Drinking Alcohol May Extend Your Life

Adolytsi writes "MSNBC has an interesting article on an Italian study on alcoholism. While the obvious notion of overconsumption of alcohol being detrimental to one's health is supported, apparently drinking it in moderation can actually extend your lifespan. A study on over 1 million drinkers and 94,000 deaths yielded the results: "According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol — up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women — reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent, the team reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine. However, "things radically change" when consumption goes beyond these levels, study leader Dr. Augusto Di Castelnuovo, from Catholic University of Campobasso, said in a statement. Men who have more than four drinks per day and women who have more than two drinks per day not only lose the protection that alcohol affords, but they increase their risk of death, the data indicates.""

Comments

Legal age

[Kelz]

I still find it interesting that at 18 you're allowed join the military and die but you're not allowed to drink alcohol.

Re:Legal age

[HappySqurriel]

I still find it interesting that at 18 you're allowed join the military and die but you're not allowed to drink alcohol. ... in the United States of America

Anyways, the problem with the age limit on alcohol consumption is that it gives teens/young adults the impression that drinking excessively is a mature thing to do; most people I have met who have drank from a young age tend to see excessive drinking in a completely different light than those who get to drink when they're 18-21.

Re:Legal age

[Lord Kano]

Where's the ACLU when they could actually be doing something helpful.

There's no reason why 21 should be the drinking age when 18 is the age of majority.

People always spout some bullshit about responsibility, but the studies show that people starting to drink at 21 is more harmful than people drinking earlier. When people are younger, they have more parental supervision. They learn how to drink responsibly. When someone is 21 and out on their own, they have no parents to answer to and can do pretty much what they want.

LK

Re:Legal age

[notwrong]

To make light of those that serve with honor is the greatest abuse of the freedoms you enjoy as a result of thier sacrifice.

How does it count as "freedom" if you restrict the the things that people are allowed to make light of?

Re:Legal age

[Dun Malg]

A big fuck you to whomever modded this as funny. There is nothing funny about those that lose thier lives in service of thier country. The current world circumstances are especially sad when a command in chief is as clueless as the idiot in the White House. As a veteran, it brings tears to my eyes when I hear about the lose of life in Iraq. To make light of those that serve with honor is the greatest abuse of the freedoms you enjoy as a result of thier sacrifice. WTF are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with the humor there. It's not insulting to people in uniform. You need to chill, man. Not long ago I came back from 2 years in Afghanistan with the good ol' US Army. I can't say how it might affect casualties, but I can assure you that a couple drinks a day there would definitely have improved my morale.

Re:Legal age

[Gryle]

A lot of the fear is scaremongering by the Mothers/Students Against Drunk Driving organizations. At my high school these groups did some kind of presentation at least once a semester. Instead of teaching that alcohol needs to be consumed responsibly, they preached that all alcohol is bad and will make you into some kind of monster if you come within 5 feet of it. They're responsible for most of the legislations that raised the legal drinking ages.

Re:Legal age

[adrianmonk]

I think the US is the only country in the world with such a strict view on drinking, and it does not help. There is no less drinking amongst the youth in the US as in europe, and I just cannot understand where this phobia comes from.

I'll assume that you don't know the answer to that since you're apparently not from the US and thus probably didn't have to take multiple years of US History in school at every level. Basically, 500 years ago, Europe wasn't so hot in the religious freedom department. So all the various groups that believed slightly differently (and I really mean only slightly differently in the grand scheme of things -- we are talking about 100 different flavors of Christianity here) couldn't practice freely, or at least not as freely as they wanted to. Consequences ranged from annoyance level to death. So there was all this land over here in the Americas, and not a hell of a lot of established bureaucracy to regulate it, and about a zillion separate groups decided, "Hey, let's go over there where we can do what we please, and we'll build a new, ideal society! We've thought about this a lot, and we think we have the correct interpretation of the Bible and that nobody else does, so once we run things according to the real Godly principles we've discovered, everything will be totally schweet and kick ass." So they did. Net result? Not only were the real religious zealots (the ones who not only took religion seriously, but so seriously that the established variation of Christianity wasn't good enough) siphoned out of Europe, but they got together and established entire (small) societies based on fairly extreme principles. So they were extreme to start with, and then they put themselves in a situation that encouraged extremeness.

