Actually, the study shows nothing of the sort. It makes no attempt to establish a causal connection, it merely notes a correlation. It would be just as true to say "those people who have a better quality of life tend to drink moderately". So which is chicken, and which egg?
It may be that moderate drinking is not actually good for you. It is more likely that heavy drinking is actively bad for you, and that heavy drinkers are represented in both the heavy drinking and the teetotal groups, because the latter will contain a proportion of recovering alcoholics. Plus the non-drinking group will include some people who have become ill for other reasons. So the findings of the study could just as easily have been presented as "moderate drinkers tend to have better lives than those who are alcoholics or otherwise ill." Big news, indeed.
Sorry about that.
Last edited by chasm54; 06-26-12 at 01:01 AM.