Moderate drinking can reduce your risk of getting diabetes

mary kulundu

July 28, 2017 11:07 AM

Could drinking alcohol really have a positive effect on your health?

A new research suggests that drinking alcohol three to four times a week could reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes as compared to not drinking alcohol at all.

The study was conducted on over 70,000 people and it set to determine how much and how often they drank.

The findings of the study revealed that drinking moderately – three to four times a week- reduced the woman’s risk of getting diabetes by 32 percent while for men it lowered their risk of getting diabetes by 27 percent as compared to people that drank less than one day a week.

"We can see it's a better effect to drink the alcohol in four portions rather than all at once," said lead researcher, Prof Janne Tolstrup from the National Institute of Public Health of the University of Southern Denmark.

It should be noted however that not all types of alcohol had the same effect.

Wine and beer were discovered to be more beneficial in decreasing the risk of getting diabetes.

Wine, red wine to be exact, contains polyphenols which play a role in managing blood sugar.

As for beer, it was discovered that those men having one to six beers in a week could lower their risk of getting diabetes by 21 percent as compared to men who drank less than one beer a week.

There was no such effect to women that drank beer but women that had a high intake in spirits significantly increased their risk of diabetes – there was no such effect in men that took spirits.

Head of research communications at Diabetes UK, Dr. Emily Burns, however cautioned people against overdrinking with the excuse that drinking reduces diabetes risk.

Men and women should not drink more than 14 units of alcohol a week which is equivalent to six pints of beer or 10 small glasses of wine over the course of three days or more.

The research also set out to discover the effect of alcohol on other medical conditions such as heart attacks and strokes and the findings revealed that drinking moderately a few times a week was linked to lowering the risk of these cardiovascular disorders.

Excessive consumption of alcohol however does increase the risk of developing diseases such as liver cirrhosis and pancreatitis.