by Ronna Benjamin

Mike and I watched the swirling snows of Nemo that Friday afternoon, curled up on the couch in front of a roaring fire. Carole King radio played on Pandora over the stereo. We each had a glass of tequila splashed with Cointreau, in which floated a few wedges of three-week-old lime. Ahhh, the benefits of an empty nest! It was a fine afternoon for a storm.

We relaxed as we soaked up the warmth of the fire and the liquor.  And then…I couldn’t breathe.  I began to blow my nose.  My throat was on fire, and I began to sneeze. I wanted to amputate my head.

Not knowing where to turn to ease my misery, I grabbed my laptop so I could let the world know how miserable I was, and my spirits were lifted when I saw an email from my daughter in Abu Dhabi.  The subject of her email was: “Check out this article…you guys are right…duh.”

I perked right up.  Screw the cold!  My kid thought we were “right”!  And she was reading the LA Times!

I immediately clicked through to the link in her email.  It was to an article that had appeared on February 6, 2013 in the LA Times Health section,  The article was about incompatible drinking and divorce, and sure enough, it confirmed we were right.

The LA Times article focused on a Norwegian study of 19,977 married couples (which, of course, begged the question, “couldn’t they have gotten 23 more?”) that proved that spouses who consumed roughly the same amount of alcohol (“compatible” drinkers) were less likely to divorce than pairs where one partner was a heavy drinker and the other was not. (Interestingly, the study indicated it was worse if the woman was the drinker and the man was not.)

I asked Mike to freshen our drinks in celebration, because we were so very ahead of the (LA) times; we have been talking about this “compatible drinking” theory with family and friends for decades.  Many moons ago, without spending a dime on research (unless you factor in the cost of the alcohol) my brilliant husband came up with the Law of Equivalent Drinking, or as we call it, LED (not to be confused with Light Emitting Diode).  We could have saved them a lot of money if they had just asked us.

LED, or the Law of Equivalent Drinking, as Mike explained it one night over a round of martinis with friends, provides that everyone–married or not- gets along best with people who drink roughly the same amount. Having legal backgrounds, we called it a law and not a theory.  Besides, TED would be taken soon enough–though ironically, this indeed has proved to be an Idea Worth Spreading.   We toasted to shedding the light on LED the night of Mike’s epiphany, and have done so with friends many times since.

The fact is, we tend to gravitate toward, and get along best with, people who drink like we do–and we know others do too. Mike enjoys the company of men who can appreciate a fine scotch.  We like to share a bottle of wine with dinner.  We like to see the excitement in our friends’ faces when we bring over an oversized glass container of fruit-infused vodka.  We like to start our Saturday night out with a martini.  It’s ok if it’s dirty, but if you pass altogether, it changes the mood.

Like any law, LED has its exceptions.  I have a few wonderful girlfriends that are truly special to me- even though they order a diet coke instead of a glass of wine at dinner.  I get that some people do not like to drink.  I get that some people cannot have a drink and of course I respect that.   But on the whole, I’m just sayin’….we spend an awful lot of time with people who drink like we do.

Mike may not bring me a box of chocolates this Valentine’s Day (though if he does, it should be dark chocolate with sea salt.)  He probably won’t bring me a dozen roses either.  But I do know for sure that we will share a toast over a nice bottle of Cabernet this Valentine’s Day. And there is no doubt in my mind, that because of LED, we will finish that bottle.

*This essay was originally published on BA50.com

Ronna Benjamin is the Managing Editor of BetterAfter50.com. About the time Ronna  turned 50, she had an epiphany.  After 28 years of practicing law, she realized she didn’t want to be a real estate attorney, and jumped into the world of writing.  She never looked back.  Ronna writes humorously about the things BA50’s are concerned about:  adult children, aging parents, illness, anxiety and insomnia, to name a few.  She is a native Bostonian and loves to spend time with her wonderful husband and three adult children.  She also loves to cook, sail, ski, run and bike.

For those of you who like coming up with names, here’s your chance to give one to a wine grape. Or two. And today, August 6, is the last day to submit your proposal.

Scientists at Cornell University have asked the public for names for two new grape varieties that will be released from their breeding program in 2013, according to an article on Cornell’s Chronicle Online. Grape breeder Bruce Reisch, who is accepting name submissions at bruce.reisch@cornell.edu, came up with the two new varieties—”a cold-hardy white wine grape and an innovative organic dark red.”

