alcohol

[Sander]

Is it healthier to drink some alcohol or none at all?

[JohnThorn]

A moderate amount will reduce your chances of heart disease (and improve your chances of surviving a heart attack) compared with no alcohol at all. Red wine is thought to be best.

[modge]

It depends on your age. The benefits of drinking a moderate amount of alcohol take effect in early middle age for men, and much later for women. For the lowest risk of death, men should be teetotal until 34 and women until 54. The amount you can drink increases with age, but not greatly: for the most beneficial effects (protecting against heart disease and some forms of stroke), men over 65 should limit themselves to eight units a week (four pints of beer) and women to three units (three glasses of wine). However, the protective effects of alcohol are slight. Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that the protective effects of moderate consumption appeared to be responsible for 2.8% fewer deaths in men and 0.9 % in women. You have to measure this against the vast amount of lives which have been shortened because of alcohol-related deaths, liver disease and sheer misery of alcoholism.

[SarahW]

It's obviously better to drink none at all. Drinking red WINE is what reduces the risk of heart disease, and that's only because of the grapes in it, not the alcohol. Grape juice by itself would give you the same benefits. Furthermore, people take this "drinking a moderate amount" thing too far, and binge drink on weekends. That is really bad for your heart and liver and just about everything else, and leads to alcoholism and early death. So no, there aren't really any benefits to drinking --- alcohol is a toxin, plain and simple.