Ever wondered why many teetotalers are boring? A lot of times they act grumpy and depressed, incapable of letting other people enjoy the things they gave up. Well, Spanish researchers looked into the connection between alcohol consumption and depression and guess what? According to their research alcohol (in moderate amounts) decreases your chances to get depressed. Especially red wine has a great effect on your state of mind. No wonder right? Georgians are drinking this stuff for 8.000 years and they’re still going strong. With the dark days coming up in the Northern Hemisphere usually more suicides occur. But if we all just share some wine with our loved ones, maybe we’re gonna be just fine.
Back to the research. 15 different universities, institutes and hospitals worked together on this one. They tested 5.505 people in the ‘depression risk group’ of 55 to 80 years old. None of them had a history with alcohol problems or depressions. Now they were devided in 4 groups. One that didn’t drink at all, one that drank at most 5 glasses a week, one that drank 5 to 10 glasses and one that drank up to 15. Well, we won’t bore you with too much LOTD-propaganda, but we’ll just show you the original table with the results.
As you see the more alcohol, the lower the chance on having a depression. To be honest this contradicts with previous research with larger amounts of alcohol. That’s why the researchers still say that ‘a moderate amount’ of alcohol makes you feel better about yourself. To read the full research paper including more statistics click here and draw your own conclusions. Ours is that abstinence is clearly unhealthy.
Micky Bumbar
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