Saturday, December 28, 2013

Wine drinkers are happy, healthy, wealthy, wise

The apparent benefits of drinking wine may not be in the wine at all. People who opt for a glass of wine after work may already be smarter, happier and more well adjusted than their beer-drinking friends, researchers suggest. The findings indicate that people who choose wine over beer may have certain traits that explain the apparent health benefits of wine described in previous studies, according to researchers from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Their study of 363 men and 330 women aged 29 to 34 years in Denmark found that wine drinking in general was associated with higher parental education, socioeconomic status and IQ. Among both sexes, the difference in IQ scores between those who drank only beer and those who drank only wine were substantial. The average IQ of beer drinkers was 95.2 compared with 113.2 for wine drinkers, the investigators found. Wine drinkers also appeared to be more well adjusted. For instance, women who preferred wine tended to be less neurotic and more extroverted than their peers who preferred beer, while beer- drinking men tended to be more neurotic, the researchers said. Additionally, beer drinkers were more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, and smoke heavily. There was no association between beverage preference and body mass index (BMI), a measurement of weight and height. "Our results suggest that wine drinking is associated with optimal social, intellectual, and personality functioning, while beer drinking is associated with suboptimal characteristics," researchers write. Previous studies have shown that moderate wine drinkers are healthier than people who consume other alcoholic beverages or no alcohol at all, the authors note. Similarly, light to moderate wine drinking has been linked with a lower risk for several health problems, including stroke, upper digestive tract cancer, lung cancer and hip fracture, and to a lower rate of death, compared with abstaining or drinking beer or other forms of alcohol. The results are based on interviews with individuals, who were categorized in one of four groups according to their alcohol preferences over the past week: no beer or wine; beer drinkers; wine drinkers; and beer and wine drinkers. Study participants were asked about their drinking habits, diets, exercise, education, personality and other factors.

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