A glass of wine every night?

I hate manipulated 'facts' like this.
The amount of antioxidants in a small glass of red wine is negligible compared to say, a handful of blueberries.
Blueberries will also not contain anything that'll harm you. Alcohol does.
WHO guidelines now state there is NO safe level of alcohol consumption.
By all means, we are all free to drink what we like & take those risks of course.

I don’t see the issue at all but it is all about balance.

I drink a glass of red wine most evenings, I’m within recommended limits, I cannot remember the last time I got drunk, my BMI is 21, cholesterol low average, BP healthy, heart rate healthy, all nutritional levels where they should be.

Would I give up the wine? I would probably swap it out for a different treat but I’m not sure there is a healthier alternative? Or why I would?

But.

If I was overweight or had health difficulties I would look at overall lifestyle and see which things I could change.

I had 3/4 of a bottle of Merlot last night, and a wispa duo for my dinner. I work at a funeral home so should know better. Might go and size my coffin up now. It was lush ❤️ though. I shan’t make a habit of it.

Your fine... I always finish the bottle!

I thought I was fine drinking 1 bottle of red wine per week but my nurse visibly looked shocked when I told her and I felt as though I was doing something wrong.
When I read it in my medical notes on the write-up of the appointment, I also felt a bit ashamed even though I don't smoke and I exercise etc.
Due a phone appointment with another nurse any time now so will be interesting to see if she brings it up.

I still have my bottle of wine - although to be fair, in MY case, it could be classed as binge-drinking even though it's consumed over a few hours on a Friday night and stops at a single bottle, just because I'm drinking in one go, rather than a glass each night.

If you feel okay doing it and don't feel it's doing you any harm and you enjoy it, then you're probably okay, but I would definitely add a couple of alcohol free days in to reduce the amount to maybe 1 bottle per week.
It's hard to say because anything could come across as being too judgy or too blase - we're inundated with so much different information from the media, that's it's hard to know if we're doing right from wrong sometimes.

I'm still having my Friday treat tomorrow, regardless of whether I get told off during my appointment - I'm good with everything else.

I wear a fitness watch and the impact one(!) glass one wine has on my body is insane.
The two graphs attached are the difference between a normal evening and an evening with one glass of wine. The stress is measured in orange

This! With bells on.
I find it fascinating - and alarming - the effect one glass of wine has on my body. I might not feel much different, aside from slightly relaxed, but my Garmin tells a whole different story.

Also, the whole "but the French drink wine every day" thing just isn't true. Latest figures show around 10% of French people drink wine daily.
www.economist.com/europe/2024/03/27/why-the-french-are-drinking-less-wine

Yes, it's very pleasant to enjoy wine, but let's not try to pretend that doing it every day is normal or healthy.

It is common in Italy, the difference being that most Italians drink locally made wine which has no nasties in it and they don’t drink to excess. Having spent many years travelling and staying there, and having many Italian friends, I have never seen any of them ill through alcohol, they just simply have a very different attitude towards it, and they only ever have it with food. If you call in at a bar in summer for an Aperol or a beer they always bring a little plate of snacks with it.

But I just find that a small glass of white wine adds something to my evening.

I find it interesting that this is the language you are using, to convince yourself.
1/4 bottle of wine, is not "a small glass of wine", and keep in mind wine tends to be 13% alcohol now, unlike when you could first go to a pub and order a glass of wine, which was 9% and a glass held 125ml.

Whether it is okay to drink every night is going to cause debate, but you are drinking above the Gvmnt suggested guidelines, so it can't be that good. How harmful or otherwise will depend on everything else about your lifestyle. How much it is affecting you might be worth testing by going without it for a month and seeing the change - or indeed seeing if you struggle without it.

Why do people say that drinking in excess of the NHS guidelines is 'absolutely fine'?

I am interested in this alterantive facts thinking. The science is very clear. There is no amount of alcohol that benefits health, it is always a negative in health terms (that old red wine story has been disproven now).

Are you still doing those mental Mental Gymnastics? I’m in bed because: I worked late last night performing an emergency operation/ I have flu / I have serious mobility issues/ I am a firefighter and was on duty last night/ my baby had me awake all night and I am catching up on some sleep / I am lazy and this is how I live.

