THE RIGHT WAY TO DRINK ALCOHOL...

.....is to have 1-2 drinks daily. A new prospective cohort study published in the January 4 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine involving more than 38,000 male health professionals who were free of known cardiovascular disease or cancer at the start of the study in 1986 has shown that this is the right way to go.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -- New findings from a large study suggest that drinking up to two alcoholic beverages a day does not significantly increase the risk of stroke.

In fact, certain drinking patterns and consuming red wine may actually lower the risk, the study found.

The new study's findings support previous reports showing that heavy alcohol use raises stroke risk, but light or moderate alcohol use does not. Drinking more than two alcoholic beverages a day increased the risk by 42 percent compared with not drinking alcohol at all.

[Reuters Health ]

The study defined light alcohol consumption as less than 1 drink daily, moderate alcohol consumption as 1 to 2 drinks daily, and heavy alcohol consumption as 3 or more drinks daily.

Light drinkers were shown to have the lowest risk for stroke at 32 percent while heavy drinkers were shown to have the highest risk for stroke at 42 percent.

Among other notable findings from the study are:

• the protective effect from drinking is not as great for stroke as it is for cardiovascular disease, and


• that any observed beneficial effect from alcohol was confined only to drinking red wine.

So, the next time you grab a drink with your friends or family, be sure to do it light to moderately, and make it red, for red wine.