It always intrigues me what a good job the red wine marketing people have done.

They have really sold the idea that red wine is only booze that’s good for the heart.

Norman Kaplan of Framingham Heart Study fame always said it’s the alcohol not the red wine specifically. Now a study reported from Italy would seem to support that.

It showed a different alcoholic drink, beer, has the same benefit as red wine, and can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease by 31%.

Actually there have been other studies showing the benefits of different types of beer - and it’s noted malt has a lot of those healthy vitamins - especially B6 and B12, and antioxidant flavanoids.

Also in a study, reported by John Folts of the University of Wisconsin to the American Heart Association it was noted dark beer can have particular benefits - Guinness has substantially more anti-clotting activity than Heineken.

No wonder the Irish are so healthy - and maybe their procreativity is not the result of their Catholicism, if we are to believe another report in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that moderate drinking protects against impotence in the long term (it’s all to do with keeping the blood flowing to the relevant parts I guess).

But “moderate” is the operative word. We all know about “brewers droop” and how you can’t get a good stiffy when you’ve had a serious skinful.

And, get this, it can even make you cognite better.

A study reported in the American Journal of Epidemiol;ogy showed people who drank did better than people who didn’t in a series of test to assess intellectual ability.

Other studies, also reported in the AJE noted that alcohol consumption may have a beneficial cognitive function in women, but not necessarily in men - I’m sure that’s just because men were trying to hit on the women after a few drinks, and the women maintained their cool and disdain (and probably the study was done by a woman).

In another however, it showed women who drank moderately (2-4 drinks a day) showed superior performance to abstainers. But that men also had some benefit - but they had to drink 4-8 drinks a day.

What amazes me is the quantity. Here am I telling my patients a healthy amount is an average of one drink a day/seven drinks a week for women. And two drinks a day/fourteen drinks a week for a man.

That’s a little different from the up to 30 drinks a week that were correlated with improved intellectual ability in the first study. Or the second, with up to 8 drinks a day correlating with “superior performance in many cognitive domains”

I’d have expected someone drinking 56 drinks a week to be a driveling idiot. But let’s drink to that.

“I am for individuals - exactly like automobile insurance - having health insurance and being required to have health insurance”

This is a quote, not from some raging leftist, but from current leader of the pack of republican potential nominees, Newt Gingrich (from when he was minority House whip in 1993).

This was after Clinton introduced his attempt at universal health care in the 1990’s.

A decade after which Mitt Romney resurrected the idea in Massachusetts which required the residents to buy health insurance or face up to $1,212 in annual penalties.

“It’s the Republican way of reforming the market” he is quoted as saying when this became law in 2006 - and referring to the “free rider” issue of people not taking out insurance until the get sick if they are not mandated, he said “to have people show up when they get sick, and expect someone else to pay, that’s the Democratic approach.”

And now, in case you haven’t notices, the Republicans are doing everything in their power to get the courts to declare the idea of everyone being mandated to take out health insurance, be declared unconstitutional.

Alexandra Petri writing in The Washington Post expresses a concern about people’s longevity - which I share. But a solution I’m not sure I fully condone.

He notes households headed by old farts over sixty five have 47 times the net worth of households headed by people under 35.

But - they live so long, and health care is becoming so expensive, there is a danger of them eating up all that net worth, and their kids never getting their hands on the family loot.

I don’t know how old Petri is, but, though I go along with his concern, being over 65 myself, I’m not sure I go along with his solution.

“Sure they may be wrinkly and taste sort of gamy, with a hint of talcum powder” he says, but his solution is to eat the elderly - “the alternative is to continue to allow them to devour us”.