But one drink won’t hurt, right?

A paper from New York has shown that low- quantity alcohol drinks have no significant difference in the number of mentally unhealthy days they experience when compared to non-drinkers. The research was carried out to identify the health-related quality of life consequences by using frequency-quantity measures of consumption patterns.

The results of the study showed that those who are current drinkers regardless of consumption pattern are less likely to have physically unhealthy days than non-drinkers but that they were more likely to have negative mental health outcomes, except those that were low frequency, low quantity drinkers. The study also showed that high frequency, low quantity drinkers benefitted the most physically from their alcohol consumption. The impact on health-related quality of life was shown to be variable and dependent on how much and how frequently an individual consumes alcohol.

Son, C-H. (2018) ‘Health-related quality of life in consequences from frequency-quantity measures of alcohol consumption patterns’, Int. J. Happiness and Development, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp.236–260.