There was a clear reduction in the risk of death when light to moderate drinkers were compared with total abstainers, according to researchers.
A study by some researchers a few years ago investigated 4797 male physicians who had suffered a previous heart attack and 953 who had experienced a stroke. Men who drank one or two alcoholic drinks reduced their risk of premature death and the risk of a fatal heart attack by 20 to 30 percent. These men were drawn from among the more than 90,000 doctors who filled out a questionnaire to enter the Physicians' Health Study, a trial designed in part to learn if low doses of aspirin reduce the risk of a first heart attack. The doctors were in real dilemma: whether to encourage their patients to drink, knowing that uncontrolled and heavy drinking can lead to avoidable deaths, or whether to avoid them to shy away from any alcohol drinking at all.
And the real crunch: it may even be that drinking two or more drinks a day is even more effective-so few of the doctors in the study fell into this category that nobody can really tell, one way or the other.
''Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake . . .'', said St Paul in his first epistle to Timothy. He goes on to add that wine will also treat Timothy's ''often infirmities''. St. Paul Was quite right!
