I couldn’t find the meta-analysis that was going around last year but this one seems to show the same thing. Low dosages of alcohol are reasonably correlated with longevity in the general population.
I don’t know, if you are interested read them. Their models definitely control for things like ‘social class’. Furthermore I am not really convinced whether the small amount of extra socializing that alcohol brings has a significant effect on longevity (it might do, I am just not convinced).
My understanding is that the decent longitudinal studies fail to take account of the fact that a fair proportion of people who don’t drink AT ALL are ex-alcoholics. But I haven’t seen these studies in particular.
To be honest, in the UK, not drinking at all is a very strong signal for either being a Muslim or having some reasonably serious personal whackiness and non-conformism. Both of those seem likely to me to be at least as likely to explain health effects as the booze itself.
I couldn’t find the meta-analysis that was going around last year but this one seems to show the same thing. Low dosages of alcohol are reasonably correlated with longevity in the general population.
Did these studies control for socializing?
I don’t know, if you are interested read them. Their models definitely control for things like ‘social class’. Furthermore I am not really convinced whether the small amount of extra socializing that alcohol brings has a significant effect on longevity (it might do, I am just not convinced).
My understanding is that the decent longitudinal studies fail to take account of the fact that a fair proportion of people who don’t drink AT ALL are ex-alcoholics. But I haven’t seen these studies in particular.
To be honest, in the UK, not drinking at all is a very strong signal for either being a Muslim or having some reasonably serious personal whackiness and non-conformism. Both of those seem likely to me to be at least as likely to explain health effects as the booze itself.