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Here are the data about alcohol and mortality:
In 1995 Charles Fuchs and his colleagues at Harvard found that women who drank up to two drinks a day lived longer than abstainers. Subjects were 85,700 nurses.
In 1995, Morten Grønbæk and colleagues found that wine drinkers survived longer than abstainers, with those drinking three to five glasses daily having the lowest death rate. Subjects were 20,000 Danes.
In 1994, Richard Doll and his colleagues found that men who drank up to two drinks daily lived significantly longer than abstainers. Subjects were 12,300 British doctors.
In 1992 Il Suh and colleagues found a 40 percent reduction in coronary mortality among men drinking three and more drinks daily. The 11,700 male subjects were in the upper 10 to 15 percent of risk for coronary heart disease based on their cholesterol, blood pressure and smoking status. Alcohol's enhancement of high density lipoproteins was identified as the protective factor.
In 1990, Paolo Boffetta and Lawrence Garfinkel found that men who drank occasionally — up to two drinks daily — outlived abstainers. Subjects were over a quarter of a million volunteers enrolled by the American Cancer Society.
In 1990, Arthur Klatsky and his colleagues found that those who drank one or two drinks daily had the lowest overall mortality rate. Subjects were 85,000 Kaiser Permanente patients of both genders and all races.
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New York, NY, June 2000—According to scientists and physicians associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages can provide significant health benefits to some groups of consumers. Conversely, they did not find any net health benefit from the typical use of tobacco products. Their conclusions and evidence are summarized in a new report from ACSH: A Comparison of the Health Effects of Alcohol Consumption and Tobacco Use in America.
Consumption of alcoholic beverages—beer, wine, and distilled spirits—in moderation can reduce the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women and in middle-aged men, for example. Moderate consumption of alcohol is defined as one drink per day for women and one to two drinks per day for men. One drink means twelve ounces of beer, five ounces of wine, or one and a half ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits. The pattern of consumption is important in determining the health effects, the authors report. "Consuming one or two drinks a day could benefit middle-aged men," notes ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, "but having 14 drinks on Saturday would not. Such a bout of heavy drinking would qualify as alcohol abuse."
In contrast to alcoholic beverage consumption, use of tobacco products has no significant health benefits, the report states. Dr. Gilbert Ross, ACSH's medical director, comments: "The statistics pointing to tobacco smoke as the primary cause of lung cancer in our society are overwhelming. It also is an important cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, like emphysema, and greatly increases the risk of heart disease and stroke. Any conditions for which tobacco use seems to provide a health benefit are either uncommon or are rarely fatal." The report also cites health risks from the use of smokeless tobacco products, passive smoking, and the use of cigars and pipes.
The report recommends that the differing effects of tobacco products and alcoholic beverages on health be considered when policy makers evaluate regulatory and educational approaches to the use of these substances.
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