Friday, December 02, 2005

Please dear God... say it ain't so!!

This is horrible news! All you researchers out there... this should be your number one priority!

Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Drinking even small to moderate amounts of alcohol does more harm than good, contradicting the common conception that a glass of wine a day can help prevent heart disease, a researcher said in the Lancet.

Any protection from heart disease through light to moderate drinking would be very small and unlikely to outweigh the harm, said Rod Jackson, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, in a comment in the medical journal.

"Do not assume there is a window in which the health benefits of alcohol are greater than the harms -- there is probably no free lunch," Jackson said in the comment.

Studies starting in the 1970s have shown that having one to three drinks a day may reduce your risk of heart disease between 20 percent and 25 percent. These study results may have been skewed by the fact that risk factors for heart disease seem to be more common in people who don't drink, Jackson said.

Alcohol raises the type of cholesterol in the blood that's estimated to account for about half of the heart-protective effect and also helps to thin the blood, acting like aspirin.

Moderate to heavy drinking may be able to protect the heart, Jackson said, though the benefit will be overwhelmed by the known negative effects including an increased risk for stomach ulcers, osteoporosis, liver disease, heartburn, obesity and cancer. The unhealthy behavior of heavy drinkers may also obscure any coronary protection, Jackson said.


I guess we won't be opening the pubs in old-folks homes anytime soon then.

Those sobs you hear are me crying in my beer...