ErnieDeBord
Member
I peed on a electric fence once, regards Ernie
I'm not really sure how to take this.....
- Thread starter CAJUNLAWYER
- Start date
The military will still take 'em at 17! I wonder what the discard rate is for young adults that age now compared to when we were sending them to Vietnam?
Another form of evolution: Drinking so much for so long that you no longer have hangovers. THAT'S when you know you're in trouble.
Another form of evolution: Drinking so much for so long that you no longer have hangovers. THAT'S when you know you're in trouble.
Last edited:
amazingflapjack
US Veteran
and yet...
A person who has an addictive personality will puke and have hangovers every day-and continue to do the same each day with the insane hope that each time they do these things that "it will be different this time." This can continue on through extraordinary evidence to the contrary. Addiction-for those who suffer with it-is a spiritual malady that is manifested as a mental obsession, that when acted upon, brings on a physical compulsion, also called an allergy. When the Spiritual remedy is found and acted upon, the mental and physical fall in line. NJMHO.
A person who has an addictive personality will puke and have hangovers every day-and continue to do the same each day with the insane hope that each time they do these things that "it will be different this time." This can continue on through extraordinary evidence to the contrary. Addiction-for those who suffer with it-is a spiritual malady that is manifested as a mental obsession, that when acted upon, brings on a physical compulsion, also called an allergy. When the Spiritual remedy is found and acted upon, the mental and physical fall in line. NJMHO.
indie_rocker
US Veteran
Humans have struggled with addictive substances for centuries. Some people are more prone to dependence than others. It's part hereditary, part how we're raised (environment) and, totally random sometimes. Something happened in the last ten years that changed how young adults handle situations that most of us would have no problem with.
Let's use this real life example: I'm 30 and have a brother who is about to be 20. His car needs a little repairing that I am unwilling to do myself. I have offered to help pay for the repairs, all he needs to do is drive his car to a shop, get an estimate, have them fix it, when the job is billed I'll give him the money to pay it. The idea is for this to be a life lesson. This is what grown people do, stuff breaks and if we can't fix it ourselves we pay someone for their services. We don't just flop around until mommy comes running up and takes care of it for you.
He has left the car sitting in front of our mothers house for the past month. I'm assuming it's because he is waiting for someone else to do all of this for him. He's been coddled all his life and wants to keep playing the "poor me" card.
Now I'm not saying all of today's kids are like this. My 16 year old brother blows my mind, showed him how to change a tire and he calls me one day to tell me he actually had to do it. Where does he go to get it fixed? I told him to call some tire shops and see if they had a used tire. He calls me back and said it was all taken care of and thanked me for showing him how to put his spare tire on, I was stunned... he paid attention. There's hope for the future!
Let's use this real life example: I'm 30 and have a brother who is about to be 20. His car needs a little repairing that I am unwilling to do myself. I have offered to help pay for the repairs, all he needs to do is drive his car to a shop, get an estimate, have them fix it, when the job is billed I'll give him the money to pay it. The idea is for this to be a life lesson. This is what grown people do, stuff breaks and if we can't fix it ourselves we pay someone for their services. We don't just flop around until mommy comes running up and takes care of it for you.
He has left the car sitting in front of our mothers house for the past month. I'm assuming it's because he is waiting for someone else to do all of this for him. He's been coddled all his life and wants to keep playing the "poor me" card.
Now I'm not saying all of today's kids are like this. My 16 year old brother blows my mind, showed him how to change a tire and he calls me one day to tell me he actually had to do it. Where does he go to get it fixed? I told him to call some tire shops and see if they had a used tire. He calls me back and said it was all taken care of and thanked me for showing him how to put his spare tire on, I was stunned... he paid attention. There's hope for the future!
Arik
Member
Being addicted to something has nothing to do with spiritual whatever. Know any church goers that smoke? How about priests? BTW smoking is more addictive then heroine!
If it was that way then people would be addicted to everything. I LOVE liquor. Can drink a case of beer a day or a bottle of scotch or tequila. Or....I can not have any for months. Couldn't care either way. Kinda like liking ice cream. I have absolutely no interest in drugs of any kind. And not because of health or law reasons. ..I just have no interest in it.
On the other hand I go through a pack of cigarettes a day. Can't not have one.
Other people don't care about any of that but can't stop gambling
For alcoholics it's genetic and not spiritual. It's passed down and has to do with how the anzymes metabolize alcohol, some plants and yeast
Last edited:
HorizontalMike
US Veteran
Google: Drunks Live Longer
Alcohol is good for your health: Leading science writer claims tipple can prevent cancer and may help improve your sex life | Daily Mail Online
Alcohol is good for your health: Leading science writer claims tipple can prevent cancer and may help improve your sex life
Tony Edwards is a science journalist and writer
He has brought together leading research on the effects of alcohol Found that, far from being harmful, drinking could prevent illness Red wine is best, but must still be drunk in moderation
By Tony Edwards
Published: 19:25 EST, 22 November 2013 | Updated: 09:20 EST, 25 November 2013
While medical advice says to avoid alcohol, medical science says it could actually be good for you
A businessman goes to his GP. 'My hands hurt, I get a bit of a pain in my chest sometimes, and I'm beginning to forget things,' he complains.
