Ladies, drink to your health but not if Indian

New Delhi, Sept. 6: Women who drink moderate amounts of alcohol daily in their midlife years seem to have a greater chance of ageing without any serious health problems, according to a new medical study released today. The study by a team of US researchers provides novel evidence to support the idea that moderate drinking five to seven times a week provides greater health benefits than concentrating alcohol over one or two days a week. The findings appeared in the journal PLOS Medicine. But the researchers caution that their findings are based on an analysis of the health and drinking habits of 13,900 mainly Caucasian women and it is still unclear whether the results apply to other ethnic groups. Indian doctors have also warned that a big question mark hangs over the relevance of these findings to India given the cultural preferences of binge drinking in India. “I see very little relevance to India,” said Vivek Benegal, professor of psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, who has conducted independent research on heavy episodic — binge — drinking in India. “We need to ask: is moderate drinking achievable in India at all given our cultural patterns of alcohol use?” Benegal told The Telegraph. The study by Qi Sun, at the Harvard School of Public Health, and his colleagues has indicated that women who drank 5 grams to 15 grams alcohol five to seven days a week had a nearly 50 per cent greater chance of successful ageing than non-drinkers. In contrast, women who drank only one or two days a week had a similar chance of successful ageing as non-drinkers, the study has shown. The researchers defined successful ageing as a woman at 70 with no history of cancer, diabetes, coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke, kidney failure, Parkinson’s disease and overall good mental and physical health status. In the study, the Harvard researchers assigned 13.2 grams alcohol for a bottle of beer, 10.8 grams for a glass of wine, and 15.1 grams for a drink of liquor. They found that among the 13,984 women studied, 1,491 had aged without health problems. How moderate drinking affects overall health has remained largely unaddressed before this study, Qi Sun and his colleagues wrote in their paper. While excessive drinking can damage the liver and increase the risk of certain diseases, including some cancers, many previous studies based on Caucasian populations have shown that moderate drinking protects the heart. “But we know this doesn’t seem to work for Indian men,” said Ambuj Roy, a cardiologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, whose own research has suggested that drinking does not protect Indian men from heart disease. “It could be underlying genetics or just different drinking habits — the studies on Caucasians involved moderate drinking with meals. Here, we find heavy episodic drinking with unhealthy snacks — and before meals.”