Researchers say a little alcohol everyday helps improve your immune system

Researchers have suggested that moderate drinking of alcohol may actually bolster one's immune system and help it fight off infection.

To conduct the study, the researchers trained a group of 12 rhesus macaques to consume alcohol — a 4 percent ethanol mixture — of their own accord.

Researchers vaccinated the monkeys against small pox as part of the study. They then separated the animals into two groups — those with access to the 4 per cent ethanol and those with access to sugar water. All of the animals had regular access to pure water, and to food.

The researchers then monitored the animals' daily ethanol consumption for 14 months. And the animals were vaccinated again, seven months after the experiment began.

The monkeys' voluntary ethanol consumption segregated them into two groups. One group was made up of heavy drinkers, those that had an average blood ethanol concentration greater than 0.08 per cent — the legal limit for humans to be able to drive a vehicle. The other group was made up of moderate drinkers, with an average blood ethanol concentration of 0.02 to 0.04 per cent.

Prior to consuming the alcohol, all of the animals showed comparable responses to the vaccination. But after exposure to the alcohol, the two groups of monkeys responded in very different ways to the vaccination.

The heavy drinkers showed greatly diminished vaccine responses compared with the control group of monkeys who drank the sugar water. But the more surprising finding: the moderate-drinking monkeys displayed enhanced responses to the vaccine compared to the control group. Moderate drinking bolstered their bodies' immune systems.

Too much protein is ‘just as bad as smoking’, claim scientists

LONDON: Middle-aged people who eat protein-rich food are four times more likely to die of cancer than someone who only eats a little, according to a new study. The researchers said eating a lot of protein increased the risk of cancer almost as much as smoking 20 cigarettes a day. 

They reached their findings, published in the journal Cell: Metabolism, after tracking thousands of people over 20 years. 

"We provide convincing evidence that a high-protein diet — particularly if the proteins are derived from animals — is nearly as bad as smoking for your health," one of the academics behind the work, Dr Valter Longo, of theUniversity of Southern California, told Daily Telegraph. 

A high-protein diet was defined as one in which 20 per cent of the calories came from protein. They recommended eating 0.8g of protein per kilogram of body weight a day during middle age. 

However, the researchers said protein had benefits during later life. 

Dr Eileen Crimmins, a co-author of the study, said: "We also propose that at older ages, it may be important to avoid a low-protein diet to allow the maintenance of healthy weight and protection from frailty." 

However Dr Gunter Kuhnle, a food nutrition scientist at the University of Reading, criticized the study for making a link to smoking. 

"While this study raises some interesting perspectives on links between protein intake and mortality ... It is wrong, and potentially even dangerous, to compare the effects of smoking with the effect of meat and cheese," he said. 

"The smoker thinks: 'Why bother quitting smoking if my cheese and ham sandwich is just as bad for me?'" 

And Professor Tim Key, of Cancer Research UK, said: "Further research is needed to establish whether there is any link between eating a high protein diet and an increased risk of middle aged people dying from cancer."

Binge drinking is harmful to older drinkers: Study

Binge drinking has a higher mortality risk for older drinkers, says a study on drinking and older adults conducted by the University of Texas at Austin. 

This is for the first time that drinking patterns and age have been studied in detail, says a preview of the study which will be published in the May 2014 issue of 'Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research'. 

A university press release quoted the study's chief author Charles J Holahan as saying, "Binge drinking is increasingly being recognized as a significant public health concern." Holahan and his team used data from a larger project examining late-life patterns of alcohol consumption and drinking problems. It covered 446 adults (334 men, 112 women) in the 55 to 65 age group over a 20-year period. 

"We found that among older adults, those who engage in heavy episodic drinking -- even when average consumption is moderate -- show significantly increased total mortality risk compared to regular moderate drinkers," said Holahan. 

The researchers said that these findings may pose special health concerns for these older adults, even though binge drinking is damaging at any age. 

"Binge drinking concentrates alcohol's toxicity and is linked to mortality by damaging body organs and increasing accident risk," said Holahan. "Binge drinking may be additionally risky for older adults due to aging-related elevations in comorbidities as well as medication use."