The doctor examines him and says: 'You've got a touch of arthritis, possibly mild heart disease, and you may be in the first stages of dementia. How much are you drinking?'
'Never touch a drop, doctor,' says the patient proudly.
'Ah, that explains it,' says the GP, wagging an admonishing finger. 'Here's a prescription for red wine — a quarter of a litre a day.'
Ridiculous? Absurd? A story from the Bumper Book of Jokes for Alcoholics? Absolutely not.
Let me tell you this: if GPs fail to recommend alcohol to at least some of their patients, they should be had up for medical negligence.
That, at least, is the logical conclusion I've drawn from an in-depth study of around half-a-million scientific papers about alcohol.
To my surprise, they contained findings that would make any pharmaceutical company uncork the champagne. Except they never will, of course, because alcohol can't be patented as a drug.
Most of the evidence suggests that if red wine, in particular — and to a lesser degree white wine, beer, lager and spirits — were used as a preventive and therapeutic medicine, disease rates would fall substantially. Not only that, but lives would be saved — with huge benefits to the economy.
In fact, red wine may well be one of the most effective 'medications' in history.
Like other drugs, it has side-effects. It has a minimum and maximum therapeutic dose — take too little and it won't work; take too much and it may make you ill.
And it has a daily treatment regime: ideally, you should take wine once a day with the evening meal.
Yes, daily. I know that the medical profession urges us to stop drinking at least two or three days a week, but this isn't borne out by scientific studies. These consistently show that daily moderate drinking is the best for health.
OK, but what is a moderate amount? Unfortunately, that's where it gets a bit more complicated, because the prevention and treatment of different diseases seem to require differing amounts — varying from a small to a large glass a day, but sometimes more.
Of course, most people already know red wine is supposed to be good for your heart. But, that aside, the endlessly repeated public message is that alcohol is Bad News.
Now, I'd be foolish to deny that over-indulging in booze can be harmful to society. You need only think of alcohol-fuelled crime, road deaths, city centre mayhem, domestic violence, and costs to the NHS.
But to show only one side of the picture, as government and medical authorities inevitably do, is simply bad medicine. It prevents people making sensible decisions about their own health.
Why haven't doctors ever come clean about all this? The reason is fairly obvious: they don't trust us.
One shining exception is Professor Karol Sikora, the UK-based consultant oncologist who's written the foreword to my new book about the benefits of alcohol.
Red wine seems to be the most beneficial, but as with any medicine taking too much can be harmful
Too much booze, he warns, not only kills but 'ruins lives, destroys families, ends successful careers, causes untold physical and mental illness and has a huge adverse impact on society'.
However, he continues: 'If you don't drink at all, you have a defined risk of developing all sorts of medical problems in your heart, joints, brain, blood sugar levels, and kidneys — indeed all round your body.
'As you begin to drink, there seems to be evidence of benefit. As you drink more, that gradually disappears and the damaging effects kick in.'
But let's be clear here: I'm not recommending anything personally. I'm just an averagely intelligent science journalist who's done what anyone else can if they have the time: I've looked at the scientific and medical data published in top-flight journals, and collated the evidence.
So, readers should consult knowledgeable health professionals before acting upon anything they read below. The trouble is, most doctors know very little about this area, because they, like you, have been largely kept in the dark.
Here, though, is some of the evidence I found — and it's more than a little surprising.
Heart Disease
From the Nineties, experts at Harvard University monitored 12,000 men with high blood pressure for nearly 13 years.
All the men were doctors, and some were drinking far more than the accepted alcohol limits. In the UK, these are 16 grams a day for women — the alcohol in just over a medium glass of wine — and 32 grams for men, roughly half a bottle of red wine.
Working in grams per day is far easier than the hopelessly confusing system of units.
So what happened in the Harvard study? The more these men drank, the less chance they had of a heart attack.
Drinking 10 to 15 grams (up to a medium glass of wine) a day reduced risk by nearly 40 per cent. But at over 50 grams (two-thirds of a bottle of wine), the risk went down even further — by nearly 60 per cent.
Similar results were found in a 13-year Oxford University study of British doctors, some of whom also drank over the guidelines.
'The consumption of alcohol appeared to reduce the risk of ischaemic heart disease, largely irrespective of amount,' the Oxford researchers reported.
In fact, the evidence from over half a century's research seems to be overwhelming: alcohol is associated with a reduced risk of all forms of heart disease.
And alcohol can also help people with existing heart disease; in other words, it acts just like a pharmaceutical medication.
A huge nine-year study of nearly half a million Americans revealed that alcohol 'significantly' prolonged the lives of people already suffering from heart disease — and this applied even to people who drank more than 56 grams of alcohol (two-thirds of a bottle of wine) a day.
Common Cold
Drug companies have spent billions trying to find a way of preventing colds, and failed.
However, the answer has been staring us in the face all along, because astonishingly, both wine and alcohol in general help prevent the common cold — and very effectively, according to a joint research venture between Harvard and Spanish universities in 2002.
The results were astounding: up to a 60 per cent reduction in the risk of catching a cold among red wine drinkers, and a staggering 88 per cent reduction in white wine drinkers.
weekly units
This finding was reinforced by an earlier placebo-controlled clinical trial in Britain's Common Cold Unit in 1993, when 400 regular drinkers and a smattering of teetotallers were deliberately infected with a cold virus.
