Drinking=Living Longer

[paris29]

Hey ladies,

So, I heard on the news the other day about a new study that shows that moderate-heavy drinkers live longer than non-drinkers. I just found an article about it in Times http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 32,00.html. I'm headed over to read the whole article right now. What do you guys/ladies think about this study/topic.

 

[paris29]

Update from OP:

OK. So i just got done reading the article and I have to say I find the article very interesting. I liked that they went back and looked at /analyzed almost all the extraneous factors that could have influenced the study, which makes the study more valid in my eyes at least. Even after factoring almost all confounding variables they still found that moderate and heavy drinkers live longer. I've seen many studies in the past that state wine decreases heart disease, etc and its interesting to see a more broad study of alcohol overall. And I must say it nice to hear/read that not everything that one may enjoy in the life isn't necessarily killing you or making your life shorter.

 

[partgypsy]

Crap, wrote out a long explanation why I am suspicious of the correlation but my response got eaten. Basically my response is that non-drinkers are a smaller and a self-selected group of the population. The authors cannot know all the reasons why people self-selected; could be they had an alcoholic relative who died young, or they are frail, or cannot tolerate alcohol or how it feels to them, or religious reasons (which means they can differ in diet, other lifestyle choices other than alcohol).

So you have this small self-selected group on one extreme, the heavy drinkers on liver transplant lists on the other, and then the largest group which should presumably contain the healthiest people in the middle.

If they could randomly assign people to the different groups (which they cannot do) I would have more confidence in the results.

 

[partgypsy]

Here's an example, what about Mormons?