A surprising new study points out that almost 40% of alcohol consumption-caused death happen before age 50. If that’s true, it makes sense that previous studies of the risks of alcohol (often done on people over age 50) couldn’t account for those under 50 who had died, meaning they could be flawed.
Previous studies have found that drinking alcohol could actually have a protective effect when consumed in low to moderate amounts. But most of the research was done on volunteers over 50 and they were generally observational.
Reinvestigating alcohol-related deaths
The lead author of the new study, Dr. Timothy Naimi of Boston Medical Center, had voiced his concerns in a 2017 edition of the journal Addiction. He wrote: “Those who are established drinkers at age 50 are ‘survivors’ of their alcohol consumptions who [initially] might have been healthier or have had safer drinking patterns.”
For the new study, Naimi and his team analyzed the data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Alcohol-Related Disease Impact Application.
In looking more closely at the data and accounting for age, the researchers found two very different stories.
For people between ages 20 to 49:
• they accounted for 35.8% of alcohol-related deaths
• Only 4.5% of deaths were prevented by alcohol consumption
• had 58.4% of the total number of years lost to alcohol
For people 65 and over:
• they accounted for 35% of alcohol-related deaths
• A whopping 80% of deaths were prevented by alcohol consumption
• had 15% of the total number of years lost to alcohol
What the study concludes
According to the authors, in the group they studied, the younger people had an increased risk of dying from alcohol consumption as opposed to an increased risk from not drinking. But the opposite was true for the older people. They benefited from the protective benefits of drinking alcohol.