Remarkably, it was the teetotallers who were most susceptible to getting a cold. And the effect of alcohol was huge: people who drank 20 grams (just over one large glass of wine) of alcohol a day had almost ten times fewer cold symptoms than teetotallers.
No drug, herb or medical intervention can come close to offering that level of protection.
Breast Cancer
In 2008, a study was done on about 1,500 women in Southern France who'd developed breast cancer in the previous two years.
Their lifestyles were then analysed in detail, including the types of alcohol they drank, how much and how often. A matched 'control group' of healthy women was also surveyed.
The findings were dramatic. First, none of the breast cancer cases appeared to have any association with alcohol intake — no matter how much the women usually drank.
Second, drinking up to 15 grams of alcohol a day of wine (a medium glass) actually reduced the risk of breast cancer — by a remarkable 42 per cent.
Third, the greatest protection occurred among the women who drank wine every day; there was no benefit whatever if they drank sporadically.
So the researchers had no option but to conclude: 'Low and regular consumption of wine reduces the risk of breast cancer.'
Two years later, those French findings were bolstered by a University of Ottawa study on women at risk of one particular breast cancer type — the BRCA1 genetic mutation.
'Compared with non-drinkers,' it said, 'exclusive consumption of wine was associated with a significant reduction in the risk of breast cancer.'
In 2012, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles reported that red wine specifically has beneficial effects on some of the hormones implicated in breast cancer.
Meanwhile, at least two studies on mice have shown that the natural ingredients of red wine can reduce breast cancer tumours.
However, we should be cautious. Although four population studies have found that wine doesn't cause breast cancer, about four disagree. And Cancer Research UK is adamant that drinking alcohol has been shown to increase the risk.
Certainly, the evidence is fairly clear that alcohol in general isn't good news for breast cancer, with roughly a 10 per cent increase in risk for every tot of spirits or half pint of beer you drink.
Diabetes
In 2009, researchers at Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health analysed more than 1,500 studies on the link between alcohol and diabetes.
They concluded that drinkers have a 13 per cent lower risk of contracting it than teetotallers.
An earlier Dutch analysis looked at data on nearly 370,000 people whose health had been tracked for 12 years. If you drank between six grams of alcohol (half a small glass of wine) and 48 grams (two large glasses) of alcohol a day, you reduced your diabetes risk by about 30 per cent, it concluded.
Interestingly, there's some evidence that moderate female drinkers benefit from almost double the reduction in diabetes risk as men.
Rheumatoid Arthritis
'Currently, rheumatoid arthritis cannot be prevented,' says Britain's official NHS website tersely. But that's a porkie.
Because, according to a wide variety of studies, RA can be prevented — by alcohol.
Two separate Scandinavian studies in 2009, involving 3,000 women, revealed that teetotallers had 40 per cent more risk of contracting RA, while the heaviest drinkers had 45 per cent less risk.
An American study showed that drinking four glasses of wine a week halves the risk of prostate cancer
Since those studies, more evidence has come along, showing that the most effective RA-preventing dose is about 10 grams (just under a small glass of wine) a day. But risks actually increase if you drink more than 30 grams daily (two medium glasses).
Does alcohol help if you've already got the disease? In 2010, Sheffield University doctors studied the drinking habits of over 800 RA patients, and found that regular drinkers have significantly less severe symptoms than non-drinkers.
Drinking for up to 10 days a month reduced pain by about 25 per cent, and more frequent drinking by 30 per cent. And this was no temporary anaesthetic effect: X-rays showed there was less damage to joints, blood tests revealed lower levels of inflammation, and there was less joint pain and swelling.
Osteoporosis
In 2012, U.S. researchers at Oregon State University studied a group of people very prone to bone loss: post-menopausal women.
All were regular moderate drinkers, and they were persuaded to give up alcohol for two weeks.
At the end of this period, super-sophisticated X-ray technology discovered that their bone turnover (the body's continuing replacement of new bone for old) had deteriorated markedly.
The women were then allowed to resume drinking — and their bone turnover went back to its original level within 24 hours.
Large-scale studies have confirmed these findings, showing that regular drinking significantly improves bone density in not just older women but men, too.
Optimum dose? For a 5 per cent improvement in bone density, people had to drink more than 28 grams (slightly more than a large glass of wine) of alcohol a day.
Five per cent may not sound much but it's roughly on a par with the most commonly prescribed anti-osteoporosis drugs.
However, it's not a good idea to self-medicate with alcohol if you're already a bit unsteady on your feet. Heavy drinkers get more hip fractures — simply because they're more likely to fall over.
Stomach Cancer
From 1964 to 1992, Danish researchers tracked the drinking habits of nearly 30,000 people to check their stomach cancer rates, and found that wine — both red and white — was protective.
Seventy-five grams (roughly a bottle) a week resulted in a 24 per cent reduction in risk.
Wine prevents dementia
Prostate Cancer
A 2005 study of red wine and prostate cancer risk among 1,500 Americans reported that: 'Each additional glass of red wine consumed per week showed a statistically significant 6 per cent decrease in relative risk of prostate cancer.'