The scientists are looking for names that are unique (a potential challenge with some 7,000 other grape varieties), marketable, reasonably easy to pronounce and conjure positive connotations, said Reisch. Currently, the new varieties’ names are NY76.0844.24 and NY95.0301.01. Shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with something a bit more inspiring.

Cornell, with a host of new grape varieties in development, has been breeding grapes since 1888. It’s not a quick process, though, and can take 30 to 40 years for a new variety to be released, and several more before the grapes appear in commercially available wine.

Asking the public to participate and creating a social media campaign are Reisch’s effort to create some buzz about the new varieties, according to the Chronicle Online piece. “There are so many different flavors. Why shouldn’t people get excited about new varieties?,” said Reisch. “They keep things interesting for the consumer and are often better for growers.”

The winning names will be announced at the Viticulture 2013 conference in February in Rochester, NY.

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Decades before Miley Cyrus revealed to college-age women everywhere that the hookah, or water pipe, is the latest must-have accessory, I found one prominently placed in my childhood home. I was 15 and had just returned from a summer at sleepaway camp. In my absence, my parents had traveled to Turkey where they purchased said hookah and displayed it proudly in our home’s lower level, not far from the billiard table. I suppose they thought it was a cool visual—I honestly don’t believe it was ever used for anything other than viewing.

Fast forward 30 years, and now it’s me, my husband and our children walking the streets of Istanbul. Hookahs are sold and smoked everywhere—as a matter of fact it’s not a strange sight to see people of all ages smoking the tobacco (much of it is flavored–pineapple? vanilla anyone?) from a hookah while playing chess in outdoor cafes.

It never occurred to me to smoke from a hookah, and I never imagined my kids would want to–or even have the opportunity. But obviously, I wasn’t keeping up with the times. According to new research from the Miriam Hospital’s Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, almost one quarter of college women try smoking tobacco from a hookah for the first time during their freshman year. Did I mention my daughter just finished her first year of college?

The study, which was published online by the Psychology of Addictive Behaviors journal, revealed a potential link between hookah smoking and alcohol and marijuana use. An article from Science Daily reported that “researchers found the more alcohol women consumed, the more likely they were to experiment with hookah smoking, while women who used marijuana engaged in hookah smoking more frequently than their peers.”

The problem is that many college students believe mistakenly that smoking from a hookah is safer than cigarettes. Hookahs, however, have been linked to lung cancer and other diseases similar to those brought on by cigarette smoking.

“The popularity and social nature of hookah smoking, combined with the fact that college freshmen are more likely to experiment with risky behavior, could set the stage for a potential public health issue, given what we know about the health risks of hookah smoking,” said lead author Robyn L. Fielder, M.S., a research intern at The Miriam Hospital’s Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, in the article on Science Daily. Fielder says the findings corroborate prior research showing strong correlations between hookah and other substance use, but their research is the first to show that alcohol and marijuana use are prospectively related to hookah initiation.

The study, which was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), consisted of a survey of 483 first-year female college students and asked about their hookah use before college, followed by 12 monthly online surveys about their experience with hookah smoking. Of the 343 participants who did not report precollege hookah use, 79 students (or 23 percent) tried smoking a hookah during their freshman year.

As a parent, the concern is naturally that your kid is going to try this or that because that’s what other kids are trying. Hookah smoking seems a lot more enticing, I imagine, to many students who see cigarettes as outdated–and practically verboten in every public place anyway. But if they do a little research, they’ll learn that hookah smoking is not exactly a new phenomenon and originated in ancient Persia and India.

I have not asked my daughter yet if she’s come across any hookah-smoking parties at school. But with this new research, I’m inclined to ask. I’m not sure I’ll bring her to my parents’ house anytime soon, however, for fear that she’ll see their imported hookah and ask if she can bring it back to school for her sophomore year.

