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posted by n1 on Thursday August 28 2014, @06:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the starting-the-weekend-early dept.

An article by Stanton Peele makes the case that there is strong evidence that reasonable levels of drinking are healthy, and if fact beneficial to your health compared with abstinence.

For all levels of drinking, including the highest one, for both men and women, death rates did not reach those for abstainers.

[...] Of course, abstainers may not drink because they are already ill. Thus the meta-analysis relied on studies that eliminated subjects who are abstaining due to illness, or else contrast drinkers with lifetime abstainers.

There isn't a list of references in the article, but this study may be one of the supporting ones: Alcohol Dosing and Total Mortality in Men and Women: An Updated Meta-analysis of 34 Prospective Studies.

There are, no doubt, reasonable criticisms that can be made, but there does seem to be a case for saying that drinking some alcohol is beneficial.

Article also published in: Pacific Standard Magazine

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by tathra on Thursday August 28 2014, @07:03PM

    by tathra (3367) on Thursday August 28 2014, @07:03PM (#86865)

    the concept is called hormesis [wikipedia.org], and while its been known about for a long time, its still not well understood, but it does generally imply that small doses of poison can be good for you . [huffingtonpost.com]

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by DECbot on Thursday August 28 2014, @07:10PM

    by DECbot (832) on Thursday August 28 2014, @07:10PM (#86867) Journal
    They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.
    </Obligatory_pop_culture_reference>
    --
    cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @07:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @07:15PM (#86872)

      This corn is raw!
      I know, isn't it wonderful? It's so crisp!
      Of course it's crisp! It's raw!
      No, it's terrific. You can just taste the Vitamin A and E in here. It's great.
      Could we have pills and *cook* the corn?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @07:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @07:43PM (#86892)

        Um, you have to nixtamalize corn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra [wikipedia.org]