WASHINGTON - WOMEN who drink a couple of glasses of red wine, beer or spirits a day are better at keeping the pounds off than teetotal women, according to a study published on Monday.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston asked more than 19,000, normal-weight US women aged 39 or older how many alcoholic beverages they typically drank in a day, and then tracked the women for around 13 years.
The largest single group - 7,346 women or just over 38 per cent - said they didn't drink a drop, the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, a publication of the American Medical Association, shows. The second biggest group - 6,312 women or nearly a third of those surveyed - reported drinking the equivalent of around a third of a five-ounce glass of wine or a third of a 12-ounce beer. They did not explain how they managed to do so.
Twenty per cent of the women said they drank the equivalent of up to a glass of wine, a 12-ounce beer, or a single-shot drink made with 80-proof spirits, while six per cent said they had up to two drinks a day and three per cent had more than two. Over the 13-year follow-up period, the women who did not drink at all gained the most weight, and the women who had the equivalent of two drinks a day were the least likely to pack on pounds.
The best drink for keeping the pounds off was red wine, but all four types of tipple included in the study - red or white wine, beer and spirits - showed the same 'inverse association between alcohol intake and risk of becoming overweight or obese,' the study found.
The authors cautioned, however, against making recommendations on alcohol use as a tool against obesity, given the potential medical and psycho-social problems associated with drinking. – AFP
[SOURCE: http://www.straitstimes.com]
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