Health Benefits of Moderate Drinking Questioned

[Celebration]

http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2006/03/30/hscout531874.html

Many previous studies suggesting that moderate drinking helps prevent heart disease may be flawed, says a report by a group of researchers from Australia, Canada and the United States.

They analyzed 54 studies that looked at the association between drinking and risk of premature death from all causes, including heart disease. The new report concluded that many of those studies did not account for the effects of age and illness that make abstainers have higher death rates than moderate drinkers.

The researchers investigated suspicions that many of the abstainers included in these studies were actually people who'd reduced or quit drinking due to declining health, frailty, medication use or disability. They found that only seven of the 54 studies included only long-term non-drinkers in the abstainers' group. Those seven studies found no difference in death risk between abstainers and moderate drinkers.

The findings appear online in advance of the May issue of the journal Addiction Research and Theory.

[barbaraann]

1. I wondered about this when I heard about the Loma Linda study.

There was a news story recently about how American community with the longest-lived citizens was Loma Linda, heavily populated by non-drinking Seventh Day Adventists. I am starting to think that the brewers have been misleading us. Darn!

[Inland]

2. Thank goodness I'm a heavy drinker! nt