The risk of prostate cancer appeared to be halved by drinking a mere four glasses (or more) of red wine in a week.
And for the most aggressive cancer type, the risk was reduced by 60 per cent. However, not all studies agree, so there's still a bit of a hung jury.
Macular Degeneration
Towards the end of the Nineties, University of Washington DC ophthalmologists decided to cast a beady eye over the drinking habits of their patients.
They fully expected to find that the demon drink would be a major risk factor when it came to failing eyesight, but the opposite was true.
'Moderate wine consumption,' their report stated, 'is associated with decreased odds of developing age-related macular degeneration.'
Sexual satisfaction
In a 2009 study, the University of Florence asked 800 women aged between 18 and 50 to answer a standard questionnaire on 'female sexual function'.
What did they discover? Teetotallers scored 68 per cent on sexual satisfaction, those who regularly drank a single glass of red wine 72 per cent, and those who often drank two glasses 76 per cent.
Ah, but is this a causal relationship or just a correlation? In other words, does red wine marginally improve a woman's sex life, or do the kind of women who choose to drink it also have a good sex life?
We don't know.
Male wine-drinkers haven't yet had their sex lives investigated. The only data I can find is that a constituent of red wine increases the effectiveness of the erectile dysfunction drug, Levitra — but only if you're a rat.
Bowel Cancer
One huge UK-based study in 2010 analysed the medical data from over 150,000 British drinkers and non-drinkers, and could find no 'statistically significant' connection between alcohol and bowel cancer whatsoever.
Moreover, there's some evidence that one type of alcohol — yes, red wine — may actually protect against it.
In 2009, Cambridge University researchers reported on an 11-year study of almost 25,000 people in Norfolk.
They discovered that drinking wine actually seemed to reduce the risk of bowel cancer by almost half. Two American surveys have also found a similar protective effect from wine.
But beware not to drink too much. The consensus seems to be that drinking more than 50 grams of alcohol (more than half a bottle of wine) a day may raise the risk of this cancer.
A Dutch paper in the 1980s showed that the risk of Alcohol Liver Disease increased with consumption, but only for a very limited number of people
But what about the liver?
If there's one organ that doctors tell drinkers that alcohol is bad for, it's the liver. But what does the evidence really say?
Even here, it turns out that we're only given a partial view of the true picture.
The catch-all term for liver problems thought to be caused by alcohol is Alcohol Liver Disease (ALD). And the facts are that ALD is not nearly as widespread as doctors like to make out.
In the Eighties, Danish researchers decided to track the health of more than 13,000 people over a 12-year period, specifically looking for a connection between alcohol and ALD.
As expected, they found that, above an intake of about 35 grams a day (roughly two pints of beer), there was indeed a risk of ALD.
But, crucially, this risk only applied to a relatively few people. Fully 93 per cent of the drinkers had no sign of cirrhosis whatever, even at alcohol intakes above 120 grams a day — almost two bottles of wine.
Italian doctors found very much the same thing in a celebrated study called 'Dionysos' in 1997. This was an intensive long-term study of the inhabitants of two towns in northern Italy.
Evidently, some of these 7,000 Italian townsfolk were pretty heavy drinkers, with more than a hundred of them downing the equivalent of more than a bottle and a half of wine a day — and yet the vast majority of these heavy boozers had no ALD symptoms at all.
Why not? Some experts believe the answer lies in people's genetic make-up — a special study of the heavy drinkers in the Dionysos population found that cirrhosis tended to occur in the people who had particularly unusual variants of the two genes responsible for detoxifying alcohol in the liver.
In other words, if you're unlucky enough to have the wrong genes, you might get ALD almost no matter how little you drink. With the right genes, however, you'll probably never get liver disease.
What doctors also don't tell you is that some kinds of liver disease might actually be prevented by alcohol — for example, a condition called Fatty Liver Disease (steatohepatatis).
A huge U.S.-wide survey in 2012 found alcohol is of real benefit for this fairly common liver problem.
'Our study showed that people with modest alcohol intake — up to 36 grams of alcohol daily [roughly half a bottle of wine] had half the risk of developing steatohepatitis than people who drank no alcohol,' reported lead author Professor Jeffrey Schwimmer of UC San Diego.
Extracted from The Good News About Booze by Tony Edwards, to be published by Premium Books on Tuesday at £11.99. © 2013 Tony Edwards.
Read more: Alcohol is good for your health: Leading science writer claims tipple can prevent cancer and may help improve your sex life | Daily Mail Online
Alcohol is good for your health: Leading science writer claims tipple can prevent cancer and may help improve your sex life | Daily Mail Online
Alcohol is good for your health: Leading science writer claims tipple can prevent cancer and may help improve your sex life
Tony Edwards is a science journalist and writer
He has brought together leading research on the effects of alcohol Found that, far from being harmful, drinking could prevent illness Red wine is best, but must still be drunk in moderation
By Tony Edwards
Published: 19:25 EST, 22 November 2013 | Updated: 09:20 EST, 25 November 2013
While medical advice says to avoid alcohol, medical science says it could actually be good for you
A businessman goes to his GP. 'My hands hurt, I get a bit of a pain in my chest sometimes, and I'm beginning to forget things,' he complains.
