
Regular alcohol drinkers have lower risk of diabetes, according to a huge new study
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There's a new checkmark in the 'drinking isn't all bad for you' column.
According to a new study that looked at more than 70,000 Danish people, those who drink small to moderate amounts of alcohol on a frequent basis are less likely to develop diabetes than people who don't drink at all.
To be clear, these results shouldn't be seen as license or encouragement to drink freely as a health-promoting exercise.
But they do provide further evidence that, for some reason, people who drink moderately are less likely to suffer from certain illnesses, including some cardiovascular diseases and type-2 diabetes.
Regular drinking and diabetes
For the new study, researchers wanted to see how much alcohol consumption was associated with the lowest diabetes risk, and determine whether the type of alcohol or the frequency that people drank mattered.
Using data from the Danish Health Examination Survey, they looked at the drinking habits of 28,704 men and 41,847 women, and tracked whether those people developed diabetes within approximately five years. The researchers excluded anyone who already had diabetes, was pregnant at the start of the study, and didn't provide information on their alcohol consumption.
The results showed that the study participants least likely to develop diabetes drank 3-4 days a week. For men, those who drank 14 drinks per week had the lowest risk, as the chart on the left shows below. For women, those who drank nine drinks per week had the lowest risk, as the right-hand chart shows.
As the U-shaped risk curve shows, study participants who didn't drink at all se
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