You could avoid a fatal heart attack with the help of just two and a half drinks of wine daily. This good news surely comes as a boon for the drinkers but it is true that drinking this amount of wine every day will "help you live longer compared to non-drinkers." The news definitely comes as a surprise after alcohol has been criticized for being bad for health.

A Major Study

A team of Danish scientists conducted the Copenhagen City Heart study, in which about 12,000 Danish men and women participated over a period of two decades. The results of this study were published in the European Heart Journal and it claimed that "people who drink in moderation can cut their risk of dying more than those who abstain." The study also revealed that those who did not drink or exercise had about 50% higher risk of heart disease than those who either drank, did exercise or did both.

The study also found that those who did not indulge in drinking were about a third more likely to suffer death from heart disease as compared to people who had up to two drinks daily. The study said, "People who drank at least one drink a week and were physically active had a 44 per cent to 50 per cent lower risk of IHD compared to slothful non-drinkers."

The Classification

The study classified subjects into the following categories:

1) Non-drinkers - who consumed less than one drink in a week
2) Moderate drinkers - who had between one to 14 drinks every week
3) Heavy drinkers - who drank 15 or more drinks in a week

A drink corresponded to a bottle of beer, a pub measure of spirits, or a glass of wine.

The Lowest Risk

The researchers concluded that the moderate drinkers were at the lowest risk of death from all causes, including those who rarely exercized. Nevertheless, drinkers or non-drinkers, people were at 23% lower risk of death from all causes if they were physically active.

The Supervisors

The study was supervized by Professor Morten Gronbaek, director of research at the National Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark in Copenhagen and Professor Berit Heitmann, director of research at the Institute of Preventive Medicine at Copenhagen University Hospitals. Speaking about the study, Prof Gronbaek said, "Our study shows that being both physically active and drinking a moderate amount of alcohol is important for lowering the risk of both fatal IHD and death from all causes."

We can't help but put in a word of our own here, which is that liver is the largest organ in the body and if it fails completely, it means death within four days, unless you get a liver transplant. The basic function of liver is to detoxify waste products and drugs so that the same can be eliminated from the body safely. As someone rightly said, "If the body were a country, the liver would be the manufacturing industry, the food industry, the waste disposal industry, and the petro-chemical industry." Regular consumption of more than 3-4 units of alcohol daily is likely to affect your liver with serious problems over time.

Therefore, go by this study and restrict your intake of alcohol to just two and a half drinks of wine daily and avoid heart attack too.

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