You leaped to the last scenario but any of the others could be why I am still in bed.

It’s absolutely fine!

This is mumsnet though, and you will get some people expressing outrage at anything more than a thimble of sherry at Xmas!

So does everyone, but that doesn't change the science about drinking.

When it comes to alcohol less is better and none is best, in health terms. Only you can judge if what you drink is worth the increased health risk. Obviously the health risks rise as consumption rises.

Longstanding advice has been to have more than one alcohol free night each week to give the liver a break. Also, if your bottle only lasts four nights, you are likely drinking more than 2 units per night, so across seven days you are above the recommended weekly maximum (a bottle is usually estimated to be 10 units).

If you are drinking as some form of self-medication, that's not great and you are at risk of your consumption increasing. If you are not drinking as some form of self-medication, you might want to consider stopping for the health benefits.

Just replace it with a nice hot drink or smoothie every other night. It's not awful but not great health wise.

Well 2 bottles of wine a week is about 20 units so well over the recommended limit of 14.

Well crack on then!

It would be normal here. I've been drinking at that sort of level for 40 years and it has never crept up.

I like the taste of alcohol. Most soft drinks are much too sweet for me and most of them are now full of artificial sweetener.

So 104 bottles of wine a year? Just for the sake of one glass in the early evening.

Even at the lowest end at £5 a bottle that's £520 or £43 a month ish. Probably not that bad if you can afford it. If you're spending £10 a bottle, it's really adding up IMO.

Call it 600 calories per bottle, that's 62,400 calories. In a dirty calculation (and this is up for debate!) that tots up to somewhere around 18lbs in human body fat you'll need to watch for and manage every year - if you're not changing anything else in your diet and exercise regime you'll put weight on without realising it.

I come from a family of alcoholics. You don't have to be reliant on the alcohol to get you out of bed each day to have a deeply unhealthy relationship with alcohol. To me, drinking alcohol daily is definitely a problem.

I am very fat. I'm making huge lifestyle changes, including my food and alcohol intakes. I'm not pretending it's all easy but I'm finding it useful to look at my problem behaviours in new ways. Money and calories count!

My contributions to this thread have not been made to make people feel guilty. If they do feel guilty in any way after reading, then there’s an opportunity there to do some self reflection on why that might be.

Yes I will die anyway but I’d rather minimise (I said minimise) my chances of that being from cancer and therefore I take personal responsibility.

Why take exception to a stranger on the internet giving their opinion when you have gone on the internet to ask strangers for their opinion?

A bottle a night is a drink problem that is fact not my opinion. Everyone says they can control it, everyone says it isn't a problem.

You used to do a bottle a night, now you are drinking daily. Kindly, you need to stop altogether or at least have 2 or 3 booze free days a week. Can you do that, have you tried? Best wishes, genuinely.

I know happy, healthy octogenarians who do this, but hey, what do they know

A lot of cancers are linked to frequent alcohol consumption. Smoking also used to be considered "fine and normal", it was even claimed to be healthy as the tobacco industry did such a magnificent job of obfuscating the science. We all found out in the end.

So many "live, laugh, love" tropes in this post it's unreal.

If you don't enjoy alcohol or have decided to abstain for health reasons then good for you, but it's not going to guarantee you a longer life than someone enjoying a glass a day

You sure about that, @lilydragon ? Do you have the empirical or research stats to back that up, or are you just wanting to have a pop at the health conscious?

so no need to make others feel guilty in order to justify your own choices!

No one is doing this on here. But presenting simple facts about the health side effects of alcohol intake is seen as "making others feel guilty" - this is the level of debate on here.

Life is for living and we are all going to die sooner or later

in which case why don't we all eat and drink anything we want?!!

I wear a fitness watch and the impact one(!) glass one wine has on my body is insane.

The two graphs attached are the difference between a normal evening and an evening with one glass of wine. The stress is measured in orange.

It’s not worth it to me. Even if I feel fine, my body clearly doesn’t agree.