When Alcohol Works: Health Benefits of Moderate Drinking

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but can the same be said for a glass of wine or a beer? Perhaps a legend exists in your family that relatives have told you about your great-grandfather having a glass of beer with dinner every night and living to be 98 years old. Is there any truth in that? Can consuming alcohol in moderation really be beneficial to your health? Read on to find out.

 

Drinking in Moderation

According to research, drinking in moderation can be defined as consuming one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men. Moderate drinking does not mean abstaining all week then getting drunk on the weekends. Drinking in excess not only puts your health at risk, but potentially your life as well. 

When you overdo it with alcohol, you increase your chances of driving under the influence (DUI). As Jack Diamond, a DUI lawyer in Massachusetts addresses on his website, being arrested for a DUI can lead to a multitude of problems in your life, including your health, legal and financial situations. It goes without saying that if you are not of legal drinking age, you should not consume any alcohol until you are.

 

Good for Your Heart

Studies have shown that a moderate amount of alcohol actually raises the levels of “good cholesterol,” or HDLs in your bloodstream. Higher levels of HDLs are beneficial in preventing several types of heart disease that result from cardiovascular disease. So, a drink a day may reduce your risk of suffering a heart attack or even a stroke.

 

Live Longer

Apparently, there is some truth to why your great-grandpa lived so long when he had a glass of beer every night with dinner. Consuming alcohol with meals may reduce your risk of dying by up to 18 percent. Just take a look at people who follow the Mediterranean diet for proof of this one. Wine is a staple at Greek, Italian and Spanish lunch and dinner tables, and these cultures tend to suffer from lower instances of diseases and health issues in general, thus, living longer than the rest of us.

 

Prevent Symptoms of the Common Cold

Who knew that a cold could be prevented with a glass of red wine? Researchers discovered that non-smoking individuals who consumed eight to 14 glasses of red wine each week were 60 percent less likely to develop a cold! Sixty percent! That is rather significant when so many Americans miss work each year because of the annoying symptoms of an incurable cold. It seems that the antioxidant properties of red wine are an excellent dose of preventative medicine (and wine tastes better than medicine, too).

 

If you are worried that your usual glass of wine or beer with dinner, or your afternoon martini might cause health issues later in life, worry no more. Instead, enjoy the fact that you are able to reap the benefits of drinking alcohol in moderation. As long as you maintain that moderate intake, you could very well become the next legend in your family.

Writer Melanie Fleury has watched family members get DUI’s, but she also has seen many friends and family members who know not to drive after enjoying a glass of wine with dinner. Jack Diamond, of Jack Diamond Law, knows that a DUI can seem like the end of the world, but assures clients that it is not. 

 

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/klauspost/92783024/

Categories: Alcohol, Benefits, consuming alcohol, Drinking, family members, health, health issues, jack diamond, moderate, moderate drinking, Red Wine, Wine

Will Drinking in Moderation Harm Your Baby’s Development?

If you drink in moderation when pregnant, you may not do any damage to family wellness. This is according to a study by the University of Bristol’s School of Social and Community Medicine which found that drinking in moderation through pregnancy does not harm a baby’s neurodevelopment, albeit this may be because women who are more likely to drink moderately are from an affluent background.

 

Balance tests are an indicator of prenatal neurodevelopment, and so almost 7,000 10-year-olds were asked to take part in one, while their mothers’ drinking habits were recorded during and after pregnancy. Mothers who were more affluent and better educated were more likely to drink in moderation (which was defined as drinking three to seven glasses of alcohol a week) and mothers from a working class background were more likely to abstain from alcohol altogether during pregnancy, or to go the other way and drink heavily or binge drink. The study results, which were published by the journal BMJ Open, revealed that the children of moderate drinkers were able to balance as well as those who had not been exposed to alcohol in the womb.

 

Study leader Professor John Macleod, from the University of Bristol’s School of Social and Community Medicine, commented, ‘In this group of mothers, moderate alcohol intake was a marker for social advantage which could be a key factor in better balance. It could possibly override subtle harmful effects of moderate alcohol use. The supposed benefits we saw are not the effects of alcohol, they are effects of middle classness.’

 

He continued, ‘There weren’t many heavy drinkers. We know that heavy drinking during pregnancy has bad effects on a developing foetus. The moderate drinkers consumed an equivalent of up to one glass of wine a day. When we compared moderate drinkers with women who didn’t drink at all we actually found that in relation to a number of different tests of balance the children of moderate drinkers appeared to do better. However, we also found that the women who moderately drank compared to women who didn’t drink tended to be more middle class.’

 

According to professional policy adviser Janet Fyle, ‘We recognise that this is useful research. However, there is also a large amount of evidence suggesting that the cumulative effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy can harm the developing foetus. Our advice continues to be that for women who are trying to conceive or those that are pregnant it is best to avoid alcohol.’ A spokesman for the Department of Health added, ‘Drinking during pregnancy can be associated with miscarriage, foetal alcohol syndrome and low birth weight. Our advice remains that women who are trying to conceive or are pregnant should avoid alcohol. If women choose to drink, to minimise the risk to the baby they should not drink more than one to two units of alcohol once or twice a week and should not get drunk.’

Categories: moderate drinking, pregnancy, Research