Drinking beer and spirits is linked to elevated levels of fat in the body that is harmful to health, whereas drinking wine is not associated with elevated levels of fat.
Red wine is associated with lower levels of fat in the body. A new study that my colleagues and I recently published in the Obesity Science & Practice journal has some key findings.
Our study shows that white wine in moderation may offer a health benefit for older adults: denser bones.
Older adults who drank white wine in moderation had higher bone mineral density. We didn't find a link between beer and bone mineral density.
The UK Biobank is a large-scale longitudinal database. We assessed 1,869 white adults from 40 to 80 years of age who reported demographic, alcohol, diet and lifestyle factors.
We collected height, weight and blood samples from each participant and then used dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry to get body composition information.
We used a statistical program to look at the relationship between alcoholic beverages and body composition.
Aging is accompanied by an increase in the problematic fat that can lead to heightened cardiovascular disease risk as well as a reduction in bone mineral density. It has important health implications given that 75 percent of adults in the US are considered overweight or obese.
A higher risk of cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and a higher risk of death has been linked to having higher levels of body fat.
National medical care costs associated with treating obese patients total more than US$260.6 billion annually.
It's important for researchers like us to look at all the potential contributors to weight gain so that we can figure out how to fight the problem.
Alcohol has been seen as a possible factor in the epidemic of overweight people. The public hears conflicting information about the benefits and risks of alcohol. Through our research, we hoped to untangle some of these factors.
There are many factors that contribute to being overweight. There are other studies that have not found a link between alcohol consumption and weight gain.
One reason for the inconsistencies in the literature is that previous research has traditionally treated alcohol as a single entity rather than separately measuring the effects of beer, cider, red wine, white wine, and spirits. The research yields mixed messages even when broken down in this way.
One study suggests that drinking more beer contributes to a higher waist-to-hip ratio, while another suggests that healthy adults don't experience any significant weight gain after one month of drinking moderate levels of beer.
We want to tease out the unique risks and benefits associated with each alcohol type. We will look at how diet and alcohol consumption can affect diseases of the brain in older adults with mild cognitive impairment.
Brittany is a graduate assistant at Iowa State University.
This article is free to use under a Creative Commons license. The original article is worth a read.
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