Dash For Power

Two recent studies point to how since ancient times fermented alcohol, even wine and beer, were boiled and therefore often safer to drink than the watering hole where the cattle may have been.

It would have been noted through many periods of stomach sicknesses that those who drank beer and wine survived, while those who had imbibed the fresh water supply available may have picked up microbes, cholera, other dangerous pathogens. The tavern may have been the safest watering hole in town. “It’s possible that people who drank fermented beverages tended to live longer and reproduce more, than did their teetotalling peers”, says Patrick McGovern, an archaeological chemist at the University of Pennsylvania, “which may partly explain why people have a proclivity to drink alcohol”. This by Michael Kesterton in the Globe and Mail. So much for the why.

The how to excess flows from that naturally, as shown in the next study reported by Sharon Kirby in CanWest News from scientists at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, with darker news about alcohol. We have all accepted the studies that report that a bottle of dark beer or glass of red wine is good for our heart and circulatory system. Which has us having heart healthy dinner parties where the wine, beers of all light colors and hard alcohol flows, and flows. These are not candidates to age well, if at all. Tim Stockwell, of the Centre for Addiction Research of British Columbia in Canada says, “moderate drinking is a sign of good health, not a cause of it”, citing a recent Australian study, and other.

Stockwell adds “Some studies have indicated the maximum benefit is half a drink a day for women, and one and a half a day for men”. People don’t hear that. [what they hear] is that glugging a bottle or two of red wine at a sitting is probably good for you. And that’s a huge propaganda coup for the people making this stuff”. Cirrhosis, irreversible destruction of liver cells that was once only seen in elderly is now found growing in those between 25 to 34. These risks increase for cancers to the larynx, pharynx, esophagus, liver, colon and rectum. For women it seems alcohol related cancers kick in at fairly moderate levels of consumption.

So party, but not so hardy, and with less volume of poisoning ethanol, the buzz in booze that could be sending you to pain and the beyond i so many ways too soon. Studies show that after two beers we are more agreeable to give a painful electric shock to anyone who annoys us. Who was that respected doctor in London who drank some evil potion and then turned into a terrible monster- well, apparently after two beers, every lout of us, each and every one, as Tiny Tim might have said. And then one of us would have taser’ed him.
So, be good, be wise, be aware.
Derek Dashwood

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Be 1 of The 3 Wise Men, Alcohol-Good to Bad, Be The Vibrant Woman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.