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When I was pregnant with each of my three children, I did not drink any alcohol during my first trimester. The first twelve weeks of the baby’s development were the most crucial I learned, and I wasn’t going to jeopardize that. But my doctor told me it was okay to drink a small amount of wine thereafter, so I gingerly sipped an occasional glass of wine without worry. I know that many people refuse to take even a sip of alcohol during those nine long months. But that wasn’t me. And it wasn’t one of the essayists in our forthcoming anthology, Drinking Diaries: Women Serve Their Stories Straight Up (Seal Press, Sept 2012), who wrote how her British obstetrician recognized the all-or-nothing American attitude and was quite comfortable with her patients drinking every once in a while.

Now, the pregnant women of the world who’d like to have a guilt-free, occasional glass of wine can perhaps do so (emphasis on perhaps). The results of a series of research studies from Denmark, published in the BJOG Journal, suggest that “low to moderate weekly drinking in early pregnancy  had no significant effect on neurodevelopment of children up to five years, nor did binge drinking.”

The study focused on children’s intelligence and found no differences in test performance between the children whose mothers consumed up to 8 drinks a week during pregnancy, compared to children whose mothers did not drink any alcohol. There was, however, one result that surfaced associating a lower attention span in five year old children whose mother drank more than 9 drinks per week. These children were also found to be at a risk nearly five times higher of having a low IQ compared to children of nondrinkers.

The research was drawn from 1,628 Danish women and their children–almost a third of all Danish women who were pregnant during the span of years from 1997 to 2003. The average age of the women was 31; fifty percent were first-time mothers; 12 percent were single; and 31 percent said they smoked during their pregnancy. In all of the studies, the researchers controlled for a variety of factors that may potentially affect a child’s brain development, such as maternal intelligence and smoking.

An important point to note–and highlighted in the journal article–is that a drink in these studies is defined by the the Danish National Board of Health and is equal to 12 grams of pure alcohol. The amount of alcohol in a drink can vary greatly from country to country, however, and in the United States there are 14 grams of pure alcohol in a standard drink. This is the equivalent of a 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine, or a 1.5 ounce shot of hard liquor, according to Rethinking Drinking, a website covering alcohol and health.

In a statement, the study’s authors said, “Our findings show that low to moderate drinking is not associated with adverse effects on the children aged 5. However, despite these findings, additional large scale studies should be undertaken to further investigate the possible effects.”

Though some women may feel relieved to learn about the latest study results, it is unlikely the new information will quell the controversy surrounding drinking during pregnancy, as many doctors continue to warn against potential disorders that the study may not have considered. “I would still caution women about drinking during their pregnancies,” Dr. Jennifer Wu, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told HealthDay. “There may be subtle neurobehavioral changes that were not picked up in the study.”

“Although it’s still best for pregnant women to avoid alcohol, these results suggest that small amounts may not be a serious concern,” said HealthDay. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still urge women not to drink at any time while pregnant, says Dr. Jacquelyn Betrand, who represents the CDC and served as co-author of three of the studies: “This study doesn’t change our recommendation.”

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My 11-year-old son watches a ton of sports on television. Weekday evenings (after his homework is done, of course) and weekend afternoons are often spent surfing from basketball to baseball and back again. If there’s a tennis match or horse racing on, he may watch that too. With all the game and tournament coverage, however, come a constant stream of commercials—a great number of which are for the likes of an ice cold Bud, Michelob, or Coors Light.

So do watching, singing along with and remembering these frequent beer and booze advertisements mean he is more likely to drink alcohol as an adolescent? Apparently, yes, that’s a distinct possibility, according to a new study reported in Science Daily.

In the study, conducted at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, researchers questioned more than 2,500 young people ranging from 15 to 20 years old about their exposure to alcohol, if they had a favorite alcohol ad, and if they owned alcohol-branded merchandise, among other behaviors.

After being shown 20 images from the most popular TV ads for alcohol, with the brand names removed, the participants were then asked if they remembered the ads, liked the ads and knew about the products being advertised.

The results showed that 59 percent of underage kids drank alcohol. Of those who drank, 49 percent had engaged in binge drinking (had more than six drinks in a row) at least once the previous year. Familiarity with TV alcohol advertising was much higher among the drinkers than nondrinkers, and having alcohol-branded merchandise or having a favorite alcohol ad was linked to more hazardous drinking.

“Underage drinking remains an important health risk in the U.S.,” said lead author Susanne E. Tanski, MD, MPH, FAAP, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. “In this study, we have shown a link between recognition of nationally televised alcohol advertisements and underage drinking initiation and heavier use patterns.”

