Alcohol Update
This is from an article in the New York Times:
Result we like: “For people over 55, an alcoholic drink a day reduces the risk of death by 28 percent, compared with not drinking. But there was no advantage in drinking one drink or less a week.”
Result we don’t like: “Those who had more than three drinks a day increased their risk by 11 percent.”
Agree. This is a good result.
A raft of studies suggest that marriage has a protective effect for overall and cause-specific mortality. Marriage has also been known to drive spouses to drink. The abstract is silent on whether the researchers included statistical controls for marriage. Could it be that spousal irritation, not the alcohol itself, creates the protective effect?
Just another example of why health policy research drives people to drink.
Linda, why are you spoiling the good news? I want to feel good about my next drink.
Sorry to see more than three drinks a day is bad. What if you have one of those four-drinks-needed days?