Want to increase your odds of living longer? Have a drink, study says
September 3, 2010
Lesley Ciarula Taylor
STAFF REPORTER
People over 55 who down one or two drinks a day live far longer than heavy drinkers or people who don’t drink at all, new research has found.
Scientists followed 1,824 people between the ages of 55 and 65 over a period of 20 years. And unlike some previous studies, they weighed social factors – friends, drinking history, physical activity – in their analysis.
When they factored in just age and gender, they found abstainers were twice as likely to die earlier than moderate drinkers. For, heavy drinkers it was 70 per cent more likely.
But even once they wove all of the social and emotional factors into the research, the benefits of moderate drinking were still dramatic.
“Even after adjusting for all covariates, abstainers and heavy drinkers continued to show increased mortality risks of 49 per cent and 42 per cent, respectively, compared to moderate drinkers,” said lead author Dr. Charles Holahan of the department of psychology at the University Texas at Austin.
Why abstainers?
“Abstainers were significantly more likely to have had prior drinking problems, to be obese and to smoke cigarettes . . . and significantly higher than moderate drinkers on health problems, depressive symptoms and avoidance coping,” the study found.
Abstainers, too, had fewer close friends, engaged in less physical activity, and were far less likely to be married, they found.
Science continues to disagree over the health benefits of moderate drinking, said Holahan, explaining why he and his colleagues launched the study.
What they found was that the health benefits of alcohol are “intrinsically linked to moderation.”
Which means that while downing seven to 14 drinks a week is good – if and only if it doesn’t affect your motor skills – they have to be spread out. Binge drinking all of them at once is still bad, the study found.
A drink is defined as 5 ounces of wine, 12 ounces of beer or 1.5 ounces of hard liquor.
Results will be published in the November issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
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