Now, all of these Utopian religious societies really didn't last. As Bruce Cockburn said, "Let's hear a laugh for the man of the world / Who thinks he can make things work / Tried to build a New Jerusalem / And ended up with New York." However, although the societies didn't work and people ended up going more mainstream, they still had a major, lasting effect, because American life continued to be pretty seriously religious even after the initial influx of religiously-motivated colonizers. First there was The Great Awakening, basically a series of revivals which swept the nation and pretty much permanently altered society. It was, if I remember right, a global event, but it pretty much centered on the US. As if that wasn't enough, there was a Second Great Awakening 100-ish years later.

The net result of it these days is that American Christianity is somewhat of its separate thing, in the same sense that Catholicism is different from the Eastern Orthodox Church. Obviously, they all basically believe in the same things, but they don't think about it in just the same way. For example, American Christianity has tended to have a strong current of evangelicalism. It also has tended to be a little bit anti-intellectual, which has largely as a result of a reaction against The Enlightenment.

So yeah, it's related to Prohibition. But only in the sense that both are part of a much larger trend. I have in my desk drawer a pencil with an American flag design on it and the words "LOYAL TEMPERANCE LEGION / We Stand for Total Abstinence". I got it from my grandmother's house, and I believe my grandparents got it from my grandfather's mother, who was very active in the temperance movement. It was at one time a very mainstream thing to do. And it's not completely nonexistent either -- they, in fact, still exist and have a web site.

So basically, Puritanism is still alive and well in the culture in the US. There are plenty of people with more moderate views, but there is a certain balance, and both have influence.

Can't drink

[Terminal Saint]

I wondered if they remembered to take into account people who don't drink because of pre-existing health conditions that result in shorter life spans. That's a variable they tend to forget in these studies...

Re:Make up your mind

[eln]

Clearly, from this study, if you're having 4 drinks a week, you DO have a drinking problem. Specifically, your problem is you aren't drinking enough.

The old correlation--causation confusion

[Ancient_Hacker]

Well, that would be *excellent*, I love a glass of wine or three a day. A beer or two on a hot day is just heavenly.

But unfortunately the correlation may not imply causation. i.e. people who live longer drink more, but not vice-versa.

• Maybe really sick people don't drink as much.
• Maybe the people that have four drinks a day have to be quite healthy to keep that up day after day after day.
• Maybe drinking keeps them off the streets, or out of other dangerous places.
• Maybe all the 4-drink-a-day people have died already and were not around for a survey.

Lotsa possible ways to spoil things.

Stats 101...

[Dzimas]

Correlation does not imply causation. All we can say is that "people who drink a bit of alcohol tend to live longer," not that alcohol prolongs their lives. It could be that these individuals take the time to socialize and de-stress, which causes them to live longer. Or perhaps there are financial factors at play: someone who can afford to drink three or four bottles of wine a week is not likely to be living in abject poverty. Of course, it could also be that anti-oxidant properties of the beverages have a positive effect as well.

Re:Makes me happy

[The-Bus]

You're probably not far off. I know some wines have health benefits, but I'm guessing the biggest benefit from moderate drinking is that the drinker is more relaxed: stress is certainly no friend to health.

Polyphenols and wine

[o'reor]

A few studies mentioned in this Wikipedia page tend to demonstrate that there could be a benefit in drinking red wine because of polyphenols. These studies have been wildly popular on "zis side of ze pond" particularly among wine traders and farmers. And doctors, too. My father, who has a heart disease, has been prescribed at least half a glass of red wine a day (which pisses him off, because he hates red wine !).

Finding out who paid for these studies and the publicizing of their results, is another story... With alcohol and wine lobbies strongly rooted in the french political life, and recently getting into academic funding, you should always follow the money before you make your mind about these studies...

Re:Offtopic, but amusing

[Jehosephat2k]

I think the moral is either: Don't drink the punch, or Let sleeping geeks lie.

Or lock your door.