Timing, ladies and gentlemen, please: Spreading out your drinking can make you healthier, experts say

Timing, ladies and gentlemen, please: Spreading out your drinking can make you healthier, experts say

IT’S not what you drink but the way you drink it that affects your health, scientists claim.

They have discovered that consuming two drinks a day for seven days is actually good for your heart, but 14 drinks over one weekend will damage it.

And binge drinkers put on three times more weight than moderate ones and double that of non-drinkers.

Dr John Cullen, of New York, who led the research team, said: “We still don’t understand why moderate alcohol consumption benefits cardiovascular health or how heavy drinking episodes hurt it.

"People have yet to be convinced of the dangers of binge drinking. We’re hoping this changes that.”

In the study published in the US journal Atherosclerosis, mice were put on typically high fat Western diets which can lead to blocked arteries, heart attacks and strokes.

They were then split into moderate and binge drinking groups.

Levels of “bad” cholesterol fatty deposits among the moderat e drinkers fell by 40% , while it rose by 20% among the binge drinking mice.

Dr Kenneth Mukamal, of Harvard Medical School, said: “This study backs up the emerging theories that frequent, limited drinking is beneficial to health.”

* Cutting drinking to just a sixth of a pint of beer or a quarter glass of wine a day could save 4,600 lives a year.

Government guidelines recommend three to four units a day for men and two to three for women.

But cutting it to a quarter of a unit could stop an annual three in 100 of alcohol-related deaths from conditions including heart disease, cancer, and cirrhosis.

Dr Peter Scarborough, of Oxford University, said there can be small benefits from drinks such as red wine “but this is wiped out over time.”