Research suggests...

...how often do we see/hear headlines relating the latest research on alcohol consumption and it give us a clear picture of anything?

I would contend, almost never.

The latest government campaign is suggesting that middle-aged drinkers (ie: me) have more alcohol-free days each week. 

First off, I'd like to say right here, right now that I don't think this is a lie, or is bad advice.  But I do question where it comes from and what it really means.

Is it that

a)  Really, people just need to drink less and since we can't stop them once they start of an evening, it's just better they spend some evenings not drinking at all

or

b)  Days when you don't drink certain physiological things happen in your organs that are genuinely beneficial/protective for the days you do drink.

the headline doesn't say, of course, because if it did we'd just find ways to drink as much in different ways.

Also, we see a lot of headlines about how many hospital admissions are caused or contributed to by alcohol consumption. What they don't break this down into is those caused by:

1  Saturday night punch-ups amongst annoying pissed-up young men
2  Friday night acute intoxication in non-regular drinkers
3  Domestic violence meted out by a drunk spouse
4  Road traffic accidents involving intoxicated young or older drinkers
5  Chronic conditions worsened by regular drinking
6  Primary disease caused by alcohol
7  Admissions caused by alcohol addiction
8  Other hospital admissions not really related in any way to alcohol but the person had obviously been drinking.

Then there's the "drinking more than...increases your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and liver diease by x%..."
...and this is the one that probably pisses me off the most.

Why?  Because these are from population-level studies (or meta studies...that is: secondary studies on several different sets of data from different studies) and they tell you absolutely nothing about your risk because those increases in risk are in relative risks.  If I have a 1 in 1000 chance of getting primary liver disease and my risk has increased by 5% by drinking then it's still a relatively small chance compared to other things that will kill me.

As a government I guess it's reasonable enough to act on population level information because you are concerned with the population as a whole.  But - and this is a big but...

We know that one of the biggest contributors to chronic ill health is poverty.  If we put serious money behind that then perhaps hospital admissions not only related to alcohol but other things would reduce too.

Lazy, sloppy "health" messages from a government who aren't serious about really tackling root causes isn't going to make me change my behaviour.  I'm not condoning my drinkng but I believe it conveys some positives to my lifestyle too and it's foolish to totally ignore them.

Meanwhile, I  will continue to have the odd alcohol-free day even though I notice no particular benefit from it since it's a balance kind of a thing - much like eating my greens, no?