After avoiding alcohol during pregnancy, you may be thinking about making it part of your life again. This is a great time to pause, look at the latest studies, and consider the kind of relationship you want to have with alcohol now and in the future.
Current health guidelines recommend that adults over 21 who drink should do so in moderation. Moderation is considered one drink or less per day for women and two drinks or less per day for men.
Here are examples of one drink:
- 12 ounces of 5 percent beer
- 8 ounces of 7 percent malt liquor
- 5 ounces of 12 percent wine
- 1.5 ounces of 40 percent (80 proof) liquor
What are the health risks?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, any amount of alcohol increases your health risks, including the risk of liver disease, high blood pressure, heart disease, some types of cancer, and mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. You can lower your risks by drinking less or not drinking at all.
Is it safe to drink alcohol when you’re breastfeeding?
If you’re breastfeeding, experts say the safest option is not to drink at all. However, moderate alcohol intake hasn’t been shown to be harmful to infants.
If you do drink, it’s best to do so moderately—not more than one drink per day—and to wait at least two hours after a drink before breastfeeding.
Excessive drinking (more than one drink per day) when you’re breastfeeding can have negative impacts on an infant, including problems with growth, development, and sleep.
What about the health benefits of alcohol?
You’ve probably heard that drinking some alcohol, such as a daily glass of red wine, has health benefits. But experts have found some flaws in the original studies.
For one, those studies didn’t consider other behaviors, like eating well, exercising, and not smoking, when they compared the different groups’ health outcomes.
Second, when researchers compared drinkers and non-drinkers, the non-drinking category included people who’d decided not to drink for any reason, including those who had to quit because of health conditions. So, the health benefits that seemed to exist for moderate drinkers may have just reflected the fact that people in that category did not have health conditions that would also have prevented them from drinking.
Reviewed by the Ovia Health Clinical Team
Sources:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (CDC). About Moderate Alcohol Use. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/about-alcohol-use/moderate-alcohol-use.html
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Breastfeeding Special Circumstances. https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding-special-circumstances/hcp/vaccine-medication-drugs/alcohol.html
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Alcohol Use and Your Health. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/about-alcohol-use/index.html
