Abstinent people more likely to die young than heavy drinkers

Heavy drinkers in general still outlive the abstinent.

Heavy drinkers in general still outlive the abstinent.

You know we don’t mind throwing a little propaganda about our favorite hobby your way, but now we found a study that seems too good to be true. The main conslusion: regular drinkers are less likely to die prematurely than people who choose abstinence. That’s right, people who don’t drink run a higher risk to die young. The research was led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas.

In his research Holahan checked out people between the ages of 55 and 65 for a period of 20 years. The mortality rates were highest among people who never drank. Heavy drinkers scored lower and the lowest mortality rate was for the moderate drinkers. Well we’re not really surprised about that last fact. In the past was proven that a few glasses of red wine a week can keep you both mentally and physically in shape. But that even heavy drinkers have a better chance of growing old than the abstinent is new. A conclusion we welcome with open arms of course.

So let’s have a look at the numbers. The research was performed on a group of 1.824 study participants. 41% of the moderate drinkers died prematurely. Heavy drinkers died significantly more (60%), but still way less than the nondrinkers with 69%. Even with all the drinking related diseases like several forms of cancer most heavy boozers still outlived the abstinent people.

When trying to come up with a possible explanation for this unexpected result the researchers named the social aspect of alcohol. Since social behaviour is essential for staying healthy both mental and physical. Well, you can believe us or not. Here’s the full research if you are interested. We just want to perform a cheers: to outliving the abstinent, salud!

Micky Bumbar

More posts on alcohol and science

17 thoughts on “Abstinent people more likely to die young than heavy drinkers

  1. Reblogged this on COURAGE TIMES THREE and commented:
    Interesting opinions……does this mean I should take up drinking again? Those youngers years were loads of fun but had a nasty aftereffect on me. Nah! No drinks for me except an occasional glass of champagne at a special occasion. Leave the hangovers wayyyyy behind me.

    Like

  2. I am older, but enjoy a relaxing couple of drinks most nights too much to let this get in the way! I have treated this issue as a challenge. If you pay attention to liver function and hydration, you are unlikely to have a hangover problem, when drinking in moderation. There are supplements and B-Vitamins that support liver function and I always have a bottle of water next to me to sip on through the evening. I never have a problem, unless I ignore these issues. Power-on through gentlemen!

    Like

  3. i think it’s stress. esp. when the non-drunks have to hang out with the drunks, then i bet we’ll see an even higher disparity. even on purely somatic levels, drunkenness helps survival. drunk drivers get in crazy accidents. they don’t tense up, react, etc. it actually helps their bodies minimize the resulting trauma. i noticed it skiing. i don’t think i ever injured myself seriously because i always relaxed into the fall like a rag doll.

    a drink can definitely be a part of a larger strategy to take the edge off a day. and sometimes getting smashed is just f****** necessary. sometimes.

    Like

    • Well spoken sir… Although most teetolars die of more natural causes than a car crash or a skiing incident. For as far as we can call an abstinent lifestyle natural of course. Most of them go because of heart faillure and stuff like that. Alcohol helps the digestion and the bloodstream going. Without it the body is basically a ticking timebomb.
      Cheers,
      Micky

      Like

  4. Pingback: Public Health England is spreading dirty lies about alcohol and liver disease | Lords of the Drinks

  5. Pingback: Alcohol consumption prevents memory loss at an older age | Lords of the Drinks

  6. Pingback: 11 health benefits of alcohol consumption | Lords of the Drinks

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s