Does Moderate Alcohol Consumption Prolong Your Life?

asked 2 years ago

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scavenger

Yes, as long as you keep to the "moderate"!

Let's define moderate as 1-1.5 glasses daily of wine/beer, or a drink with the same amount of pure alcohol. Those are averages, and no days of binge drinking allowed in the definition.

Moderate drinking is associated with people who live longer. In contrast, complete teetotallers (who don't drink at all) and people who drink 3 or more glasses or more daily, will tend to have shorter lives (in a statistical way). People who drink excessively are the worst off.

A 2002 study in The Lancet noted that people who drank moderately had a lower risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer's in old age.

Coronary disease is also less likely for moderate drinkers (both in severity and age of onset). This aspect of alcohol consumption is especially well studied, and seems to occur because of vaso-dilation, boosting of the good cholesterol in blood, and help in clearing clots.

A 2001 Spanish study also noted that moderate drinkers felt more positive and happy in their lives than teetotalers and heavy drinkers.

answered 2 years ago

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Moderate is a sliperly slope! It's like drugs and drinking, or just plain drinking gets to be an escape mechanism from whatever in the world happens to be bugging you! So... instead of you deciding, your anger starts deciding, or your wish to get high starts deciding and moderation gives way to more and more of the wrong kind of problem solver!

Benjamin Franklin had a saying that a man would have to be an absolute fool to put something into his mouth, that would run away with his brains! I bet you could go and look up a bunch of quotations, and make a book out of them, or go and do interviews with the bums and the homeless people who are addicted to "moderate drinking," and you would be absolutely amazed! Some of them "felt more positive" and "more happy" at such an early age that they NEVER EVEN LEARNED TO READ! I helped one guy through recovery that began drinking at age 12, and his whole family were all alcoholics. After living with me for about two months, he said "Ya know... this is the very first time that I've ever been around anybody that actually didn't drink." He was 54 years old at the time, and he said, "I got it all figured out that I just plain grew up thinking that everybody in the whole world drank, and so, I did too! But now I can see that when you run into a problem, you don't go for the bottle... (he said) Nope. You go and start praying, and I've decided that's the same thing that I'm going to start doing." This guy was such an absolute burned out drinker, that everybody called him Richie with the "Fried Egg Brain!" He wouldn't even know who anybody was when he was "on a benge," and now he's one of the best friends anybody in this whole world would like to have as a friend - and he sure doesn't "need the booze anymore," as he likes to put it! Now, five years sober!

comment made by 1Genius 8 months ago Report

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Moderate is a sliperly slope!  It's like drugs and drinking, or just plain drinking gets to be an escape mechanism from whatever in the world happens to be bugging you!  So... instead of you deciding, your anger starts deciding, or your wish to get high starts deciding and moderation gives way to more and more of the wrong kind of problem solver!

Benjamin Franklin had a saying that a man would have to be an absolute fool to put something into his mouth, that would run away with his brains!  I bet you could go and look up a bunch of quotations, and make a book out of them, or go and do interviews with the bums and the homeless people who are addicted to "moderate drinking," and you would be absolutely amazed!  Some of them "felt more positive" and "more happy" at such an early age that they NEVER EVEN LEARNED TO READ!   I helped one guy through recovery that began drinking at age 12, and his whole family were all alcoholics.  After living with me for about two months, he said "Ya know...  this is the very first time that I've ever been around anybody that actually didn't drink." He was 54 years old at the time, and he said, "I got it all figured out that I just plain grew up thinking that everybody in the whole world drank, and so, I did too!  But now I can see that when you run into a problem, you don't go for the bottle... (he said) Nope.  You go and start praying, and I've decided that's the same thing that I'm going to start doing."  This guy was such an absolute burned out drinker, that everybody called him Richie with the "Fried Egg Brain!"  He wouldn't even know who anybody was when he was "on a benge," and now he's one of the best friends anybody in this whole world would like to have as a friend - and he sure doesn't "need the booze anymore," as he likes to put it!  Now,  five years sober!