1 Drink Per Day Cuts Risk of Death by 21%, 9-Year Study Finds
From Times staff and wire reports
The biggest study ever of alcohol’s effects on health found that a drink a day in middle age reduces the risk of death by 21%. The research documented this decrease over a nine-year period in men and women whose average age at the start of the study was 56.
Researchers from the American Cancer Society gave questionnaires to 490,000 men and women and then followed up nearly a decade later, after 46,000 of them had died. They report today in the New England Journal of Medicine that one drink per day gave a 21% decrease in the risk of dying but that additional drinks decreased the benefits. Also, women who consumed at least one drink a day had a 30% higher risk of dying from breast cancer than did nondrinkers.
