Heavy drinkers outlive abstainers?

[leftyladyfrommo]

Do you believe this?

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2014332,00.html

I don't drink at all any more so I found this interesting.

[ZombieHorde]

1. Interesting. I guess I should drink more. nt

[frazzled]

2. Study underwritten by the Seagram's corporation?

I'd have to know a lot more about this study before picking up the bottle.

I agree that moderate drinking of red wine is probably healthy (we drink wine with dinner 4 or 5 times a week, but almost nothing else aside from a cocktail 4 or 5 times a year in a social situation--we're not abstainers, but just not drinkers by nature.) Of our friends who are no longer with us, most were pretty heavy drinkers. Not that drinking killed them: they died young of cancer. My father will turn 94 in a few months. He's had maybe 5 beers in his lifetime and a few sips of wine at Passover each year.

Go figure. I don't believe heavy drinking is healthy: you can get in car accidents or kill others, wreck your liver, wreck your life. Maybe the abstainers had other issues: most likely psychological anxiety and phobias that caused them to avoid alcohol, and this contributed to their shorter lifespans. But who knows, maybe all the heavy drinkers died the year after the study concluded--in greater numbers than the abstainers. Death is a funny thing.

[leftyladyfrommo]

3. Heavy drinking sure isn't good for the people around you.

I know so many families plagued by drinking - it is awful on everyone. It probably would be better if those heavy drinkers didn't live so long - they ruin so many other lives.

And so many of the really bad accidents around here are caused by a drunk driver.

[Warpy]

4. I'd be interested in seeing what they mean by heavy drinkers

because I've seen heavy drinkers in their late 20s dying of end stage liver failure, 100% attributed to alcohol. Most heavy drinkers who started in their teens don't live through their 40s.

Somehow, I think heavy drinkers who had progressed from problem drinking to flat out alcoholism were excluded from this study. That's the only way it makes sense.

Light to moderate use of alcohol seems to be protective, however.

I guess I'll just have to die young since the migraines aren't worth the slight protective effect of an occasional buzz.

[Silent3]

5. I'd also be interested in what qualifies as an "abstainer"

The text of the article talks about "people who have never drunk"? Absolutely never? It seems unlikely that "absolutely never" is a significant category.

I drink very little, only a few beers a year. Per month that's usually from 0 to 2. I think the heaviest drinking I've done in a long, long time was on a vacation in London two years ago, where for the span of a five day visit I might have had a pint per day, maybe even two pints one or two of those days.

If there is protective value is a moderate amount of alcohol consumption, I'd guess I qualify closer to "abstainer" than either "light" or "moderate", and don't get any of that protection.

[HuckleB]

6. A good review of this study.

Alcohol and Survival
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=2275#more-2275