Drinking alcohol moderately

[Corrosive]

Moderate drinkers tend to have better health and live longer than those who are either abstainers or heavy drinkers. In addition to having fewer heart attacks and strokes, moderate consumers of alcoholic beverages (beer, wine and distilled spirits or liquor) are generally less likely to suffer strokes, diabetes, arthritis, enlarged prostate, dementia (including Altzheimer's disease), and several major cancers.

Alcohol has been used medicinally throughout recorded history; its medicinal properties are mentioned 191 times in the Old and New Testaments.1 As early as the turn of the century there was evidence that moderate consumption of alcohol was associated with a decrease in the risk of heart attack.2 And the evidence of health benefits of moderate consumption has continued to grow over time.

Full article: http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/AlcoholAndHealth.html

[DarkERocker]

Pretty Interesting, I'll look that up, I knew moderated drinking was good but I didn't know what it was good for.
Thanks for the info

[caffeine]

And queue "correlation doesn't imply causation" brigade in 3, 2, 1...

[Paul676]

except that there actually has been evidence to suggest that moderate drinking is good for you, at least with wine - drunk moderately, it thins the blood

[Rosti_LFC]

It's not drinking alcohol that is the cause. It's the other things which are in the drink.

Most lightly alcohol drinks (ie. not spirits, alcopops etc) tend to be brewed and are made fairly naturally and with natural ingredients. It's not the fact that beer or wine has alcohol in it. It's the fact that beer and wine are made in a way which contains far more useful vitamins and minerals than you're ever going to get in a manufactured soft drink or tap water.

[Ukrainian4Life]

I wish moderate drinking could improve my tetris skills.

But it has been proven in the past that drinking moderate amounts of wine per day has been proven to sustain healthier bodies for those of an older age. e.g. It has been shown to be most effective for older, moderate drinkers.

[Paradox]

Drinking moderately doesn't mean the alcohol is good for you. People who drink moderately have self control and are therefore more likely to be healthy .

Actually I have no idea that is just a guess.

[Maii04]

drinking still causes damage to your liver

[xxKay]

That's sorta obvious, but I don't plan to drink and probably never will. I dislike alcohol.

[coolmaninsano]

I like alcohol.

[mippo]

"..A lot of you don't drink, don't smoke.
Some people here tonight, they don't eat butter; no salt, no sugar, no lard. Cause they want to live, they give up that good stuff.. Neckbones, pig tails.
You gonna feel like a damn fool laying at the hospital dying of nothing".

[caffeine]

This thread never really sat right with me, so here's an interesting article that The Guardian published.

Relevant excerpt:[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]The supposed cardiovascular benefits of a low level of alcohol intake in some middle-aged men cannot be taken as proof that alcohol is beneficial. To do that one would need a randomised trial where part of this group drink no alcohol, others drink in small amounts and others more heavily. Until this experiment has been done we don't have proof that alcohol has health benefits. A recent example of where an epidemiological association was found not to be true when tested properly was hormone replacement therapy. Population observations suggested that HRT was beneficial for post-menopausal women, but when controlled trials were conducted it was found to cause more harm than good.[/quote]

Sorry to bump.

[Rosti_LFC]

Almost all "studies" which claim that eating/drinking more X can be shown to reduce *insert disease here* are a load of bollocks. Very few are properly conducted with control groups, large numbers of people (to be statistically significant) and over a long enough time. The overwhelming majority are performed using very unscientific and flawed methodologies and really don't show much at all, especially given the complex biological and psychological aspects involved.

If more people read Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre, then there'd be far less money wasted on bullshit homoeopathy, "super-foods" and supposedly magical pills.

[Agamemnon]

By far most studies are paid for by somebody who wants their view proven, conducted by somebody with a bee in their bonnet, or done by somebody with a personal agenda.

My favourite is a study done by a girl in Canada, for her PhD. It was on rape. You would think this a serious enough issue to demand proper research.
She interviewed a large representative body of females, and came up with around 70% of them having been raped (exact numbers are in a book next to me, The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner).
When people went back to check, 3/4 of those who were supposed raped, had never had any sort of sexual contact with the men who supposedly raped them, and a large majority of the ones who had, had consensual sex.

Lesson: don't trust research done by people/groups you don't know.
This research report I just outlined was the basis of many, many studies (as in, they trusted her number), and one of the favourite whipping posts of many feminist movements (it still is, even though it was proven to be bogus...)



In other news; life is lethal. You're gonna die from it! Enjoy it while it lasts, or suffer the consequences.

[HERO_KID]

although interesting.. this whole thread is like.. how many things are so clearly healthy for you? if you are worried about your health there are so many things you can do, alcohol shouldnt even come into the equation for living longer. #1-cardiovascular activity