I have yet to read the report , I will be interested to see how the control for “affluent discipline”
When the original 60 minutes story about the benefits of exactly two glasses red wine per day I had two thoughts
How clever of Mike Wallace to finagle a trip to Paris for a story that could have been told almost anywhere.
Drinking exactly two glassses of red wine a day is probably a marker for (1) affluence (2) self-discipline - both being factors conducive to longer life.
Duh, Twitter!
For such a depressing topic (yes, again, alcohol is bad for you), this is a funny thread. I chuckled repeatedly.
You should add, Being willing and able to participate in a rigorous scientific study, to your list of confounding factors.
Interesting observation!
And the effect was relatively modest. As a rough rule of thumb for cancer deaths cigarette smoking is about 10 times worse for you than moderate alcohol consumption. Granted being a full on alcoholic (more than 7 drinks a day - uh oh!) increases your risk of cirrhosis - especially for women. And there are over 20K deaths yearly in the US from cirrhosis.
I know I like taking my health advice from whatever a former standup comedian who dropped out of a state school satellite campus because “it was a pointless endeavor” determines is relevant for his podcast’s ratings.
My dad is 95 and nearly died earlier this year after a fall. However, after a lengthy recovery, he’s driving again and recently took a plane trip to visit his 4 surviving younger siblings.
He was still in the habit of drinking a glass or two of wine or having a G&T (almost) daily until this year.
He avoided alcohol during his recovery but has resumed drinking a glass or two once a week.
So cut back when you hit 94 
Morley Safer did the finagling. 
He and Ed Bradley were the bon vivants.
But it would have been particularly clever of Mike Wallace given that he’s been dead for over ten years.
Segment was broadcast over 20 years ago.
Apologies for memory lapse on who did the segment.
No apologies needed.
I can’t remember what I had for lunch! 
Now you know why I drive my wife nuts …
Yes, I need to apologize for not going back to the original post instead of responding to a quote within a post.
If I may ask, is that how it has always been or are you finding it an increasing issue as you get older? I ask because now that I am 51 I am finding that even the occasional tasting can have some impacts for a couple of days. Not severe, but maintaining a Wall Street work life (and in your field I would imagine similar pressures and hours)- the effects on my sleep patterns have broader implications. And quantity does not seem to matter all that much- even two glasses of wine will have an impact.
As for living to 100, I am with you. And with what we spend on wine, I do not think living to 100 is a good financial idea 
Yup— and on top of that, liver disease and failure can also be entirely caused by, and at any rate significantly affected by, metabolic disfunction/disease (i.e., full on diabetes, insulin resistance, or anything on the spectrum of high blood sugar imbalance). Given the very high prevalence of metabolic disease throughout the world, and especially in the US, it can be very, very difficult for any epidemiology-based studies to disentangle specific causal relationships in large cohort studies. It can be done, but more often than not many studies are reported by scientists to have been poorly designed (and the results are often meaningless due to a host of confounding factors).
Fair enough - hard to believe people are dying from NASH (or whatever the new name is for it - I guess it is MASH!)
the key for me is to be sure to not drink 3 hours before sleeping. This helps a lot. It takes the liver about one hour to metabolize one serving of alcohol (and thus, blood sugar is elevated after that one hour). So if you have two glasses of wine with your meal say between 7 to 8pm, you really need to exercise a tiny bit between 10 and 11pm to get your blood sugar down before falling asleep. (Edit: per Sarah’s note below, high blood sugar is independent of alcohol consumption, but still, good to get it down before sleep) I just learned from a science lecture that melatonin quiets not only brain function to help us sleep, but also the pancreas (one of our organs that help regulate blood sugar). In other words if you fall asleep with high blood sugar, that condition can last for many hours through the night causing all sorts of short and long term health issues. The recommendation is for a short HIT one hour before and one hour after meals (but two hours for a meal with alcohol) (High Interval Training — get your heart rate up for at least one minute. Can be as easy as climbing up and down a staircase, or body weight squats for one minute. Obviously, do this off and on (90 second rest in between) several times and the health benefits continue to accrue.)
While what you are saying is generally good advice, alcohol in the form of dry wine or spirits doesn’t raise blood sugar for most people. In fact, it’s the opposite, with hypoglycemia being the concern. Even the American Diabetes Association acknowledges that light or moderate drinking can help with blood sugar control. Alcohol interferes with sleep, but not usually because of a gluscose spike, at least not in non-diabetics.
Edited to add: I was part of a study with metabolically healthy people wearing CGMs. For everyone in the study, including some alcohol with a high carb meal prevented a glucose spike. It was eye opening.
