Slashdot Mirror
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.""
Is that four drinks every day? Or is that up to four drinks in a given 24-hour period, from time to time? - i.e. four drinks on Saturday night, then several more scattered throughout the week
Because I don't hink I'd consider four drinks every day to be "moderate" drinking.
I still find it interesting that at 18 you're allowed join the military and die but you're not allowed to drink alcohol.
To be fair, though, bars around military bases tended to not pay a lot of attention to specific details like age when shown a military ID (at least back when I was in). That doesn't make it any more legal, but at least we could still show up to morning PT drunk. Believe it or not, it's an even worse idea than it sounds.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Or, is it that the behavior of enjoying a drink or two a day is correlated with something else that extends longevity (e.g., having more friends, being more relaxed and less stressed, etc.).
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.
Yes. Well, sort of. They normalized for dietary habits, physical activity, and general health as they correlate to drinking and it resulted in a positive correlation, but it is unclear from the summary I read if that is the number reported or a smaller positive correlation. I suspect the latter. This article about the study also left out the difference between the European and American data and results. For Americans, three drinks was the point where the numbers no longer provided a benefit, probably because Americans are more likely to drink all of it at once and without food, rather than with meals.
Where I live, people still make their own moonshine in their basement. My manager told me that when she starts feeling a cold coming on, she'll take a shot or two of that nasty stuff at night and then wake up feeling great. But I guess when you're drinking stuff that is used for sterilization it's not surprising. :) However, I'm curious as to whether or not the "healing effects" are lessened if you don't manage to drink every day, sort of like when you stop taking antibiotics prematurely. Chock one up to good old fashioned redneck ingenuity. :P
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
It is amazing(troubling) the number of studies that leave out the reason for not drinking. To read the article and not see any mention of controls on reason for abstaining raises BIG question marks in my mind.
This would not just apply to alcohol. If there was a study on Caffine, I would want the abstainers not to have chosen to refrain. Why? if the caffine leaves them feeling bad enough to quit they are already tangebly different than the average person.
The one thing that these types of articles always seem to do is to lump all types of alcohol together although there are several different types of alcohol sources. I'm not a connoisseur by any stretch, but I've heard from people who are in the medical profession that the body reacts very differently to different types of alcohol and that different types have different health benefits.
;)
As I understand it, and I have full confidence in the Slashdot crowd to let me know if I'm wrong, red wine alcohol comes from the sugar fermentation of red grapes and contains quite a bit of healthy anti-oxidants. White wine, on the other hand, contains far fewer anti-oxidants and therefore does not have the health benefits of red wine. In fact, the anti-oxidants entry on Wikipedia also makes this claim. Conversely, the alcohol in harder drinks like whiskey is grain-based alcohol that generally has little health benefits, not including its ability to wipe out the weaker brain cells.
Friends of mine who are very much into drinking and partying have said from their own experience that the alcohol buzz from sources like grapes is vastly different and impacts them differently than the grain alcohol in harder drinks. (Yes, I'm aware that the smart-ass responses to that almost write themselves.)
But even a friend's mom who is a registered nurse got on his case one time when he got plastered from a combination of wine and spirits, claiming that, "Mixing those types of alcohol together is incredibly dangerous!"
Again, as one not involved in the medical profession I can only make suppositions on all of this. But it does bother me how reports like this have a tendency of throwing around the generic term "alcohol" as though it encompasses all drinks when that should not necessarily be the case.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Actually, correlation frequently implies causation. Much of science is looking at correlations and testing to find corresponding causations. Correlation does not necessarily imply a given causation. You are correct in so much as this study does not provide any proof that drinking will cause you to live longer. It was, however, normalized for several other strong correlations, such as medical conditions and dietary habits. If you're looking to live longer, drinking a few drinks a day may help or it may not. I think it's worth a shot, but I was going to do it anyway.
Truth is that people's lives are a combination of so many factors that singling out one factor is pretty pointless.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
There are plenty of studies which reach this conclusion - a bit of red whine is actually good for your health. IMO, what they miss is that it has to be real red wine, ...
Actually, studies like this go back at least 30 years, and their results are a bit more complex.
The first big one I remember reading about was in the mid 70's, in the UK. It was a massive "data dredging" study of medical records, looking for things correlated (negatively or positively) with long life.
They reported that the strongest correlation was with "moderate alcohol consumption", which was about the same as in this study - 3 or 4 drinks per day, where "drink" was somewhat fuzzily defined as whatever the records listed as a "glass". They reported that drunkards didn't do so well, but teetotalers didn't do a lot better, and the ones who lived longest were those who regularly consumed moderate amounts of alcohol.
They did have a few more details. Those who drank only distilled booze didn't benefit as much as those who drank beer or wine (but they did benefit). They had weak data showing that red wines and dark beers were somewhat better for health than the lighter-colored varieties. They said that drinking with meals was better for you than just drinking, and they didn't recommend having all four of your drinks all at once.
Since then, quite a lot of research has given us a lot more information. Recently, studies have uncovered some of the reasons for the benefits of red wines, including the fact that not all red wines show the benefits. But again, further research is needed.
My wife works with medical data a lot, and is constantly finding more studies of the effects of alcohol. She rather likes telling people about the latest benefits that have been discovered. And she comments that we just don't drink enough around our house. A few years back, she worked with a researcher who liked to tell people that his studies had been unable to find an upper bound to the amount of alcohol that was beneficial. He would add that he was just studying the effect of ethanol on the circulatory system, which is apparently not at all damaged by heavy drinking. He would also say that he couldn't comment on the effect on other parts of the body such as the liver; that was other people's research.
Anyway, it's a complex subject, biologically, and the research isn't nearly done. But there have been a lot of studies, and we can fairly firmly recommend a glass or two of beer or wine with every meal. Well, maybe not with breakfast, as you might just decide to go back to sleep, so have that one later in the evening instead. Dark wines and beers are somewhat better than light, but if you don't like them, drink something you do like and don't worry about it.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
In the semi-Puritan US, where the government and talking heads really hate to say anything positive about alcohol, I take theories about polyphenols and flavenoids to largely be an attempt to conceal the conclusion that many studies keep pointing to. Namely, that there's benefit from alcohol consumption. And not just moderate (by US standards) consumption, but frequent consumption (moderate by European standards). The studies keep showing it, but the govt and talking heads still keep talking about alcohol like it's a bad thing and continue to say that there's no reason to increase your consumption.
Not that polyphenols might not have a positive effect; only that it's likely small compared to the positive effect of alcohol.
Here in the US we have this thing called the drug war. You may have heard of it. One of the central tenants pushed out by the government propaganda machine (called the ONDCP) is that all use is abuse. There's no such thing as "harmless use" of any drug, not in the brave new USA at least.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.