Updated October 2025

For decades, Americans were told that alcohol consumption has both risks and benefits. One risk comes from the addictive properties of alcohol. In addition to the risk of becoming an alcoholic and the impact that addiction has on mental health, excessive alcohol consumption can cause liver failure, heart disease, pancreatitis, and other maladies. Moderate drinking, on the other hand, was thought to confer health benefits that extend beyond relaxation, conviviality, and stress reduction. Medical science suggested that the benefits of moderate drinking included heart health, improved memory and cognition, better bone density, and reduced risks for some types of cancer and for developing Type 2 diabetes.

Widely publicized research suggested that people who do not drink alcohol have a higher risk of death than those who consume one or two drinks per day. More recent studies have questioned the conclusion that moderate drinking promotes good health. Experts at Stanford Health argue that research demonstrating the health benefits of moderate drinking is outdated.

Researchers at Stanford note that studies trumpeting the health benefits of moderate drinking suffered from poor methodologies. The studies compared current drinkers to current non-drinkers and failed to consider the impact of alcohol consumption earlier in life.

Some non-drinkers were heavy consumers of alcohol before they stopped drinking. In general, people who are in poor health tend to give up drinking. Because of their history of alcohol consumption, many non-drinkers may be less healthy than moderate drinkers. That history may account for health problems that reduce their lifespans, creating the illusion that tea-totaling is a less healthy lifestyle than one of moderate drinking.

Risks of Alcohol Consumption by Seniors

A major study in 2024 focused on older drinkers. Participants in the study were residents of the UK who were 60 or older. All participants were consumers of alcohol, but the study excluded those who died in the first two years of follow-up to minimize the counting of drinkers who were already in poor health.

Participants were classified as occasional, low-risk, medium-risk, or high-risk drinkers according to the volume of alcohol consumed. Low-risk drinkers have one or two drinks per day, usually with a meal, while high-risk refers to the consumption of five or more drinks per day and dangerous drinking patterns, such as drinking to get drunk.

The study compared low-, medium-, and high-risk drinkers to occasional drinkers rather than abstainers to avoid including abstainers who quit drinking because alcohol consumption had impaired their health. The study thus attempted to remedy the methodological problem that tainted studies finding a beneficial effect from moderate alcohol consumption.

Participants were also classified by preference for wine or other drinks. Researchers defined “preference” by whether 80% of alcohol consumption was confined to one form of alcoholic beverage.

The study assessed health risks based on almost fifty health-related factors, ranging from migraines and dental issues to high blood pressure and diabetes. The study also took into account socioeconomic risk factors, measured by whether the participant lived in an area characterized by unequal access to resources.

Researchers concluded that, compared with occasional drinkers, low-risk drinkers had higher rates of deaths from cancer, moderate-risk drinkers had higher rates of death from cancer and all other causes, and high-risk drinkers had higher rates of mortality from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and all other causes. Controlling for the higher risk of death associated with existing health concerns and socioeconomic factors, the researchers found that even low-risk drinkers had higher mortality rates than occasional drinkers, especially from cancer.

The study found a small protective effect from drinking wine and drinking only with meals, especially from cancer, among drinkers with health-related and socioeconomic risk factors. The study thus offered evidence that for some drinkers, consumption of a glass or two of wine with a meal might be beneficial. That benefit disappeared for moderate-risk drinkers. The study’s improved methodology may account for its disagreement with older studies that found a benefit from moderate rates of alcohol consumption.

Apart from drinking a glass or two of wine with meals, the study’s firm conclusion is that all other patterns of daily alcohol consumption increase the risk of acquiring cancer. The study is consistent with research finding that 5.4% of all cancers in the US are attributable to alcohol consumption, and that people who stop drinking alcohol reduce their risk of developing cancer.

Potential Benefits of Drinking Wine

Whether drinking a glass or two of red wine with an evening meal protects healthy older adults against heart disease remains an open question. Although research has not established a cause-effect relationship between drinking wine and health benefits, studies have found that moderate consumption of red wine with meals is associated with reduced risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, improvement in insulin sensitivity, and higher levels of HDL cholesterol.

The studies may be flawed because it is difficult to assure that participants accurately report the amount of wine they consume. Glasses designed for red wine typically hold 14 to 16 ounces, but standard pours range from 4 to 6 ounces. Study participants may report drinking a glass of wine, but the amount they consume might range from 4 to 12 ounces, depending on when they stop pouring.

A 2024 study in Spain attempted to obtain a reliable measure of the wine that participants consumed. All study participants had an elevated risk of developing cardiovascular disease. All were eating a heart-healthy Mediterranean diet. The researchers measured the tartaric acid in the participants’ urine to determine the amount of wine they had consumed in the prior month. The study found that drinking one glass of red wine with a meal decreased the risk of developing a cardiovascular event by 50% for people at high risk of cardiovascular disease who were following a Mediterranean diet. The apparent protective effect of red wine consumption disappeared when participants drank more than one glass per day.

The Spanish study is consistent with research findings suggesting that resveratrol, an antioxidant in red wine, may help prevent coronary heart disease. However, study results are mixed. There is some evidence that moderate consumption of red wine with a meal is healthy, but the research is far from conclusive.

Reasons for Caution

Seniors tend to be more susceptible to the effects of alcohol than younger people, both because they metabolize it more slowly than younger people do and because they tend to have less water in the body. Consequently, seniors may have a higher concentration of alcohol in the body than younger drinkers, and that concentration stays higher for a longer time–another reason to stick to moderate drinking.

It is also possible that seniors are more psychologically susceptible to the use of alcohol than their younger counterparts. Many have suffered through multiple losses and/or are themselves facing the possibility of a life-changing disability or a painful, chronic medical problem. While light-to-moderate drinking might be relaxing or sociable, relying on drink as an escape can make depression and a number of health problems worse.

Indeed, the problems associated with too much alcohol are both well known and well documented, among them poor coordination leading to traffic accidents and falls, liver damage, and increased risk for some kinds of cancer. The combination of alcohol and medications, even those that are prescribed, can magnify those risks and should be sufficient reason to avoid even occasional heavy drinking.

On the Plus Side

Alcohol and Dementia

Older studies offered reason to believe that moderate drinkers are less likely than others to develop dementia and cognitive impairments. Observational studies offered evidence that “dementia risk was lowest among light to moderate drinkers while it crept up among both the non-drinkers and heavy drinkers.” Those studies, however, produced inconsistent results.

Researchers now recognize that those observational studies may have confused cause with effect. Recent studies based on genetic analysis have debunked the belief that light to moderate drinking protects against dementia. A major study in 2025 concluded that any amount of alcohol consumption harms the brain, and that brain damage increases with the amount of alcohol consumed.

The bottom line is that alcohol does not protect against, and may contribute to, dementia. Heavy drinking is more likely to be associated with dementia, but no amount of alcohol is beneficial to the brain. Older adults must balance the potential heart benefits of drinking a glass of wine with a meal against the increased risk of developing dementia that is associated with consuming any amount of alcohol.

(This article was updated October 2025)