Fraters Libertas

And If A Little Is Good For You...

Huge news today from the New England Journal of Medicine touting the memory benefits of booze consumption.

It seems that the letter-writing campaign we started last year to ask the Journal to look at some of the obvious benefits to hooch has paid off (those soft money donations by Keegan's didn't hurt either).

Here is how the esteemed doctors put it: low-to-moderate consumption of alcohol was associated with better cognition both cross-sectionally and over time in a study that involved more than 11,000 U.S. nurses. Consumption of 1.0 to 14.9 g of alcohol per day, or about one drink per day or less...

Booze and nurses...that oughtta get our google ads going.

The thing I find interesting is that as anyone who has any experience with polls or questionnaires of any kind will tell you, people ALWAYS fudge their answers to make themselves appear more intelligent, worldly, noble (contrary to the ridiculous human resources surveys, people take new jobs for the money!) and yes sober.

I mean, how many people who are real drinkers honestly answer a question like "How many alcoholic beverages do you have in a day?" It's much like when a cop pulls you over and asks you how many you have had: you always say one or two.

So if these people said one drink a day was their average and the docs found a positive correlation (no Saint Paul, correlation is not causation) between that and improved memory, then what they are really saying is two to three drinks a day improves your memory. And two to three is what a moderate soak without a problem consumes a day.

We at Fraters would like to raise a toast (a Makers Mark Manhattan to be exact) to the New England Journal of Medicine for confirming what we have known for years.

Salud!