Reports that frequent drinking prevents diabetes are inaccurate

Conclusion Although this study found an interesting association between alcohol drinking habits and risk of developing diabetes, this study does not present strong enough evidence to recommend adopting a particular drinking pattern to reduce diabetes risk. This study had a number of limitations that weaken confidence in the results: People were only asked about their drinking habits and other risk factors at a single time point. The study doesn't tell us whether those habits changed over the period in which people were monitored for diabetes. Most studies related to alcohol consumption also run the risk that people are not always completely accurate when describing what and how much they drink. The way diabetes cases were recorded for the study did not distinguish between type 1 and type 2 diabetes, even though these conditions have different causes and treatments. The study only followed people up for an average of just under five years, whereas a condition like diabetes may develop due to risk factors experienced over a longer period. The information collected on diet may have been too simplistic to properly allow an understanding of how nutrition may also affect the diabetes risk of the people in the study. Although the researchers excluded people from the study if they already had a diagnosis of diabetes at baseline, they didn't exclude people if they had other chronic health conditions, some of which may contribute to diabetes risk. The only other conditio...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Diabetes Food/diet Source Type: news