Finally, a reason to drink
2008-03-08 12:24
Washington - People who do not drink
alcohol may finally have a reason to start - a study published
on Friday shows non-drinkers who begin taking the occasional
tipple live longer and are less likely to develop heart
disease.
People who started drinking in middle age were 38%
less likely to have a heart attack or other serious heart event
than abstainers - even if they were overweight, had diabetes,
high blood pressure or other heart risks, Dr Dana King of the
Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and
colleagues found.
Many studies have shown that light to moderate drinkers are
healthier than teetotallers, but every time, the researchers
have cautioned that there is no reason for the abstinent to
start drinking.
Now there may be, said King.
"This study certainly shifts the balance a little bit,"
King said in a telephone interview.
Volunteers
King's team studied the medical records of 7 697 people
between 45 and 64 who began as non-drinkers as part of a larger
study.
Over 10 years, 6% of these volunteers began
drinking, King's team reported in the American Journal of
Medicine.
King said he does not know why some of the volunteers
started drinking. "This was a natural experiment," he said.
"Over the next four years we tracked the new drinkers and
when we compared them to the persistent non-drinkers, there was
a 38% drop in new cardiovascular disease."
The findings held even when the researchers factored in
heart disease risks such as smoking, high blood pressure,
obesity, race, education levels, exercise and cholesterol.
Several of the volunteers had more than one risk factor and
still benefited from adding alcohol, King said.
Few bingers
Fewer than one percent of people in the study drank more
than is recommended, King said.
Recommended amounts equal a
drink or two a day by most guidelines.
"Half of them were wine drinkers only. There was a much
bigger benefit for wine-only drinkers," he added.
Now King's team has started a new study in which his team
will randomly assign non-drinkers to start either having a
glass of wine a day, a glass of grape juice, or grape juice
spiked with antioxidants, compounds believed to help fight
heart disease.
But the findings do not mean people should drink freely,
King said.
Another study published this week supports that
advice. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health found
that how much and how often people drink affects their risk of
death from several causes.
Moderate drinking
Their study of 44 000 people showed that men who had five
or more drinks on days they did drink were 30% more
likely to die of a heart attack or stroke than men who had just
one drink a day - regardless of what their average drinking
intake was.
Writing in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and
Experimental Research, the team at the National Institute on
Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Cancer Institute
found that regular, moderate drinking was healthier than having
the occasional binge.
Even men who drank every single day of the year were 20% less likely to die of heart disease than men who drank
just one to 36 days per year - if they drank moderately.
"Taken together, our results reinforce the importance of
drinking in moderation," the researchers wrote.