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Alcohol & Health

Drinking habits, Health, teetotallers

Is Alcohol Friend Or Foe?

By Dr. W. Gifford Jones

Will teetotallers or those who enjoy an alcoholic drink have a decreased risk of heart attack during this Christmas season? I recently questioned two international experts of this matter during the 3rd International Conference on Preventive Cardiology in Oslo, Norway.

Dr. Gerald Shaper of the Royal Free Hospital, London, England, reported on the British Regional Health Study. This involved an investigation of 7,500 men between 40 and 60 years of age. They lived in 24 English towns and their drinking habits and health was studied by doctors for 12 years.

Shaper's study had one particular thing going for it. What people say they drink and what they actually drink are often two different things. But to be sure these men were truthful blood samples were taken and alcohol intake verified by 24 biochemical measures.

Dr. Shaper claims that for the heaviest drinkers, that is those consuming more than 42 drinks a week, there was only a 16 per cent increase in high density lipoprotein (HDL) concentration. HDL is the good cholesterol which clears the arteries of excess cholesterol and decreases the chance of heart attack.

For moderate drinkers, that is one or two drinks a day, there was only a slight increase in HDL. His conclusion. Moderate drinking offers very little protection against heart attack.

This was not what I wanted to hear as I enjoy a social drink at Christmas and other times of the year. So I posed this question to Dr. Shaper. What about other studies that show teetotallers have a higher risk of coronary heart disease than moderate drinkers?

Shaper contends that ex-drinkers are often included in studies dealing with teetotallers. Since ex-drinkers have a high rate of heart disease this makes teetotallers appear to incorrectly have a increased incidence of heart disease.

Dr. Michael H. Criqui, of the University of California disagrees with Dr. Shaper. He cites studies where even never, never drinkers were demonstrated to have an increased incidence of heart problems. And that moderate drinkers do indeed have a decreased risk of coronary heart disease. Ô 0*0*0* Confronted with two different opinions I asked about "le paradoxe Francais". The riddle of why high-living French who consume a diet high in saturated fats, eat more cheese and smoke more suffer fewer heart attacks than North Americans. Could it be due to their increased consumption of wine?

Dr. Criqui didn't buy that argument. He believes coronary death rates for the French are false and that more French are dying of CHD than meets the eye.

He claims that the French have a system for classifying death which uses many categories that are no longer used in North America or Europe. Causes of sudden death in the French are therefore hidden in other classifications.

One point disturbed me about both doctors? During our talk they kept getting ethics and medicine mixed up.

Further questioning revealed that even Dr Shaper agrees that people who drink one or two drinks a day on a regular basis have the lowest rate of CHD. And that numerous studies reveal this to be the case.

So I asked them, "Why don't you stop talking out of the corners of your mouth and say this is the case? But both physicians were loath to suggest using alcohol as a means of preventing heart attack. They worried it might lead to excessive drinking which is associated with cirrhosis, hypertension, heart failure, stroke, cancer and car accidents. This they say would place a heavy burden on society.

Dr Criqui cites what has happened in France. He asserts there is no difference between life expectancy in England and France. But that under 35 years of age there is a higher mortality among the French from related alcoholic disorders such as crime, suicide and homicide.

So what's the final message? If you follow Aristotle's "Doctrine of the Golden mean" and drink moderately there's less risk of a coronary attack.

But if you can't say "no" to the third or more drinks you have a problem. The decreased risk of heart disease will be more than offset by these other alcohol-related disorders.

I'll continue to enjoy Christmas cheer. I like to believe there are more old wine drinkers than old doctors. And that Armand Cardinal Richelieu was right. He wrote in 1623, "If God forbade drinking would he have made wine so good?"


W. Gifford-Jones M.D is the pen name of Dr. Ken Walker graduate of Harvard. Dr. Walker's website is: Docgiff.com

My book, �90 + How I Got There� can be obtained by sending $19.95 to:

Giff Holdings, 525 Balliol St, Unit # 6,Toronto, Ontario, M4S 1E1

Pre-2008 articles by Gifford Jones
Canada Free Press, CFP Editor Judi McLeod