Is Alcohol Part of a Healthy Lifestyle?
Is alcohol part of a healthy lifestyle, or is there really no safe level of alcohol? Depends on who you ask and how you want to read the new dietary guidelines for Americans. On the one hand, the guidelines did away with the old suggestion that we should drink no more than one to two glasses of alcohol per day, but fell short of explicitly calling alcohol a carcinogen or giving specific guidance.
Its laconic advice: Consume less alcohol for better overall health. It recommends abstinence for pregnant women, people taking medications that could interact with alcohol, or those with addiction issues, but pointedly avoids mentioning specific amounts for the rest of us. So what is the recommended amount of alcohol you should be drinking according to the science, and is that number really zero?
The French Paradox: Time to Say Au Revoir: For a long time, we talked about alcohol being cardioprotective, and many a study showed a J-shaped curve, a dip in cardiovascular risk for those moderate drinkers who usually drank one to two glasses per day. People also used to talk about the French paradox, the surprising finding that the French had lower rates of cardiovascular disease than Americans despite their higher rates of smoking and their penchant for the gourmand lifestyle.
Excerpted from Medscape
