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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/health/09DRIN.html

Drink Often, Heart Study Suggests

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

cientists know that drinking can help prevent heart attacks, but new research suggests that how often you drink is more important than what or how much.

Men who drank at least three days a week — whether beer, red or white wine, or liquor — had about one-third fewer heart attacks than did nondrinkers in a study being reported today in The New England Journal of Medicine. It made almost no difference whether they consumed half a drink or four.

Among those who drank just once or twice a week, the risk of heart attack fell only 16 percent.

Dr. Kenneth Mukamal of Harvard Medical School, who led the study, speculated that regular, moderate drinking is beneficial because it helps keep the blood thinned.

The researchers used data from a long-term study of 51,529 male health professionals. They set aside those who had stopped drinking in the last 10 years and those with histories of cancer or diseases of the heart or blood vessels. That left them with the medical histories of 38,077 men for their own study.

The researchers emphasized that the findings applied only to moderate drinking, not heavy drinking, whose dangers are well established.

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