Official News page 8

REAL LIFE NEWS: HEAVY DRINKING MAKES YOU CLEVER, AND LIVE LONGER

by Hazed

Two stories that blow a big raspberry to those puritanical types that want to ban booze for being bad for the health came out while the Star was on its break.

First, we learn that drinking wine makes you brainier, and stopping drinking makes you dumber. This is the result of a study carried out by scientists in Scandinavia, where 5,033 Norwegians were studied over seven years. Their alcohol function and cognitive function were measured regularly, and at the end of the study the conclusion was that "moderate" wine tipplers showed better results for women. Other types of booze didn't seem to make any difference. However, stopping drinking altogether seemed to make the women in the study stupider.

This wasn't the first study to come to this conclusion, either. So next time someone frowns at you for swigging a glass of wine, just say "cheers" in the knowledge that you are brighter than they are.

Next, we have the cheering news that people who do not drink tend to die earlier than those who do. Moderate drinking (which for the purposes of this type of study is defined as one to three drinks per day, although in Britain the health fascists would consider that to be binge drinking) is associated with the lowest mortality rates. The effect is particularly marked when the drink in question is red wine, where moderate consumption is thought to improve heart health, circulation and sociability.

There's a lot more info about this study in this news report.

So good news for drinkers then! But not so fast, because yet another news story tells us that women who drink beer are at an increased risk of getting psoriasis, an auto-immune disease that causes scaly lesions, redness and inflammation of the skin. Oh dear. Better stick to the wine!

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