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Posted on: February 11, 2009

Cheers to Your Health

A new study links moderate drinking to better health in seniors

By Mirielle Cailles
CTW Features

Itï¿½s a well-known belief that a glass of red wine a day is good for the heart. But for seniors in good health, less than four to five drinks per day may actually prevent the development of physical disability. According to the study at UCLAï¿½s David Geffen School of Medicine, light to moderate drinkers had a 17.7 percent chance of becoming disabled or dying, compared to 26.7 percent for abstainers and 21.4 percent for heavy drinkers.

"If you start out in good health, alcohol consumption at light to moderate levels can be beneficial," said lead study author Dr. Arun Karlamangla, an associate professor of medicine in the division of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "But if you don't start out healthy, alcohol will not give you a benefit."

Drinkers were classified as light to moderate if they consumed less than 15 drinks per week and less than five drinks per drinking day, less than four per day for women. Heavy drinkers were those who consumed 15 or more drinks per week or five or more per drinking day, four or more for women. Abstainers were those who drank fewer than 12 alcoholic beverages the previous year.

"Light to moderate alcohol consumption appears to have disability prevention benefits only in men and women in relatively good health," the study reports. "It is possible that those who report poor health have progressed too far on the pathway to disability to accrue benefits from alcohol consumption and that alcohol consumption may even be deleterious for them."

Physical disability was characterized as having trouble performing routine tasks like dressing and grooming, personal hygiene, eating or walking. The study, which included 4,276 participants, based its data on three waves of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveyï¿½s Epidemiologic Follow-Up Study. The sample was split evenly between males and females, and the average age was 60.4 years.