The doctor examines him and says: 'You've got a touch of arthritis, possibly mild heart disease, and you may be in the first stages of dementia. How much are you drinking?'
'Never touch a drop, doctor,' says the patient proudly.
'Ah, that explains it,' says the GP, wagging an admonishing finger. 'Here's a prescription for red wine — a quarter of a litre a day.'
Ridiculous? Absurd? A story from the Bumper Book of Jokes for Alcoholics? Absolutely not.
Let me tell you this: if GPs fail to recommend alcohol to at least some of their patients, they should be had up for medical negligence.
That, at least, is the logical conclusion I've drawn from an in-depth study of around half-a-million scientific papers about alcohol.
To my surprise, they contained findings that would make any pharmaceutical company uncork the champagne. Except they never will, of course, because alcohol can't be patented as a drug.
Most of the evidence suggests that if red wine, in particular — and to a lesser degree white wine, beer, lager and spirits — were used as a preventive and therapeutic medicine, disease rates would fall substantially. Not only that, but lives would be saved — with huge benefits to the economy.
In fact, red wine may well be one of the most effective 'medications' in history.
Like other drugs, it has side-effects. It has a minimum and maximum therapeutic dose — take too little and it won't work; take too much and it may make you ill.
And it has a daily treatment regime: ideally, you should take wine once a day with the evening meal.
Yes, daily. I know that the medical profession urges us to stop drinking at least two or three days a week, but this isn't borne out by scientific studies. These consistently show that daily moderate drinking is the best for health.
OK, but what is a moderate amount? Unfortunately, that's where it gets a bit more complicated, because the prevention and treatment of different diseases seem to require differing amounts — varying from a small to a large glass a day, but sometimes more.
Of course, most people already know red wine is supposed to be good for your heart. But, that aside, the endlessly repeated public message is that alcohol is Bad News.
Now, I'd be foolish to deny that over-indulging in booze can be harmful to society. You need only think of alcohol-fuelled crime, road deaths, city centre mayhem, domestic violence, and costs to the NHS.
But to show only one side of the picture, as government and medical authorities inevitably do, is simply bad medicine. It prevents people making sensible decisions about their own health.
Why haven't doctors ever come clean about all this? The reason is fairly obvious: they don't trust us.
One shining exception is Professor Karol Sikora, the UK-based consultant oncologist who's written the foreword to my new book about the benefits of alcohol.
Red wine seems to be the most beneficial, but as with any medicine taking too much can be harmful
Too much booze, he warns, not only kills but 'ruins lives, destroys families, ends successful careers, causes untold physical and mental illness and has a huge adverse impact on society'.
However, he continues: 'If you don't drink at all, you have a defined risk of developing all sorts of medical problems in your heart, joints, brain, blood sugar levels, and kidneys — indeed all round your body.
'As you begin to drink, there seems to be evidence of benefit. As you drink more, that gradually disappears and the damaging effects kick in.'
But let's be clear here: I'm not recommending anything personally. I'm just an averagely intelligent science journalist who's done what anyone else can if they have the time: I've looked at the scientific and medical data published in top-flight journals, and collated the evidence.
So, readers should consult knowledgeable health professionals before acting upon anything they read below. The trouble is, most doctors know very little about this area, because they, like you, have been largely kept in the dark.
Here, though, is some of the evidence I found — and it's more than a little surprising.
Heart Disease
From the Nineties, experts at Harvard University monitored 12,000 men with high blood pressure for nearly 13 years.
All the men were doctors, and some were drinking far more than the accepted alcohol limits. In the UK, these are 16 grams a day for women — the alcohol in just over a medium glass of wine — and 32 grams for men, roughly half a bottle of red wine.
Working in grams per day is far easier than the hopelessly confusing system of units.
So what happened in the Harvard study? The more these men drank, the less chance they had of a heart attack.
Drinking 10 to 15 grams (up to a medium glass of wine) a day reduced risk by nearly 40 per cent. But at over 50 grams (two-thirds of a bottle of wine), the risk went down even further — by nearly 60 per cent.
Similar results were found in a 13-year Oxford University study of British doctors, some of whom also drank over the guidelines.
'The consumption of alcohol appeared to reduce the risk of ischaemic heart disease, largely irrespective of amount,' the Oxford researchers reported.
In fact, the evidence from over half a century's research seems to be overwhelming: alcohol is associated with a reduced risk of all forms of heart disease.
And alcohol can also help people with existing heart disease; in other words, it acts just like a pharmaceutical medication.
A huge nine-year study of nearly half a million Americans revealed that alcohol 'significantly' prolonged the lives of people already suffering from heart disease — and this applied even to people who drank more than 56 grams of alcohol (two-thirds of a bottle of wine) a day.
Common Cold
Drug companies have spent billions trying to find a way of preventing colds, and failed.
However, the answer has been staring us in the face all along, because astonishingly, both wine and alcohol in general help prevent the common cold — and very effectively, according to a joint research venture between Harvard and Spanish universities in 2002.