I have to admit, I’ve never paid much attention to the product when my son calls me over to watch his favorite commercial of-the-moment. It’s usually the witty tune or humor that he’s urging me to notice. But after learning about this study and its results, I may encourage him to take a bathroom break or go grab a snack when the game on the screen is interrupted for a commercial break.

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We all have all our moments/hours/days (years?) of feeling angry. Recently, I’ve made an effort to raise my irritation threshold, and have worked hard to not let a hard day or stressful event surrounding work, family, dogs, etc.–be an excuse for pouring myself a glass of wine. Sometimes it works, and I may take a walk to clear my head or venture to a quiet corner, close my eyes and meditate for 15 minutes or until the anger passes. But on the odd occasion, I’ll succumb to the booze instead, which after only a few sips has a way of taking the edge off ever so gently, burying the anger for a short period of time.

Research has proven a strong association between anger and drinking, and now, a recent study conducted by psychologists at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, shows that anger and alcohol mix a little too easily for many women.

During the study, a group of 30 women were split into two groups. Researchers purposely irritated one of the groups by asking them to complete impossible puzzles while mocking them for their incompetence. Afterward, the women were asked to sample different kinds of ginger ale and beer in what they thought was an unrelated taste test. The results? The women who’d been angered drank nearly twice as much beer than their unruffled counterparts. Hmmmm. Wouldn’t you?

“Women are less likely than men to express their anger assertively, and suppressing that irritation results in built-up tension,” explains study author Nora Noel, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina. “Many women (and men) view alcohol as a way to help relieve that tension.” The problem is that turning to alcohol instead of finding healthy ways to express yourself doesn’t end well for anyone.

So what to do about it? Identifying that you have a tendency to drink when you’re pissed off is the first step, according to Dr. Noel. The next step is learning healthier ways to control your anger—or release it—to help curb a desire to turn to liquid ways of coping.

While meditation has been helpful for me, other ways to stave off the anger without reaching for the bottle are exercise, writing, and talking to a friend. “Expressing anger assertively means speaking up for yourself and letting others know when you’re uncomfortable,” says Dr. Noel. Venting to a friend is a proven way to help lower your levels of anger-fueled tension, she says.

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The news is good for those of us who enjoy a glass of wine, beer or a mixed drink a day. A new study of more than 80,000 women revealed that low to moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a 17% to 21% reduction in risk of stroke.

The new findings were published last week in Stroke, the online journal of the American Heart Association. For the study, researchers looked at data on nearly 84,000 women who were part of the Nurse’s Healthy Study, in which they had to provide information on their daily diets, lifestyle habits, and how much they drank. All of the women had no evidence of cancer and heart disease when the study started, and were enrolled in the study for 26 years.

Scientists have been questioning how alcohol affects the risk of stroke, given that moderate drinking appears to lower the risk of heart disease. It probably does that by boosting the production of HDL, the good cholesterol, and reducing the risk of blood clots.

During the study, scientists found 2,171 incidents of strokes, including ischemic strokes (when blood flow to the brain is obstructed), hemorrhagic strokes (where a brain blood vessel bursts), and strokes of unknown origin. They also found almost 30 percent of women reported that they never drank alcohol, 35 percent reported drank very little, 37 percent drank moderately, and only 11 percent of women reported drinking more than the equivalent of one mixed drink per day on average.

Women who drank low to moderate amounts of alcohol–from less than 1/2 a glass of wine per day to 1.5 glasses of wine, one serving of a mixed drink, or one beer –had a lower stroke risk than women who never drank. But heavy drinkers were no less likely to suffer a stroke.

Because there were so few heavy drinkers, this study doesn’t give a reliable picture of risk for women who drink heavily. But earlier studies have found that heavier drinking is linked to more strokes.

“At higher levels, [alcohol] can increase blood pressure,” Monik Jimenez, the epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who led the study told NPR. Drinking a lot also can increase the risk of an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation, which boosts the risk of stroke.

These results, while positive, are not an invitation to park yourself at the bar. In fact, Jimenez says, women who don’t drink can feel perfectly comfortable with that choice, because their risk of stroke is still relatively low. “We certainly don’t want to advocate initiation of alcohol consumption for those who are non-drinkers.”

