Can drinking a little bit help you live longer?

Having a little wine or beer to unwind most days may help lower the odds of a premature death as long as that drink or two doesn’t routinely turn into more, a new study confirms.

Researchers examined health survey data on more than 333,000 U.S. adults, following them for an average of about eight years to see how their drinking habits influenced their survival odds.

Compared with people who never had a drop of alcohol, light to moderate drinkers were more than 20 percent less likely to die early of any cause, or of heart disease in particular, the study found.

Heavy drinkers and binge drinkers, however, were at least 10 percent more likely to die from any cause during the study, and they had at least 20 percent higher odds of an early death from cancer in particular.

“If alcohol is consumed, it should be consumed in moderation,” said lead study author Dr. Bo Xi of the School of Public Health at Shandong University in China.

Heavy drinking has long been linked to a variety of medical problems including liver disease, heart disease and certain cancers. But previous research has offered an inconclusive picture of the survival odds associated with light or moderate drinking.

The current analysis attempts to tackle two issues that have contributed to inconsistent results in much of the earlier research: `abstainer bias’ and `sick quitter bias.’

Many other studies compared moderate drinkers to people who currently didn’t drink, making it impossible to separate people who stopped drinking due to addiction or other health reasons from people who were lifelong abstainers.

To exclude `sick quitters,’ the current study left out people who died in the first two years of follow-up. To avoid `abstainer bias,' researchers created separate categories for adults who never drank at all and for ex-drinkers.

They sorted adults into six categories for the current study: lifetime abstainers; people who have always had alcohol on rare occasions; ex-drinkers; current light drinkers who have fewer than three drinks a week; moderate drinkers (more than three drinks a week but fewer than 14 for men or 7 for women); or heavy drinkers (more than 14 for men or 7 for women).

During the study period, 34,754 people died, including 8,947 fatalities from cardiovascular diseases and 8,427 from cancer, researchers report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Male heavy drinkers had a 25 percent increased risk of death during the study and 67 percent higher odds of deaths from cancer than men who never drank. These differences weren’t statistically meaningful for women, however.

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how heavy drinking might hasten death or light to moderate alcohol consumption might help people live longer. Researchers also relied on survey participants to accurately recall and report how much they drank.

Scientists aren’t sure why light or moderate drinking might have a protective effect, said Dr. Eugene Yang of the University of Washington School of Medicine.

“It may improve the health of your blood vessels by reducing inflammation and your ability to form blood clots, increase levels of good cholesterol, and promote antioxidant pathways,” Yang, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

Even if it doesn’t explain why drinking a little might lead to a longer life, the study does confirm that the risk of death tied to alcohol use increases sharply when people regularly drink more than they should, Dr. Giovanni de Gaetano, author of an accompanying editorial and a researcher at Istituto Neurologico Mediterraneo Neuromed in Pozzilli, Italy, said by email.

“The clear message is to avoid excessive drinking, either on a regular basis or even on any one day, to reduce risk,” Dr. Gregory Marcus, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “Those prone to alcoholism or addiction are also likely best served with alcohol abstinence.”

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Alcohol's cancer toll revealed

PARIS - Alcohol consumption caused more than 700,000 new cancer cases and around 366,000 cancer deaths in 2012, mainly in rich countries, according to data reported Wednesday to the World Cancer Congress in Paris.

Comparing the cancer risk of people who drink, to that of people who do not, researchers calculated that alcohol was responsible for an estimated five percent of all new cancer cases, and 4.5 percent of deaths per year.

"A large part of the population is unaware that cancer can be caused by alcohol," study co-author Kevin Shield of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), told AFP of the preliminary report, not yet published.

Alcohol was most strongly linked to new breast cancer diagnoses -- more than one in four of all alcohol-attributable cancer cases, the researchers found, followed by colorectal cancer at 23 percent.

For breast cancer, particularly, it was clear that "the risk increases with the dose" of alcohol, said Shield.

Measuring alcohol's contribution to cancer deaths, the researchers found it was most strongly linked to oesophagus cancer fatalities, followed by colorectal cancer.

The IARC, the cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), lists alcohol as a "group 1 carcinogen", which means it is considered cancer-causing, though Shield said the mechanism was "not exactly known".

Globally, the burden was highest in North America, Australia and Europe, particularly eastern Europe, but this was slowly changing as people in developing nations start imbibing more, the researchers said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Want to lose weight? Trade sugary drinks for water

NEW YORK -- Swapping your soda for water -- or at least diet soda -- really can help you shed a few pounds, a new clinical trial finds.

A common piece of advice in the battle of the bulge is to replace sugar-sweetened drinks with water or other calorie-free thirst quenchers.

But while that advice is logical, there hasn't been research to show whether changing your drinking habits alone actually works.

So for the new study, researchers randomly assigned 318 overweight adults to one of three groups: one that replaced sugary drinks with water; one that substituted with diet beverages; and one that was given weight-loss advice and could make diet changes of their choice.

After six months, all three groups lost four or five pounds, on average.

But the two groups that cut sugary drinks were more likely to shed at least five percent of their starting weight: 20 percent did, versus 11 percent of the comparison group.

A five-percent weight loss is considered "clinically meaningful" -- or enough to see health benefits like a drop in blood pressure, said lead researcher Deborah F. Tate, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

People who need to lose weight often find a diet overhaul too daunting. But swapping a couple sweet drinks for sugar-free alternatives may seem relatively easy, according to Tate.

"This is a simple thing you can do consistently each day," she said in an interview.

On average, people in this study lost around two percent of their body weight. That's not huge, but it's a move in the right direction, the researchers say.

"It might be a good first step," Tate said. After getting used to calorie-free drinks, she said, you can add changes to your eating habits.

The findings, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, are based on adults who were significantly obese, on average, and were downing at least 280 liquid calories each day (excluding milk).

The two beverage groups were told to replace two of those daily drinks with water or diet beverages. The third group was given general weight-loss information, but could make their own diet decisions. All three groups had monthly meetings and access to a group website.

After six months, all three groups had a similar average weight loss.

The water group, however, shaved several points off their blood sugar and blood pressure levels -- more than the diet beverage group.

It's not clear why that is, Tate said. But the water group had better hydration levels, which might help explain the improved blood pressure.

"For other health reasons, water might be better" than diet drinks, Tate said. She added, though, that diet versions of people's favorite drinks might be easier to stick with for the long haul.

Some past studies have found that people who regularly drink diet soda actually have a higher diabetes risk than folks who steer clear of artificially-sweetened drinks.

But the reasons for that connection are unknown, and it might not be anything about diet drinks per se.

Tate said that longer-term follow-up of the people in this study will offer a way to look at that question. By and large, participants had not been drinking diet beverages before the study; so the researchers can look at whether switching to diet has any negative effects on blood sugar or other health markers.

The study was funded by Nestle Waters USA.

source: interaksyon.com