Longevity & Alcohol
Drinking had neither a positive nor a negative effect on the risk of hemorrhagic stroke. After Berger and his colleagues accounted for other risk factors, they found that “the largest risk reductions were found among the men who had one to four drinks per week.” Blood pressure and exercise affected the impact of drinking on stroke risk, according to the investigators.2 Drinking too much water can be dangerous and even fatal. 3
Research extending back as far as 1926 1 has demonstrated that drinking in moderation is associated with greater longevity than is either abstaining or abusing alcohol. The medical research evidence is now unquestionable and demonstrates that the effect is not the result of health-compromised alcoholics who abstain.6 Research and methodological analyses having implications for measurement of patterns of consumption of alcohol are reviewed. The importance of estimating quantity per occasion, especially maximum, in addition to average volume of intake when investigating consequences of alcohol abuse is established.7 Researchers from the University of Rochester found that blocking the myostatin gene with tamoxifen increased muscle growth in male and female adult mice by 25 percent in three months. 8
Researchers over the past four decades have investigated this question (e.g., Terris 1967; Gruenewald and Ponicki 1995; Schmidt and Bronetto 1962). Recently, Roizen and colleagues (1999) and Kerr and colleagues (2000) have proposed that cirrhosis mortality is more strongly associated with consumption of spirits than with other alcoholic beverages, and that this relationship accounts for the apparent discrepancy between per capita alcohol consumption measures and cirrhosis mortality rates.9
Modern epidemiologic studies also show lower risk of both morbidity and mortality among lighter drinkers. Defining “heavy” as ≥3 standard drinks per day, the alcohol–mortality relationship is a J-curve with risk highest for heavy drinkers, lowest for light drinkers and intermediate for abstainers.10 Moderation is the key to a healthy diet and lifestyle, and this is reflected in several traditional nutrition concepts. 11 Moderate drinkers had the lowest death rate of all the groups. The result of this study was a graph shaped like a big letter J--and so it became known as the J curve of mortality.12
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has reported that the greatest health and longevity benefits result from one to two drinks per day. In other words, moderate drinkers live longer than both abstainers and overconsumers , a finding backed by research in various other countries as well.15 National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism or NIAAA and are based on one to two drinks per day. 16
Pearl concerned himself with methods of artificial selection, growth, the physiology of reproduction, and a wide range of general questions of heredity, evolution, and eugenics. He applied Mendelian genetic and chromosome theory to quantitative characteristics.20 Pearl maintained a loose interest in eugenics, but in 1927 published the landmark article The Biology of Superiority , which attacked the basic assumptions of eugenics as well as its prejudices. The article was the first general attack on eugenics by someone perceievd as being within the movement.21
