The always excellent NY Times health and fitness section had a good piece a couple of days ago on recent research into the value of moderate drinking. Or rather, perhaps the problem is that it's not possible to do the kind of study that could lead to a final conclusion.<\/p>\n
Alcohol\u2019s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It – NYTimes.com<\/strong><\/font><\/a><\/p>\n … Study after study suggests that alcohol in moderation may promote heart health and even ward off diabetes<\/font><\/a> and dementia<\/font><\/a>. The evidence is so plentiful that some experts consider moderate drinking<\/font><\/a> \u2014 about one drink a day for women, about two for men \u2014 a central component of a healthy lifestyle. <\/p>\n But what if it\u2019s all a big mistake? <\/p>\n For some scientists, the question will not go away. No study, these critics say, has ever proved a causal relationship between moderate drinking and lower risk of death \u2014 only that the two often go together. It may be that moderate drinking is just something healthy people tend to do, not something that makes people healthy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe moderate drinkers tend to do everything right \u2014 they exercise, they don\u2019t smoke, they eat right and they drink moderately,\u201d said Kaye Middleton Fillmore, a retired sociologist from the University of California, San Francisco, who has criticized the research. \u201cIt\u2019s very hard to disentangle all of that, and that\u2019s a real problem.\u201d <\/p>\n Some researchers say they are haunted by the mistakes made in studies about hormone replacement therapy, which was widely prescribed for years on the basis of observational studies similar to the kind done on alcohol. Questions have also been raised about the financial relationships that have sprung up between the alcoholic beverage industry and many academic centers, which have accepted industry money to pay for research, train students and promote their findings.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom line is there has not been a single study done on moderate alcohol consumption and mortality outcomes that is a \u2018gold standard\u2019 kind of study \u2014 the kind of randomized controlled clinical trial that we would be required to have in order to approve a new pharmaceutical agent in this country,\u201d said Dr. Tim Naimi, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/font><\/a>. <\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The always excellent NY Times health and fitness section had a good piece a couple of days ago on recent research into the value of moderate drinking. Or rather, perhaps the problem is that it's not possible to do the kind of study that could lead to a final conclusion. Alcohol\u2019s Good for You? Some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-lymphoma-and-related-medical-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9128,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions\/9128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n