The results were astounding: up to a 60 per cent reduction in the risk of catching a cold among red wine drinkers, and a staggering 88 per cent reduction in white wine drinkers.
weekly units
This finding was reinforced by an earlier placebo-controlled clinical trial in Britain's Common Cold Unit in 1993, when 400 regular drinkers and a smattering of teetotallers were deliberately infected with a cold virus.
Remarkably, it was the teetotallers who were most susceptible to getting a cold. And the effect of alcohol was huge: people who drank 20 grams (just over one large glass of wine) of alcohol a day had almost ten times fewer cold symptoms than teetotallers.
No drug, herb or medical intervention can come close to offering that level of protection.
Breast Cancer
In 2008, a study was done on about 1,500 women in Southern France who'd developed breast cancer in the previous two years.
Their lifestyles were then analysed in detail, including the types of alcohol they drank, how much and how often. A matched 'control group' of healthy women was also surveyed.
The findings were dramatic. First, none of the breast cancer cases appeared to have any association with alcohol intake — no matter how much the women usually drank.
Second, drinking up to 15 grams of alcohol a day of wine (a medium glass) actually reduced the risk of breast cancer — by a remarkable 42 per cent.
Third, the greatest protection occurred among the women who drank wine every day; there was no benefit whatever if they drank sporadically.
So the researchers had no option but to conclude: 'Low and regular consumption of wine reduces the risk of breast cancer.'
Two years later, those French findings were bolstered by a University of Ottawa study on women at risk of one particular breast cancer type — the BRCA1 genetic mutation.
'Compared with non-drinkers,' it said, 'exclusive consumption of wine was associated with a significant reduction in the risk of breast cancer.'
In 2012, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles reported that red wine specifically has beneficial effects on some of the hormones implicated in breast cancer.
Meanwhile, at least two studies on mice have shown that the natural ingredients of red wine can reduce breast cancer tumours.
However, we should be cautious. Although four population studies have found that wine doesn't cause breast cancer, about four disagree. And Cancer Research UK is adamant that drinking alcohol has been shown to increase the risk.
Certainly, the evidence is fairly clear that alcohol in general isn't good news for breast cancer, with roughly a 10 per cent increase in risk for every tot of spirits or half pint of beer you drink.
Diabetes
In 2009, researchers at Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health analysed more than 1,500 studies on the link between alcohol and diabetes.
They concluded that drinkers have a 13 per cent lower risk of contracting it than teetotallers.
An earlier Dutch analysis looked at data on nearly 370,000 people whose health had been tracked for 12 years. If you drank between six grams of alcohol (half a small glass of wine) and 48 grams (two large glasses) of alcohol a day, you reduced your diabetes risk by about 30 per cent, it concluded.
Interestingly, there's some evidence that moderate female drinkers benefit from almost double the reduction in diabetes risk as men.
Rheumatoid Arthritis
'Currently, rheumatoid arthritis cannot be prevented,' says Britain's official NHS website tersely. But that's a porkie.
Because, according to a wide variety of studies, RA can be prevented — by alcohol.
Two separate Scandinavian studies in 2009, involving 3,000 women, revealed that teetotallers had 40 per cent more risk of contracting RA, while the heaviest drinkers had 45 per cent less risk.
An American study showed that drinking four glasses of wine a week halves the risk of prostate cancer
Since those studies, more evidence has come along, showing that the most effective RA-preventing dose is about 10 grams (just under a small glass of wine) a day. But risks actually increase if you drink more than 30 grams daily (two medium glasses).
Does alcohol help if you've already got the disease? In 2010, Sheffield University doctors studied the drinking habits of over 800 RA patients, and found that regular drinkers have significantly less severe symptoms than non-drinkers.
Drinking for up to 10 days a month reduced pain by about 25 per cent, and more frequent drinking by 30 per cent. And this was no temporary anaesthetic effect: X-rays showed there was less damage to joints, blood tests revealed lower levels of inflammation, and there was less joint pain and swelling.
Osteoporosis
In 2012, U.S. researchers at Oregon State University studied a group of people very prone to bone loss: post-menopausal women.
All were regular moderate drinkers, and they were persuaded to give up alcohol for two weeks.
At the end of this period, super-sophisticated X-ray technology discovered that their bone turnover (the body's continuing replacement of new bone for old) had deteriorated markedly.
The women were then allowed to resume drinking — and their bone turnover went back to its original level within 24 hours.
Large-scale studies have confirmed these findings, showing that regular drinking significantly improves bone density in not just older women but men, too.
Optimum dose? For a 5 per cent improvement in bone density, people had to drink more than 28 grams (slightly more than a large glass of wine) of alcohol a day.
Five per cent may not sound much but it's roughly on a par with the most commonly prescribed anti-osteoporosis drugs.
However, it's not a good idea to self-medicate with alcohol if you're already a bit unsteady on your feet. Heavy drinkers get more hip fractures — simply because they're more likely to fall over.
Stomach Cancer
From 1964 to 1992, Danish researchers tracked the drinking habits of nearly 30,000 people to check their stomach cancer rates, and found that wine — both red and white — was protective.
Seventy-five grams (roughly a bottle) a week resulted in a 24 per cent reduction in risk.
Wine prevents dementia
Prostate Cancer
A 2005 study of red wine and prostate cancer risk among 1,500 Americans reported that: 'Each additional glass of red wine consumed per week showed a statistically significant 6 per cent decrease in relative risk of prostate cancer.'
