Moderation in everything...

Everyone likes to go out for dinner and some of us indulge ourselves in moderate consumption of alcohol, to compliment the food or when relaxing over a social gathering. For those of us that like a drink with our meal, I’m sure you agree there’s something about it that just helps the food sit better on your stomach, especially after a heavy meal. That said, I’m no chemist and most definitely do not purport to know any scientific fact on this, it is purely a gut feeling, pardon the pun.

Anyway, we all have most probably read the articles that red wine is “a particularly rich source of antioxidants flavonoid phenolics” and that “moderate drinking, of alcohol, is associated with reduced risks of cardiovascular disease, injuries and mortality“. Now there is something more to say about drinking in moderation and only in moderation. A new study conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in the July/August issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion reported; “moderate drinkers are more likely to report above average health, compared with lifetime abstainers, light drinkers and heavy drinkers“. The research was based on how different levels of drinkers felt about their state of health, with the objective to ascertain if moderate drinkers felt better by their own judgment.
Before I go further, lets define drinking in moderation for this case study, the U.S. Census Bureau for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define it as, “… four to fourteen drinks a week for men and four to seven drinks a week for women”.

The results for the study indicated that males that drank in moderation were “1.27 times more likely to report above-average health, compared with those who were lifetime abstainers and former light drinkers. The moderate drinking women were more than twice as likely as abstainers to report above-average health”. Overall, the researches concluded that drinking in moderation may be health-promoting by warding off cardiovascular disease.

Irrespective of this report’s findings and all the other pro or con reports on alcohol consumption, one thing can be agreed upon by all of them; abusing alcohol or heavy drinking is not good for you and leads to poor health. In the end, drinking alcohol is something you either do or don’t do. Like most things in our life it is a personal choice for us to make as individuals by making the most informed decision with the information we have on hand. Drinking alcohol in moderation is important if you do drink, though moderation is not just limited to alcohol, abuse from anything we put in our bodies can lead to ill-health. A balanced life is the best answer in my mind.