It seems to becoming a age old question, Is drinking bad for my health? 
For the most part yes especially is your binge drinking every day or so. Recently though studies have indicated that drinking in moderations can actually be good for your health, ( when we say moderation we mean 1-2 drinks NOt 4-6). These studies have shown it could be good for your health and heart. 

This report, which appears online in the British medical journal BMJ, suggests that for women, alcohol intake is the primary protective factor, while for men, it is drinking frequency.

The Danish study included 27,178 men and 29,875 women volunteers who were free of coronary heart disease at the start of the study. They filled out questionnaires and underwent interviews about their eating and drinking habits, recording how many drinks they had per week. A drink was defined as containing 12 grams of ethanol, a little less than one-half ounce.

The researchers then followed the subjects for an average of 5.7 years. There were 749 coronary heart disease events among the women, and 1,238 among the men. Women consumed an average of 5.5 drinks a week; men, an average of 11.3.

For men, the more they drank, the lower the risk. One drink a week lowered the risk by about 7 percent, two to four drinks by 22 percent and five or six drinks a week by 29 percent. Those who drank every day had a 41 percent lower risk of heart disease than those who did not drink at all. Even among men who had up to 35 drinks per week, the protection persisted.

With women, the trend was different. One drink a week lowered the risk by 36 percent, but daily drinking lowered it by 35 percent. In other words, for women, alcohol consumption had a significant protective effect, but the frequency of drinking had none.

Dr. Morten Gronbaek of the Danish National Institute of Public Health, the study's senior author, said he would not hesitate to recommend a drink a day to certain patients. "If I were talking to a patient, about 50 with a high coronary risk profile, who I knew wasn't at risk for alcohol abuse, and who didn't drink at all, I wouldn't hesitate to tell him that a glass of wine a day might be a good idea," he said. "But people who are light drinkers should certainly not be advised to drink more."

The researchers also stressed that their data said nothing about binge drinking or about the number of drinks per occasion, and Dr. Gronbaek said that drinking was not a substitute for exercise or good diet. "You shouldn't avoid exercise," he said, "and then try to compensate by drinking."

According to the authors, there are several plausible explanations for the effect. Alcohol helps raise the levels of high density lipoprotein or H.D.L. cholesterol and lowers plasma fibrinogen levels, which contribute to blood clotting.

It is not clear why men and women react differently, but the authors suggest that the association between alcohol and coronary heart disease may be modified by menopause. Moderate alcohol consumption may increase estrogen levels, which normally decline at menopause and are known to have a protective effect.

Because only 17 percent of the women in this study were premenopausal, the findings may pertain only to older women.


So basically if you want that drink go ahead and take it just don't over do it, Liv

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