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The Truth We Won’t Admit: Drinking is Healthy

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

pTamok writes:

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

• Re:Won't admit it? (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @08:45PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @08:45PM (#86912)

  It turns out that there is a very small window of time where exposure to alcohol in the womb presents any danger at all, and the mother has to be a fairly heavy drinker to have any risk at all.

  Being a heavy drinker may be required for real damage, but the timeline where the damage can occur is not a small window, its basically from week 3 on [asu.edu], with the worst damage being done if drinking between weeks 3 and 8.

  A daily glass of wine may be acceptable during the 3rd trimester, but it should absolutely be avoided for the first trimester.

  Parent

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