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In a blow to smug teetotalers everywhere, men who enjoy one or two hard drinks a day three to four times a week were found to have a 32 percent lower risk of stroke than guys who don't drink at all, according to a new study. And in a bow to the smug French and to Francophiles everywhere, the same report also found that men who drink one or more glasses of red wine a day had a staggering 46 percent lower-than-average risk for stroke, said the study's lead author, Kenneth Mukamal, a Harvard Medical School professor and an internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. But the most sobering, albeit unsurprising, results of Mukamal's research was that big boozers - men who knock back three or more hard drinks a day - are nearly 45 percent more likely to stroke out than men who abstained entirely. ``We found that on average, increasing alcohol consumption was linked to a higher risk of stroke,'' said Mukamal, whose team tracked more than 38,000 men, ages 40 to 75, over 14 years. But Mukamal said he was surprised to learn that lower levels of alcohol consumption, per se, did not necessarily correspond to a lower incidence of stroke. ``There's been a bit of an assumption that moderate drinking of any type would be associated with lower rate of stroke, the same way it's been linked to a lower risk for heart attacks,'' Mukamal said. On the contrary, he said that for moderate drinkers, the pattern of their drinking mattered more than how much they drank. Specifically, Mukamal discovered that only those who drank, say, every other day showed a lower rate for strokes. That jibes with Mukamal's previous findings that showed moderate but sporadic drinkers were also less likely to develop diabetes and coronary heart disease. ``What we can say, at least for men,'' Mukamal said, ``is that one or two drinks every other day seems to be the way to go in terms of cardiovascular health.'' Another surprising find, Mukamal added, was the seemingly salubrious effect of red wine. ``There's been this wives' tale that red wine offers specific protection against heart disease,'' said Mukamal, referring to the comparatively lower rate of heart disease among the fatty-food-eating, cigarette-smoking, red-wine-swilling French. ``It's called the French Paradox,'' Mukamal said, diplomatically. But he said, to date, no studies had shown red wine to be good for the heart - none, that is, until this one, which appears in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Then again, few men in Mukamal's study drank red wine on a daily basis, so he was unsure how to interpret his results. ``It leaves us in a quandary,'' Mukamal said. ``Is it the red wine, or is this just a fluke?'' He added: ``It's important that good studies of stroke in the future look at various beverage types as risk factors.'' |