Over the past few years, there’s been a steady rise in the rate of Americans who die by suicide and drugs each year. But while much of the attention surrounding these deaths has focused on the opioid crisis, a new study out Wednesday in the BMJ highlights a different aspect of that increase: More people, especially…
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has abruptly halted its $100 million study meant to examine whether moderate drinking can be good for your heart. The decision, announced Friday, comes in the wake of a report commissioned by the federal agency that reaffirmed allegations first reported by the New York Times…
The National Institutes of Health has taken a whole lot of heat for allegedly cozying up to Big Alcohol in order to secure funding for a major study on the effects of having a daily drink. On Friday, the NIH lost one of its backers from the booze business, as brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev pulled funding from the…
The perils of drinking too much alcohol run deep—even if there’s still an ongoing debate as to how much is too much. A new study published Monday in Microbiome suggests one of those perils is a mouth filled with potentially harmful bacteria.
It might take less alcohol than we think to damage the heart and shorten our lifespans, suggests a new study published today in The Lancet*. For many, the threshold might be fewer than one drink a day.
The National Institutes of Health is facing more allegations that it’s in Big Alcohol’s corner. Not only has the agency been accused of begging the alcohol industry for money—using a sales pitch that implied their results would likely be favorable to the industry, according to a March report from the New York Times—…
Serious ethical questions have loomed over a large, ongoing study overseen by the National Institutes of Health. The research, largely funded by the alcohol industry, intends to find out whether moderate drinking can be good for us. Following revelations that scientists and officials involved with the project reached…
Many of us enjoy the odd glass of wine or beer, but every once in a while we like to throw down and get completely wasted. But for many Americans, these binge-drinking sessions aren’t as “every once in a while” as we’d like to believe. New research shows that nearly 20 percent of all US adults participate in…
A few months ago, I got a package containing four bottles of Never Too Hungover, one of those hangover remedies that you’re supposed to drink the night before, and another you’re supposed to take the next day. I pounded beers as if I were rushing a fraternity with the knowledge that I’d be immune from the physical…
It’s hardly a surprise that too much alcohol is bad for the body, including the brain. But a new study published Tuesday in The Lancet suggests that even doctors are underestimating its impact on our risk of developing dementia.
Dramatic mood shifts while drinking alcohol are normal, but for some of us, booze takes us down a path toward nasty, belligerent, and downright aggressive behavior. By studying brain scans of drunk men, Australian scientists have pinpointed the parts of our brain that go weak when we drink, making us meaner than…
A panel of the nation’s top public health experts is pushing for a sweeping set of policy changes and laws aimed at accomplishing an audacious goal—an end to deaths caused by drunk driving. But the recommendation touted as having the largest potential impact on deaths might also be the hardest to sell: lowering the…
When the year ends, many of us take the time to reflect by getting utterly obliterated. But what’s actually going in your body and brain after two or three or five drinks?
We humans have shockingly malleable tastes. Studies have shown that we are more likely to prefer something if we think it’s expensive (even if it isn’t). It stands to reason, then, that a cocktail costing $1,210 should be roughly 80 times more delicious to me than any I’ve ever purchased for myself. So, when Trader…
If a police officer pulls you over for driving while intoxicated, you could be brought in for a breath alcohol test. If that happens, you’d better hope the test operator doesn’t slather their hands in an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, first.
“I don’t know” and “yes” are very different things. “I don’t know if my child is allergic to peanuts” does not mean, “yes, I should feed my child peanuts.” “I don’t know if this berry is poisonous” does not mean, “yes, I should eat this berry.” And “I don’t know if light drinking will harm my pregnancy” does not mean,…
Science doesn’t give answers. Instead, it’s a tool that humans have created to make meaningful conclusions from data. So, if someone tells you that science says energy drinks will turn you into a cocaine user, well, science won’t ever do that.
There are plenty of people who enjoy the warm sadness cowboy drink known as whiskey. While some might have a John Wayne instinct to drink it neat, the real aficionados know that adding a few drops of water to the drink can improve and expand its flavor profile. Now, in the great whiskey war of whether or not one…
Ryanair is having a tough time. As Brexit threatens to turn its entire business upside down, passengers can’t stop getting drunk on its flights, doing something stupid on camera, and causing all kinds of chaos when the video hits the internet. Now, Ryanair is trying to restrict how much people drink at the airport.
Whiskey tastes like warm poison. To be fair, if you add an ice cube to the mix, it tastes like chilly poison. Even my very nice mom, in her infinite wisdom, once described whiskey as “horrible shit.” Nevertheless, those who insist there is a difference between good and bad whiskey will be happy to know that a team of…