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There is an answer to this question, but you’ll have to read on to find the answer (don’t cheat)…

Needless to say, the glass wine bottle reigns supreme. There has, however, been an increase in the types of containers storing wine in recent years. And it keeps on evolving.

For a long time, boxed wine has been looked down upon. But the quality of the wine has recently risen. Eric Asimov of the NYT explains the reasons in his piece, ”Reconsidering Boxed Wine.” Greater acceptance of the boxed wine notion is also good news if you’re counting carbon footprints–according to the Journal of Wine Research, shipping boxed wine produces half as many gas emissions as transporting heavier glass bottles.

Along with boxes, came the can. In a recent article on nytimes.com, “Cans of Wine Join the Boxed Set,” Bonnie Tsui provides great information on some of the newer, and finer, wines–drinkable not from a Bordeaux or Burgundy-shaped bottle, but rather from a specially-lined aluminum can.

Wine in a can isn’t entirely new, Tsui points out, and was “first sold by Barokes Wines, an Australian winemaker that invented a patented process called Vinsafe, which lines the aluminum to prevent any reaction that would impart flavors to the wine or degrade the container. The techniques are similar to what some craft brewers have been using, but wine’s high acidity and alcohol levels require a thicker lining.”

I wasn’t surprised to learn that Francis Ford Coppola was the first American winemaker to sell wine in a can–small, pink ones housing Sofia Blanc de Blancs, named for his daughter.

Wines on tap at Colicchio & Sons

I was surprised, however, when I ate recently at the latest of chef Tom Colicchio’s New York restaurants, Colicchio & Sons. The bar had an extensive selection of craft beers, as well as five “eco-friendly” wines…on tap. That’s right. On tap.

I’ve since learned that there are several advantages for serving wine on tap:

-Better for the environment. While bottles are recycled, wine served on tap is stored in environmentally friendly, air tight mini tanks that are reused.

-Cost-effective. Producers aren’t adding on the cost of the bottle, the cork, the carton and the transportation it comes in, so the restaurant owner pays less and so does the consumer.

-Freshness. Wine left over in a bottle used to pour wines by the glass is often discarded as it doesn’t last for more than a couple of days at most. Wine served on tap always tastes fresh, lasting for up to 60 days.

So I guess that’s what’s next…

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It will come as no surprise that drinking lots of alcohol often goes hand-in-hand with bad decision making. But up until now, scientists had yet to come up with a direct cause and effect relationship regarding alcohol and unprotected sex.

In the January issue of the journal Addiction, a new study reports that researchers in Canada conducted 12 experiments to test the theory. The results–yes, rather obvious–confirmed that drinking alcohol affects decision-making, and the more alcohol one drinks, the more impaired the decision making. As the results show, for every 0.1mg/mL increase in blood alcohol level, study participants were 5 percent more likely to engage in unsafe sex.

While the findings may not seem overly newsworthy, they do confirm the direct connection between alcohol and sexually transmitted diseases. The study’s conclusion states that  ”alcohol use is an independent risk factor for intentions to engage in unprotected sex, and as risky sex intentions have been shown to be linked to actual risk behavior, the role of alcohol consumption in the transmission of HIV and other STDs may be of public health importance.”

“Drinking has a causal effect on the likelihood to engage in unsafe sex, and thus should be included as a major factor in preventive efforts for HIV,” said principal investigator Juergen Rehm of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, in a statement. “This result also helps explain why people at risk often show this behavior despite better knowledge: alcohol is influencing their decision processes.”

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In less than a week, my daughter will be off to college. Sitting on a beach chair a few weeks ago, her eyes glanced at her computer screen under the glare of the sun and the ocean only steps away. I assumed she was watching some incredibly gripping movie from which she couldn’t tear herself away. But when I inquired, she rolled her eyes and explained that she was watching an alcohol awareness video—a mandatory assignment for her university.

Despite the efforts made by educational institutions, new psychological research suggests that the pitfalls from all those jello shots and games of beer pong aren’t bad enough to make students stop drinking.

On the USA Today website, an article, “College Drinking is Liberating, and a Good Excuse,” reports on why the efforts to raise awareness are not working.