The risk of prostate cancer appeared to be halved by drinking a mere four glasses (or more) of red wine in a week.
And for the most aggressive cancer type, the risk was reduced by 60 per cent. However, not all studies agree, so there's still a bit of a hung jury.
Macular Degeneration
Towards the end of the Nineties, University of Washington DC ophthalmologists decided to cast a beady eye over the drinking habits of their patients.
They fully expected to find that the demon drink would be a major risk factor when it came to failing eyesight, but the opposite was true.
'Moderate wine consumption,' their report stated, 'is associated with decreased odds of developing age-related macular degeneration.'
Sexual satisfaction
In a 2009 study, the University of Florence asked 800 women aged between 18 and 50 to answer a standard questionnaire on 'female sexual function'.
What did they discover? Teetotallers scored 68 per cent on sexual satisfaction, those who regularly drank a single glass of red wine 72 per cent, and those who often drank two glasses 76 per cent.
Ah, but is this a causal relationship or just a correlation? In other words, does red wine marginally improve a woman's sex life, or do the kind of women who choose to drink it also have a good sex life?
We don't know.
Male wine-drinkers haven't yet had their sex lives investigated. The only data I can find is that a constituent of red wine increases the effectiveness of the erectile dysfunction drug, Levitra — but only if you're a rat.
Bowel Cancer
One huge UK-based study in 2010 analysed the medical data from over 150,000 British drinkers and non-drinkers, and could find no 'statistically significant' connection between alcohol and bowel cancer whatsoever.
Moreover, there's some evidence that one type of alcohol — yes, red wine — may actually protect against it.
In 2009, Cambridge University researchers reported on an 11-year study of almost 25,000 people in Norfolk.
They discovered that drinking wine actually seemed to reduce the risk of bowel cancer by almost half. Two American surveys have also found a similar protective effect from wine.
But beware not to drink too much. The consensus seems to be that drinking more than 50 grams of alcohol (more than half a bottle of wine) a day may raise the risk of this cancer.
A Dutch paper in the 1980s showed that the risk of Alcohol Liver Disease increased with consumption, but only for a very limited number of people
But what about the liver?
If there's one organ that doctors tell drinkers that alcohol is bad for, it's the liver. But what does the evidence really say?
Even here, it turns out that we're only given a partial view of the true picture.
The catch-all term for liver problems thought to be caused by alcohol is Alcohol Liver Disease (ALD). And the facts are that ALD is not nearly as widespread as doctors like to make out.
In the Eighties, Danish researchers decided to track the health of more than 13,000 people over a 12-year period, specifically looking for a connection between alcohol and ALD.
As expected, they found that, above an intake of about 35 grams a day (roughly two pints of beer), there was indeed a risk of ALD.
But, crucially, this risk only applied to a relatively few people. Fully 93 per cent of the drinkers had no sign of cirrhosis whatever, even at alcohol intakes above 120 grams a day — almost two bottles of wine.
Italian doctors found very much the same thing in a celebrated study called 'Dionysos' in 1997. This was an intensive long-term study of the inhabitants of two towns in northern Italy.
Evidently, some of these 7,000 Italian townsfolk were pretty heavy drinkers, with more than a hundred of them downing the equivalent of more than a bottle and a half of wine a day — and yet the vast majority of these heavy boozers had no ALD symptoms at all.
Why not? Some experts believe the answer lies in people's genetic make-up — a special study of the heavy drinkers in the Dionysos population found that cirrhosis tended to occur in the people who had particularly unusual variants of the two genes responsible for detoxifying alcohol in the liver.
In other words, if you're unlucky enough to have the wrong genes, you might get ALD almost no matter how little you drink. With the right genes, however, you'll probably never get liver disease.
What doctors also don't tell you is that some kinds of liver disease might actually be prevented by alcohol — for example, a condition called Fatty Liver Disease (steatohepatatis).
A huge U.S.-wide survey in 2012 found alcohol is of real benefit for this fairly common liver problem.
'Our study showed that people with modest alcohol intake — up to 36 grams of alcohol daily [roughly half a bottle of wine] had half the risk of developing steatohepatitis than people who drank no alcohol,' reported lead author Professor Jeffrey Schwimmer of UC San Diego.
Extracted from The Good News About Booze by Tony Edwards, to be published by Premium Books on Tuesday at £11.99. © 2013 Tony Edwards.
Read more: Alcohol is good for your health: Leading science writer claims tipple can prevent cancer and may help improve your sex life | Daily Mail Online
D--- .............
"It's 5 O'clock somewhere!!!!!!!"
"It's 5 O'clock somewhere!!!!!!!"
I could not agree more. The kids today are "given" everything without earning anything. They don't appreciate it anyway. This is the era of entitlement and if you don't have to work for anything you don't have think about how to earn anything - like getting a job - or going to work. My father said when I turned 18 - you have three choices from here on - 1. get a job and go to work and pay room and board (1 year). 2. Go to college - your mother and I will help you with that but you must maintain a 3.0 or better or 3. Join the armed forces - branch is your choice. Uncle Sam made the decision "Greeting from the President of the United States" = you have been selected.
