How bad is a glass of wine per night?

[flossie72]

Roughly 2.5 bottles a week - over the recommended units by quite a bit. But isn’t a significant amount per night. Just habitual at this point, and enjoyable over dinner.

Not Sure if people are aware but drinking wine alcohol also increases the risks of breast cancer as well !
That’s enough to not make me wanna drink alcohol to excess!

The article you linked is specific to heart health and notes:

And drinking alcohol can cause other health problems or make them worse.

A small glass of wine a night is fine, but yours isn't small. If you really want to carry on with your glass every night then buy new smaller wine glasses and put the bottle straight back in the fridge after pouring so you don't pour another.

That’s a fair point. I do struggle with willpower and I’m the same with food. It’s not that im addicted to biscuits but when I tried giving them up for lent I lasted about a week! I think it’s hard to give up the things that you enjoy even when you know it’s not particularly good for you. But with alcohol there’s the stigma of ‘if you can’t stop you must be an alcoholic’.

If I can’t drink for any reason such as having plans or needing to drive somewhere then it’s not a problem but when I’m at home in the evenings and the kids have gone to bed I suppose it’s just become a bit of a habit.

I think the fact you’re asking shows that you know it’s a problem. I was drinking similarly to you - a third to a half of a bottle every night. I became reliant on it quite quickly. I ended up giving up and I had some physical side effects (crazy dreams/bad sleep) so I was definitely physically addicted too. Scary actually.

To me that would be extremely restrained, virtually teetotal. I don't think I've ever had just one. More like three.

But having said that it shouldn't be hard to just reduce the size of the glass until you're not really craving any anymore?

I'd be very pleased with myself if I only had one glass. Though ideally I'd try and have a couple days off.

Is that every night you’re drinking that though? And if you read the updates it’s more like a third to a half of a bottle every night.

Exactly. There are benefits and disadvantages to moderate consumption of alcohol. Take your pick :)

But not necessarily as enjoyable. I mean, you can get a double win by having a glass of red wine with some grapes and cheese ;)

But you can get the anti oxidants from grapes alone. Why would you drink alcohol for the anti oxidants when it also causes cancer?

Thats like me saying I regularly snort coke but its ok because I always have an orange at the same time so it's great for the vitamin c!

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/08/moderate-alcohol-consumption-drinking-health-benefits-impacts-research

Indeed.

"A 2024 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association followed more than 135,000 drinkers age 60 and over and found that even moderate alcohol intake was associated with a higher death rate – with much of that increase seen in cancer and cardiovascular disease". alcohol not quite so great for heart it seems....

If I drank that much I'd be contantly ill - headaches, colds, that sort of thing. Do you not find that the alcohol makes it hard for you to fight off infections? Maybe I just have a feeble immune system! I also think it'd affect my weight quite badly - wine is high in calories and it's also very bad for your teeth.

Whatever your thoughts on addiction and dependence, wine is a pretty difficult substance for your body to deal with and it's not great to make it contend with it every day or even multiple times a week.

I got out of the habit by substituting for a nice non alcoholic drink that I liked instead.

I was probably drinking a glass of wine 4 nights a week. In my case they were small as I hate warm wine and kept them small to avoid them warming up. I enjoyed it, could go days in between with no issue, all good. So definitely no judgement from me on that score.

However, I’m now on weight loss injections and as a result have gone off alcohol completely- I’ve drunk 4 alcoholic drinks in 8 weeks. I’ve realised how many calories were involved in my drinks and reflected on the fact that my liver showed alcohol damage when I had blood tests. I’m now on slimline tonic- posh stuff, garnished with fruit instead. Makes it feel like a “grown up drink” (squash/Diet Coke/ water didn’t feel like a relaxing adult thing for me).

I’m horrified to realise that I’m sleeping better, my skin looks better and I’m having fewer hot flushes. Not the side-effect of WLI I was expecting, but a real point of reflection for me.

Given the fact that you mention boredom as a reason, and that you have to exercise self-control to maintain your current amount, this could get out of hand before you realise it.

It’s really really bad.

Which is why I said take your pick :)

Its clearly a lot more complex than your simple analysis. Take a country with a very high life expectance, like Japan,. The per capita alcohol consumption there is similar to the USA, but the Japanese live 8 or so years longer. Some of the Scandinavian countries have high per capita consumption of alcohol, but live 3 or 4 years longer than if you are in the UK

I think its more reasonable to say that diet and lifestyle, have a big effect on life expectancy, and moderate consumption of alcohol as part of that is unlikely to be the biggest factor. Clearly extreme alcohol consumption brings its own health issues.

And lets not forget that the acrylamides in crusty bread, toast and biscuits can also cause cancer :)

Good for you. The fact that you had liver damage with that amount is scary -if that was the cause of it.

2.5 bottles a week is about 10 bottles of wine a month.

Yes, that is an awful lot and it will be having a detrimental effect on your health even if you cannot feel it right now.

This is not good for you, no matter which way you look at it. Using wine to cope with stress is a very unhealthy road to go down.

Its also a lot more complex than your simple analysis too.

When crusty bread appears on the cancer research website then maybe I will take note but alcohol is most certainly on there as a cause.

There is no "safe" level of alcohol consumption and it is classified as a class 1 carcinogen.

I can see the effects even 1 glass of wine has on my sleep/stress levels/heart rate according to my Garmin and its really quite shocking.

If you want to carry on thinking its fine thats entirely your choice but its simply not true to say that moderate drinking is healthy.

I used to drink dangerously heavily. I now have two or three medium glasses about five days a week.

I guess I'm not the best person to judge it. But what I do think is whatever you're drinking, if you can gradually reduce it is always a good plan.

I think what I actually said was that it was part of the overall impact of lifestyle and diet, and probably not the largest one, not that it was healthy. There are benefits, though as another poster has postulated they can also be achieved in other ways.

When major food companies are actively working on reducing acrylamides I think it's reasonable to assume there's a risk though. Cancer Research UK is not the only authority on cancer, treatment or causes, good though it undoubtedly is :)

As you can see, you get wildly different views on here. At the end of the day, the safest amount to drink is zero but we often make compromises for things we enjoy. I might enjoy salty, fatty, sugary food so i might take the view that although they not ideal things to eat, since I enjoy them I will take on that additional risk but I will minimise it by eating those things irregularly, being active and maintaining a healthy weight. I might enjoy riding my horse - there's some risk associated with that but I accept it because I enjoy it. The safest thing to do would be to not ride the horse at all but I might not choose that option.

The NHS suggests drinking no more than 14 units a week and to have at least a couple of days off. If you are over that then the advice is to cut down. However, it's a continuum - 10 units is better than 14 but 15 units doesn't suddenly become wildly more risky because it's over the guidelines. It sounds like you would benefit from cutting down so perhaps think of ways you could do that whilst still being able to enjoy a few glasses a week.

i took some leave this year and we travelled for a couple of months. I had at least one beer/glass of wine a day (and thoroughly enjoyed it!). But I did notice that my sleep, anxiety.. everything felt so much better as soon as I stopped. I try not to drink at home at all so I really noticed the impact then the benefit - so while I think it’s absolutely fine, I do think you’d feel a lot better without it.