“We thought if we could demonstrate to students that their performance deteriorated under alcohol, they would be convinced that their alcohol consumption has put them at risk,” says psychologis E. Scott Geller, director of the Center for Applied Behavior Systems at Virginia Tech. But “knowing that one is impaired, physically and even emotionally, did not seem to reduce alcohol consumption.”

Geller, who’s been studying alcohol awareness since the mid-1980s, states clearly that the alcohol education hasn’t worked. “We have shown in several studies that their intentions influence their behavior. If they intend to get drunk, it’s difficult to stop that.”

Going for the effects is what it’s all about. One student, Brandie Pugh, a senior at Ohio University, says in the article: “I think everybody’s aim is to get drunk on the weekend. It’s not about the taste of the alcohol. It’s about the effects of it. It’s about the lowered inhibitions.”

In another study, researcher Laina Bay-Cheng, an associate professor of social work at the University at Buffalo-State University of New York, found that when teenagers drink, they think they can use their intoxicated state as an excuse for their actions. Students in her focus groups–there were 97 teens ranging in age from 14 to 17–described alcohol as emboldening and said it offers “liquid courage,” a phrase other researchers also have cited. Colleges, she says, need to “acknowledge and reckon with” alcohol’s appeal.

According to Bay Cheng, another result of drinking is that it can be an excuse for young women to “act out being sexually assertive, carefree, liberated,” she explains. ”If you have sex, you’re a slut, and if you don’t, you’re a prude — but drinking allows you to do both. You can go out, get drunk, have sex and the next day say, ‘I’m still a good girl.’”

In the USA Today article, Pugh goes on to say that she has seen this scenario play out on her campus repeatedly: “‘I was drunk so I hooked up with that guy.’ ‘I was drunk so I missed my class this morning.’ ‘I was drunk so I got in a fight.’ If it’s something they’re not proud of, it gives them an excuse.”

After next Wednesday, I’ll hope from afar that my daughter doesn’t ever feel that she needs to use alcohol as an excuse for anything.

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A new study published in the June 24 edition of The Journal of the National Cancer Institute revealed that lifestyle changes, such as drinking less alcohol, weight loss, and increased amounts of exercise, could lead to a considerable reduction in breast cancer cases across an entire population, according to a new model that estimates the influence of these variable risk factors.

Often times, breast cancer risk is based on elements that can’t be modified, such as family history. And until now, there have been no models based on ways women can impact their breast cancer risk through lifestyle adjustments.

The findings provide “extremely important information relevant to counseling women on how much risk reduction they can expect by changing behaviors, and also highlights the basic public health concept that small changes in individual risk can translate into a meaningful reduction in disease in a large population,” wrote Dr. Kathy J. Helzlsouer, of Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, a journal news release.

Using data from an Italian study that included more than 5,000 women, the U.S. National Cancer Institute researchers created the model that included three modifiable risk factors (alcohol consumption, physical activity and body mass index) and five risk factors that are difficult or impossible to modify (family history, education, job activity, reproductive characteristics, and biopsy history).

Benchmarks for some lifestyle factors included getting at least 2 hours of exercise a week (for women 30-39) and having a body mass index (BMI) under 25 (in women 50 and older).

The  authors of the study noted that the predicted changes in lifestyle to achieve significant  changes — such as former and current drinkers becoming non-drinkers — might be overly optimistic.

But the findings, say researchers, may help in designing programs meant to encourage women to make lifestyle changes. For example, a 1.6 percent absolute risk reduction in a general population of one million women amounts to 16,000 fewer cases of cancer.

For information about breast cancer risk, go to the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

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Did you know that nearly a third of what we drink is black market? That women abstain more than men? And that Russians are the world’s most dangerous drinkers?

These are just a few of the results from the recently published report on global alcohol consumption from the World Health Organization. The report, released in February, delves into a wide variety of areas concerning alcohol, including per capita consumption, trends, patterns, health, and societal effects.

