To all those who think being “moderate” is silly….here is one good reason 4 U:
The benefits of light to moderate drinking when it comes to heart disease have been touted for years, but new research suggests it may also help you stay svelte.
Regular drinkers who consume one or two drinks a few times a week are less likely to be obese compared with people who do not drink. However, having four or more drinks per day increases the risk of being obese by 46 percent, researchers report.
The report appears in the Dec. 4 online issue of BMC Public Health.
“We were surprised to find that people who were moderate drinkers were less likely to be obese,” said study co-author Dr. James Rohrer, from the department of family medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
“We don’t want to give the wrong impression,” Rohrer continued. “We certainly don’t want to recommend that nondrinkers become drinkers just to try to control their weight.”
And if Forbes doesn’t convince you, read Medpage:
ROCHESTER, Minn., Dec. 5 – Moderation in drinking seems to correlate with moderation in waistlines, researchers here reported.
A drink a day, more or less, was associated with a lower risk of becoming overweight or obese in a Mayo Clinic study. But drinking was not advocated as a weight-maintenance strategy.
Analysis of a cross-sectional survey of more than 8,000 individuals revealed that those who consumed five drinks per week were 38% less likely to be obese, compared with non-drinkers (95% confidence interval=0.46-0.82), according to James E. Rohrer, Ph.D., and colleagues.
However, heavy drinking (four or more drinks per day) was associated with increased risk of overweight and obesity compared with non-drinkers, according to the study, published in the Dec. 5 issue of BMC Public Health.
And if you’re STILL not convinced, how about this impeccable souse source: Pravda:
In this study, the researchers compared body mass index (BMI) data from 8,236 non-smokers who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
They found that people who report drinking one or two drinks per day had just less than half the odds of obesity compared to nondrinkers. However, people who report drinking at least four alcoholic drinks were 46 percent more likely to be obese than the nondrinkers were.
Alcohol is big business in the United States. Half of all Americans over the age of 11 years old consumed at least one alcoholic beverage in the last month.
Of course alcohol does have some risks.
If you don’t drink at night you count sheep. If you do drink at night you count foxes — which might actually be sheep.
SOME MORE RESOURCES:
Moderate Drinking Beneficial After Heart Surgery
Obesity, Health Problems Linked To Teenage Drinking
Drinking’s Link To Obesity
Gauging The Real Benefits Of Drinking
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.