ZigOn Drinking Alcohol

Today many people are looking for excuses to justify drinking. However, the New England Journal of Medicine in December of 1997 completed the largest ever undertaken study on drinking habits and disease rates of nearly a half-million men and women, ages 30 to 104. The study covered a 15-year period and revealed that one drink a day was associated with a 40% reduction in the incidence of heart attacks in persons over 50. However, they pointed out the downside of alcohol: It is calorically dense and nutritionally sparse. It puts weight on with few health benefits, and many people don't know when they've had enough. In the real world, only a minority of Americans who drink limit themselves to a single drink. Add smoking to the mix and you lose all the benefits from the booze-and then some.

The study emphasized other ways to obtain alcohol's cardiac benefits without the risks. Alcohol protects the heart by raising the level of the good cholesterol, but so does the right diet, exercising, and if necessary, taking a cholesterol-lowering pill. Alcohol also protects the heart by reducing the tendency of the blood to form clots, but so does aspirin. Prolonged drinking hurts the liver and brain and is the number one cause of automobile accidents, broken homes and domestic violence. Drinkers are at greater risk for cirrhosis of the liver, cancers of the mouth, esophagus, pharynx, larynx and liver, so it makes sense to take the alternate route and avoid those infinitely more destructive results that alcohol brings. So avoid alcohol and you'll find it easier to stay up, up, up in a down, down, world.