{"id":2191,"date":"2011-09-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/condition-alcoholism-alcohol-healthy-aging\/"},"modified":"2011-09-06T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T00:00:00","slug":"condition-alcoholism-alcohol-healthy-aging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1millionbestdownloads.com\/condition-alcoholism-alcohol-healthy-aging\/","title":{"rendered":"A Drink a Day Linked to Healthy Aging in Women"},"content":{"rendered":"
Getty Images<\/p>\n
By Anne Harding<\/p>\n
TUESDAY, September 6, 2011 (Health.com) — Middle-aged women who drink alcohol in moderation have a better chance than nondrinkers of staying healthy as they age, especially if they spread out their consumption over most days of the week, a new study from Harvard researchers suggests.<\/p>\n
The study followed nearly 14,000 mostly white women beginning in 1976. Compared to teetotalers, those who averaged roughly 3 to 15 alcoholic drinks per week in their late 50s had up to 28% higher odds of being free from chronic illness, physical disability, mental health problems, and cognitive decline at age 70, the study found.<\/p>\n The findings don't necessarily apply to men or to nonwhite women. But they add to the "strong, consistent evidence" that people who drink in moderation are less likely than nondrinkers or heavy drinkers to experience health problems such as heart disease<\/a>, type 2 diabetes, and dementia<\/a>, says Qi Sun, MD, the lead author of the study and a nutrition researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston.<\/p>\n Related links:<\/p>\n Experiments have shown that moderate alcohol intake—roughly one drink a day for women, or two a day for men—can reduce inflammation<\/a>, promote healthy cholesterol levels, improve insulin resistance<\/a>, and help blood vessels function properly. "Those mechanisms actually underlie a lot of chronic diseases and conditions," Dr. Sun explains.<\/p>\n That doesn't mean that women who don't currently drink should start, however. Other healthy habits, such as staying slim and exercising regularly, are far more important to overall health than alcohol consumption, Dr. Sun says.<\/p>\n "If you are physically active, if you have a healthy body weight at midlife, you can have much better odds of achieving successful aging," he says. "You don't have to use moderate alcohol consumption as a way to help achieve healthy aging."<\/p>\n Moreover, the large questionnaire-based studies that have shown a link between moderate drinking and better overall health—including this one, which was published in the journal PLoS Medicine<\/em>—have some inherent limitations, says Arun Karlamangla, MD, an associate professor of geriatrics at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine.<\/p>\n Unlike clinical trials that compare an active drug to placebo pills, studies like these can't prove that alcohol has a direct effect on long-term health. Sun and his colleagues took into account more than a dozen health and demographic factors that could influence both drinking and aging (such as diet, smoking, educational attainment, and family history of disease), but it's still possible that the moderate drinkers differed in key ways from their peers.<\/p>\n People who drink in moderation "look systematically different than those who…either binge drink or don't drink," says Dr. Karlamangla, who has researched alcohol consumption and disability but was not involved in the new study. And those subtle differences—which might include their social life, eating and exercise habits, and stress levels<\/a> at home and on the job—may influence overall health independent of alcohol consumption, he adds.<\/p>\n "Even if you buy the idea that alcohol is good for you, we really can't tease out what aspect is good for you from a study like this," Dr. Karlamangla says.<\/p>\n\n