Why drinking benefits Europeans, not Indians

Are the health benefits of alcohol overrated? In the latest advisory on spirits, the UK House of Commons has requested the British to keep away from alcohol for at least two days a week. The lawmakers reason the body needs a break twice a week to repair the liver. This is a climbdown from earlier guidelines to drink moderately every day.

In the country's various watering holes, it's difficult to miss the flurry of advice: have beer to flush out kidney stones, wine to cut down risk of heart attack. Some even claim that diabetes can be kept at bay with a regular drink. But doctors say such claims cannot be given a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Consider beer, whose popularity in urban India is increasing steadily because of its low alcohol content. Urologist Dr Manish Bansal says it is a myth that beer can treat kidney stones. "Studies in the US have shown that certain beers, such as stout, prevent calcium deposits and reduce stone formation by 30 to 35%. But beer contains a chemical called purine, which increases the risk of uric acid stones," he says. He adds that orange juice, or even tea or coffee, would have the same flushing-out effect as beer on kidney stones.

Then there is the widespread contention that alcohol is good for the heart. Malika Arora, of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), points out that this contention doesn't hold for Indians. "We have done a study which shows that alcohol offers no cardiovascular protection for Indians," she says.

The study was done jointly by PHFI and the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, across 10 cities in 2010 and compared 4,000 Indians who drank alcohol to an equal number who didn't. The study, published in the Atherosclerosis medical journal in February 2010, showed that even low levels of alcohol increased the risk of coronary artery disease among Indians by 40%.

Why does this health reversal occur among Indians? PHFI's Arora points out that the kind of alcohol one drinks has a role. "Indians mainly drink hard liquor, like whisky or even scotch. Europeans drink a lot of wine and it has been shown to be beneficial for them," she adds. Alcohol has been a part of Indian society since ages, but there is better tracking of the drinking habit these days. Market research firm International Wine and Spirits Record had stated that the total consumption of spirits in India stood at 200 million cases in 2009 (a case has 12 bottles or nine litres). A World Health Organization survey a few years back showed that spirits made up for 88% of what Indians regularly drink, while beer only had a 10% share and wine was barely 2%.

It's this 'different' drinking pattern that makes a difference. While westerners drink moderately every day, resulting in some spirits giving them a health advantage, Indians tend toward binge-drinking. The AIIMS-PHFI study, for instance, said that varying effects of alcohol on different races may be genetic or due to different drinking patterns.