From Sip To Slip

By Norman Swan (Reader's Digest June 2008, pg 113)
In this article, the issue discussed is how alcohol is bad for health.
During these years, more and more people are indulging themselves in large quantities of alcohol. The reason for this, as stated in the article, is that people are "deluding themselves".
There was a research some years ago which showed that small quantities of alcohol is good for the heart. Thus, this became an excuse for people to drink alcohol. Furthermore, many people think that since a small amount of alcohol is good, a large amount would be better. This is wrong. Everything, even vitamins, are bad for health if taken too many. "Too much of good is bad".
However, this is not the only explanation given. The author believes that the key to this problem lies in the research taken. How was the results obtained? Who where the ones that were tested on? Are there any other alternative explanations for the results?
The answers to these questions are important, especially the last. According to the author, it is impossible to eliminate all the thingies that could be alternative explanations and introduce bias into the results. Examples are being richer, better-educated, non-smokers and generally healthier to begin with. This was the reason which led to wrong results for the hormone replacement therapy (HRT) story. Thus, since nobody has ever done a randomized trial of alcohol in preventing heart disease,
the only thing we can be sure of is that people from the same group have the benefits.
Thus, not all results are accurate, and that we should not just take their word for it and drink to our hearts content.
However, it turns out that there is little truth in drinking helping to reduce heart diseases. Perhaps one of two standard drinks a day does not prevent heart diseases at all, though it does no harm either. Anything above that would be bad for health.
Furthermore, alcohol can be considered to be a damaging drug. Alcohol consumption is strongly associated with fatal and non-fatal injuries, domestic violence, dependence, liver disease and depression. Therefore it would be important too to control this drug.
Delaying first alcohol consumption is a key goal, as it prevents further addiction to alcohol. Ways to do this, as mentioned in the article, is to raise the price of alcohol through taxes. However, the alcohol industry would suffer, thus this would not happen in the near future.

Done by : Quek Jie Sheng (37)