WASHINGTON — Beer drinkers appear to be substantially healthier then either nondrinkers or wine and liquor drinkers, according to the largest study yet conducted of health differences among people who drink different kinds of alcoholic beverages.
The survey of more than 17,000 Canadians found that people who drank beer regularly and in moderate amounts were healthier than people who drank other alcoholic beverages.
The study, reported in the current issue of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, was sponsored by the Brewers Association of Canada and by the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, which is financed by both the Canadian brewers and the United States Brewers Association but staffed by the medical school.
The study`s director, Dr. Alex Richman, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, cautioned that the results did not necessarily prove that beer promoted health. That is one possible explanation for the findings, he said, but it is also possible that beer drinkers have more healthful ways of life than other people, or that beer drinkers may simply not admit to being ill.
``There is no evidence that moderate drinking would interfere with a person`s health,`` Richman said. ``In fact, our study suggests that drinking beer regularly and in moderate amounts may actually be advantageous.``
Dr. Thomas B. Turner, president of the sponsoring foundation and former dean of the Johns Hopkins medical school, called the study ``well-executed``
but added, ``You can`t regard it as conclusive until other studies show the same thing.`` Turner said he had ``no doubt that moderate drinking`` was associated with health benefits but he said he was ``not ready to say that beer alone`` was the beverage responsible. Even in this study, he noted, moderate wine and liquor drinkers had slightly better health than nondrinkers. Several previous studies have suggested that moderate alcohol use, including moderate beer or wine use, may reduce the risk of death from heart disease. But no previous epidemiologic study has attempted to relate the type of alcoholic beverage consumed to a broad range of health measures, according to the new report.
Data for the study came from a door-to-door survey in 1978 and 1979 of 17,249 Canadians. All were asked about their drinking habits and about their health status as measured by visits to the doctor, days lost from school or work and days spent in bed. The researchers then compared the amount of illness reported by the drinkers of various beverages with the amount of illness that would be expected in such a group without regard to the beverages consumed.
Only the beer drinkers deviated significantly from the amount of illness expected. As a group, they reported being ill 13 percent less than expected, while wine drinkers were only 2 percent and liquor drinkers only 1 percent less ill than expected. Nondrinkers and those who could not be classified reported 1 percent more illness than expected.
The apparent good health of beer drinkers was associated more with the regularity of drinking than with the amount of beer consumed. The more often people drank beer, the greater the apparent health benefit. Those who drank beer one or more times a day had 25 percent less illness than expected.
Extremely heavy beer drinkers, who drank 35 or more pints of beer a week, suffered 1 percent more illness than expected, but those who drank 15 to 34 pints had 23.5 percent less illness than expected, and those who drank 4 to 7 pints had 27.8 percent less illness than expected.
Beer contains more nutrients than other alcoholic beverages, and it produces lower concentrations of alcohol in the blood, and less functional impairment, than higher strength alcoholic beverages, the study noted.