Drink to Keep from Getting Fat?

There is one thing about having a drink after work, or with dinner, that nearly every health study in the world seems to miss:  a bit of alcohol in the system relieves stress.  Maybe that's why there's a benefit to having the occasional drink?

According to the NPR Health Blog, a report from the Women's Health Study at Harvard University states that their study of women over 39, who started at a "normal weight", and who had a drink several times a week, tended to put on less weight than those who did not.  (Note they didn't lose weight, but they didn't get obese.)

The researchers are not entirely sure what caused this effect, but suspected that women who drink a bit tend to eat less (consciously trading food calories for drink calories), or that alcohol is metabolized differently than other sugars.

These points may be true, but as most health benefit studies surrounding alcohol go -- red wine leads to fewer heart attacks, for example -- one key point keeps getting missed.  Alcohol is metabolically, as well as socially, relaxing.

Everyone eats more when they are stressed out.  Hell, my cats eat more when they are stressed out.  The benefits of lowering one's stress level are well-established.  Therefore, when you are relaxed, you eat leisurely, you stop to taste your food, and less is more satisfying.

Sure, there are fun biochemical things going on here, or even economical ones (those who can afford good red wine perhaps can afford healthy food), but a factor that needs to be looked at is the release of stress that goes along with that good Pinot Noir.

Someone at Harvard ought to crack open a cold one and see if there's something to it.