In a piece titled, “Does the World Have a Drinking Problem?” Daily Beast writer David Sessions captures some of the more “stunning” statistics from the study. In a nutshell, Sessions shares the following from the WHO report:

1. Nearly half of us have never had a drink.
2. We love beer and liquor, but wine not so much.
3. Europeans are earth’s bigger drinkers.
4. Ireland is the world’s drunkest country.
5. Americans are drinking less than Europeans, but dying more often from it.
6. Russians are the world’s most hazardous drinkers.
7. We’re not drinking any more or less than we used to.
8. Our kids are drinking a lot more.
9. More of us are dying from alcohol than from AIDS.
10. Women are abstaining more than men.
11. Men are at highest risk for alcohol-related death.
12. Nearly a third of what we drink is black market.

If you’d like to dig deeper, there’s some fascinating stuff in the report. And now that the results above have surfaced, as well as those concerning the major disease and injury categories causally related to alcohol, and socioeconomic differences and drinking, it’ll be interesting to see what, actually, the WHO will do with this info.

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According to an article on the BBC website, a recent study by the NHS (England’s National Health Service) reported that middle class professionals frequently drink more alcohol than people belonging to a low income group.

The statistical data collected by the NHS showed that nearly 1 in 3 men and 1 in 6 women, who are earning above £35,000 annually (equal to approximately $54,000), consume alcohol nearly every day.

People belonging to a high income group drink only on a few occasions in a week but they end up gulping down alcohol whenever they drink, consuming almost six to eight units of alcohol at a time.

However, people earning a low income are less likely to consume alcohol on a daily basis and therefore, they drink mostly on weekends.

According to Tim Straughan, chief executive of the NHS Information Centre, “The figures show the extent to which people from all backgrounds drink alcohol both frequently and in quantities that could be harmful to their health.”

In addition, Straughan said, “They show that a greater percentage in the richest households drink [more] frequently than those in the poorest.”

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A new gene variant that may protect against alcoholism was recently discovered at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

The results of the study report that 10 to 20 percent of the population carries a gene variant (called CYP2E1) that makes them get drunk more easily–and therefore makes them less susceptible to alcoholism.

According to an article in USA Today, Dr. Kirk Wilhelmsen, the study’s lead author, explained that the finding, “potentially changes the paradigm about how we think about how alcohol affects the brain.” While the finding doesn’t yet have any treatment application, he says, “my expectation is this is actually going to lead somewhere.”

Wilhelmsen and colleagues collected hundreds of pairs of siblings, all at college-age and all with at least one parent who was an alcoholic. The study participants were given a mixture of grain alcohol and soda that was equivalent to about three drinks that they drank at regular intervals. They were asked to answer questions describing how the alcohol made them feel: “I feel drunk, I don’t feel drunk; I feel sleepy, I don’t feel sleepy.”

The 10 to 20 percent of the population that carry the gene variant typically avoid drinking often or in large quantities because they can’t “hold their liquor.” As a result, they are less likely to become alcoholics in the long run. The new finding offers hope for a treatment of alcoholic if scientists can develop a way to modify the gene or copy its effects.

“We have found a gene that protects against alcoholism, and on top of that, has a very strong effect,” Wilhelmsen said in a statement. “But alcoholism is a very complex disease, and there are lots of complicated reasons why people drink. This may be just one of the reasons.”

The findings are published in the online version of the journal, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, and will appear in print in its January 2011 issue.

According to a new study directed by psychology graduate student Helle Larsen of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, the relationship between drinking alcohol and drinking in groups may be genetically linked. In other words, those who inherit a specific gene which affects the brain’s “reward system” are more likely to drink greater amounts of alcohol in the company of their party-loving peers.

As reported in an online article in Psychological Science, the study suggests that “Adults carrying at least one copy of a long version of the dopamine D4 receptor gene, dubbed DRD4, imbibed substantially more alcohol around a heavy-drinking peer than did others who lacked that gene variant.”

Larsen’s study is the first to offer evidence that a gene influences human alcohol use in social situations. “Carriers of the long gene may be more attuned to, and influenced by, another person’s heavy drinking than noncarriers are,” Larsen says.

An article in Science News, which sheds light on how the study was conducted, reported that: “Scientists have yet to decipher the precise brain effects of DRD4’s long form. Larsen hypothesizes that in the presence of heavy drinkers, the gene variant may increase dopamine activity in brain areas that amplify alcohol’s appeal as a rewarding social activity.”

Other attempts to substantiate findings of gene-environment interaction have yielded mixed resulsts, so Larsen agrees that other researchers will need to confirm these findings.

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