Prevent Disease.com - Moderate Drinking May Cut Women's Risk of Diabetes



		Moderate Drinking May Cut Women's Risk of Diabetes NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol may help prevent healthy young women from developing diabetes, new research suggests. According to the report, women who consumed about a drink or two a day were 58 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes. The risk was 33 percent lower in women who had an average of one drink per day. The association between light and moderate drinking was most apparent with wine or beer, researchers report. Drinking more than two drinks a day of hard liquor doubled a woman's risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Even though light to moderate drinking seems to lower the risk of diabetes, lead author Dr. S. Goya Wannamethee and colleagues point out that "light to moderate alcohol intake has not been shown to be associated with reduced all-cause mortality in younger women." "Thus, there seems little justification to encourage those who do not drink regularly to do so for health benefits," they add. "The potential harmful effects of drinking on other aspects of health outcome need to be considered," the authors conclude. Type 2 diabetes, which usually strikes in adulthood, is marked by poorly controlled blood sugar, or glucose, and arises from the body's inability to properly use the hormone insulin -- the body's key blood-sugar regulator. The notion that light to moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes is biologically plausible, the authors assert in their report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Light to moderate drinking may somehow enhance a person's sensitivity to the effects of insulin, according to Wannamethee, who is with Royal Free and University College Medical School in London, and colleagues. Previous research has also demonstrated a similar relationship between light to moderate drinking and a lowered risk of type 2 diabetes. The findings are based on interviews conducted with more than 100,000 women who participated in the Nurses Health Study II, an ongoing study designed to evaluate the associations between lifestyle and nutritional factors and the occurrence of disease. Beginning in 1989, when the women were 25 to 42, the participants filled out questionnaires every other year for 10 years. Several of the questionnaires, including the one in 1989, included questions about alcohol consumption. SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine 2003;163:1329-1336. Reference Source 89 For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".