Moderate Alcohol Consumption
Dr. Serge Renaud, the French scientist who showed the world that wine is good for the heart, has a new discovery: two to three glasses of wine a day reduces death rates from all ailments by up to 30 percent.
Renaud's study of 34,000 middle-aged men living in eastern France supports what has become known as "the French paradox": Frenchmen who eat lots of saturated fat but still live a long time.
A sampling of other studies and their results:
l A recent Harvard study found the risk of death from all causes to be 21 to 28 percent lower among men who drank alcohol moderately, compared to abstainers.
l A large-scale study in China recently found that middle-aged men who drank moderately had a nearly 20 percent lower overall mortality compared to abstainers.
l A Harvard's Nurses' Health Study of more than 85,000 women found reduced mortality among moderate drinkers.
l A British analysis of 12,000 male physicians found that moderate drinkers had the lowest risk of death from all causes during the 13-year study.
l A large study funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that moderate drinking increased the length of life by about 3 percent among white males.