That one doesn't make any sense to me. Alcohol is basically poison. Perhaps small amounts of it won't do any harm to you, but how could it possibly have a positive effect on your health?
From the study text:
> We observed a relatively small difference in life expectancies across different levels of alcohol consumption compared with other individual lifestyle factors. The cardiovascular benefits of moderate alcohol consumption have been consistently observed in large cohort studies, but alcohol consumption and risk of cancer showed a dose-response relation. Thus, current guidelines do not encourage a non-alcohol drinker to start drinking just for the benefit of preventing cardiovascular disease.
Female life expectancy peaks in the two lowest non-zero ranges, and disease-free expectancy at the second-lowest specifically; male life expectancy rises all the way to the top of "moderate" consumption, and disease-free peaks at the top two "moderate" doses. Presumably that's partly from men being larger and metabolizing alcohol faster, and partly from men being at higher risk of heart disease.
(There's probably a healthy-user bias here too, since there are conditions and medications which weren't checked for that would make people unable to tolerate alcohol, but that's less relevant when comparing different doses.)
Sharing a bottle of wine or champagne with my wife can be one of the most enjoyable experiences to us.. going out to the pub having some beer with family & friends is great.
An argument could be "you can have just as much fun doing something else", but I don't know.. that's not really my experience. A moderate amount of drinking usually makes things even more fun.
it may be that the act of consuming alcohol is a confounding variable in the underlying correlation of social interaction/un-stressing or something.
(Incredibly to me, even small doses of radiation can be protective against larger doses later.)
1. The social benefit. There's research showing that if you have a rich social life and friend network, you live longer. The assumption being that the drink is likely to be with other people.
2. The stress management benefit. It's not healthy to be stressed out. The alcohol's mitigating effect on stress may be greater than the alcohol's poisonous effect, in the right dose, for the right person.
Which I'm really not convinced that is even true.
Or, to put a cynical spin on it: noone becomes an abstinent by choice, usually people stop drinking once their doctor tells them they should, so obviously they will have worse overall health than moderate drinkers.