The Good and the Ugly Part 2

Turning to the ugly, the September 1, 2017 edition of The Week reported that, according to a study, about 30 million people in our country are binge drinking at least once a week. Binge drinking was defined as drinking four or more drinks for women and five or more drinks for men. As you might know, alcohol is associated with dangerous driving behaviors, violence, and increased risk of heart attack, stroke, cancer and other, neurological problems. In fact, more recently, heavy drinking rose more sharply among women, blacks and seniors. This epidemiologist, author believed that increased drinking was likely the result of people feeling pessimistic about their economic chances. Another hypothesis was that the marketing of alcohol products has become more effective, especially to women and young people. It was stated that alcohol abuse was more widespread than that of opiate addiction. Another article highlighted “the fat, but fit” rationalization. This study, had more than one half million people from 10 European countries as subjects. They were placed into various groups. The first, were divided into the metabolically healthy and unhealthy based on markers such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Then these two groups were divided according to body mass index [BMI] classifying them as normal, overweight or obese. The findings, metabolically unhealthy subjects had the highest risk for heart disease. Second, the overweight or obese people, who were metabolically healthy, still had about a 28% more likelihood of developing heart disease than those with a healthy body weight. To be continued