Non drinkers die young!

Nick Leggett writes:

The headlines sound terrifying: “Deadly cost of that extra drink: 10 glasses of wine a week can cut two years off your life” or “How much booze can you drink before it starts killing you? Not much”.

Like many I saw that a few weeks ago.

So should all of us reasonable drinkers just stop drinking altogether?

Well, we could of course – we all have that choice already – but what the headlines and the words behind them fail to tell us is that those who don’t drink alcohol actually die earlier than those who drink it moderately. Some might find this hard to believe, but it’s true.

Yep moderate drinking is good for you.

But while the headlines claimed drinkers who consume fewer than 10 drinks a week had a better life expectancy than those who have more than 10, what they didn’t tell you is that the research also found that people who never drink alcohol had a shorter life expectancy than those who drank up to 25 drinks per week.

So someone having 20 standard drinks a week is still less likely to die early than a non drinker.

While the prohibitionists are trying to stamp out the word “moderation,” all major studies still point to our Ministry of Health guidelines as being sensible.

Those guidelines say 15 drinks per week for men, 10 for women and that we shouldn’t binge drink (more than five in a session), but that drinking water and eating when you drink is positive.

Sounds very sensible.