Actually, that was the best choice for me at the time. But today, very little in the way of maturity and facing life issues for this generation because of the nanny state and being PC.
Last edited:
Fishslayer
US Veteran, Absent Comrade
I blame the backwards ballcap. It's been my observation that if somebody is going to do something unbelievably stupid it's gonna be the guy in the backwards ballcap. 
williamlayton
Member
Dead is dead in any form it is administered.
Blessings
Blessings
chaparrito
Member
kids these days I swear why when I was a kid we oh never mind
Arik, my friend, if you can drink heavily then choose to not for extended periods with no ill effects on your personality, my hat is off to you
(no sarcasm)I appreciate your awareness of the condition. And you are correct in your assessment of the problem when it comes to the digestion of alcohol.
The AMA, VA, and virtually every other medical study in modern time will show that The physiological differences among the alcoholic and non-alcoholic "heavy drinker" are well documented. Among the alcoholic, body chemistry and enzyme production (which convert the alcohol once ingested) are measurably different and progressive with continued exposure. Otherwise, everyone that drinks would become addicted. That IS the case with opiates, regular heroin use will result in addiction.
As for the solution, Karl Jung and William James (and many other professionals) both provide extensive research and patient studies showing cures that were not credited to anything other than a "phenomenal experience", particularly among those who were considered medically hopeless.
The great difference between "church" and "spirituality" is also well recognized over many many ages.
Mae West was known to have said "Cocaine isn't addictive, I use it every day and I'm not addicted."
Respectfully, and in friendship,
Jim
carpriver
US Veteran
We all complain about the youth of today, my grandfather complained about my dad and his drinking, my dad complained about me my driving, smoking and running around with with red headed girls. But I had chores to do, if I didn't do them I lost privileges. If I talked back to him or my mother there was hell to pay, if I backed talked my grandfather or grandmother there was hell to pay. I had everything I needed to grow up, food, shelter, clothes, shoes and a bike. My first car was a beater I paid for from working after school and weekends. I made my mistakes used poor judgement by I was taught to take responsibility for my behavior.
I complained about my sons, there music, the behavior, the back talk, they had there share of corrections of attitudes, and forced to responsibility. Our oldest son drove my truck to a Boy Scout meeting and was instructed to come straight home with know side trips. He made a side trip, and did $1200 damage to my truck. He spend his summer working to pay for the damage. My mother thought I was a *** for taking the kids money. I said he would learn anything if he didn't have to take responsibility. My son is a former Marine, a good father and hard working truck driver. and he know I love him. Kids need to to have good judgement by have bad judgement; falling down and getting back up. scraping some knees and getting slapped some times.
I complained about my sons, there music, the behavior, the back talk, they had there share of corrections of attitudes, and forced to responsibility. Our oldest son drove my truck to a Boy Scout meeting and was instructed to come straight home with know side trips. He made a side trip, and did $1200 damage to my truck. He spend his summer working to pay for the damage. My mother thought I was a *** for taking the kids money. I said he would learn anything if he didn't have to take responsibility. My son is a former Marine, a good father and hard working truck driver. and he know I love him. Kids need to to have good judgement by have bad judgement; falling down and getting back up. scraping some knees and getting slapped some times.
HOUSTON RICK
Member
It is hard to be responsible if you never had to wipe your own rear end.
BigBill
Absent Comrade
I lost buddy's to drugs. This was the late 60's/ early 70's fast cars, fast women, drugs, booze. We also fished a lot.
One group of us were gear heads (me)
One group of us drank (not me)
One group of us used drugs (not me)
Each group was 1/3 of us. The druggies Od on H. Too bad we lost some good kids. They just took the wrong path. This was the time of LSD TOO.
We hung around together we grew up together. But we separated when doing our own thing.
One group of us were gear heads (me)
One group of us drank (not me)
One group of us used drugs (not me)
Each group was 1/3 of us. The druggies Od on H. Too bad we lost some good kids. They just took the wrong path. This was the time of LSD TOO.
We hung around together we grew up together. But we separated when doing our own thing.
Last edited:
I'll bet you only did it once.
Nothing wrong with today's youth that becoming taxpayers won't cure.
ChattanoogaPhil
Member
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2009
- Messages
- 14,601
- Reaction score
- 20,622
Kids of today.... They just don't know how hard us older generations worked to accumulate $20 trillion in debt and a $100+ trillion in unfunded mandates to heap on the backs of our children and grandchildren while we suckle on the government nipple of SS and all the rest because we are owed!
And it hasn't been easy to let in 20 million third word illegals to take their summer, entry level and manual labor jobs. And that's not to mention the tireless efforts over the past decades to ship jobs overseas.
Kids of today... they don't appreciate nuthin'!
Look around fellers... I'm pretty sure the youth of today will do better than we have... they won't have the luxury of being as irresponsible.
And it hasn't been easy to let in 20 million third word illegals to take their summer, entry level and manual labor jobs. And that's not to mention the tireless efforts over the past decades to ship jobs overseas.
Kids of today... they don't appreciate nuthin'!
Look around fellers... I'm pretty sure the youth of today will do better than we have... they won't have the luxury of being as irresponsible.
It all really comes down to humans being human.
