LenDale White's diet may work for you

Former USC running back LenDale White lost 30 pounds during the off-season, according to an Associated Press story Sunday. How did he do it? He stopped drinking alcohol.

"I was drinking a lot," White, who now plays for the Tennessee Titans, told AP. "I cut that out of my diet all the way. I don't drink at all."

The weight, he says, "started falling off."

White's favorite beverage was tequila, which cost him 65 calories per 1 ounce serving.

Reducing alcohol use is often the forgotten component of a healthy diet. The calories in one little drink are fairly shocking. Here's a look at the calories in alcohol from the website of College Drinking: Changing the Culture.

-- Shari Roan

Photo credit: Doug Benc / Getty Images

Another round, bartender, and make it vitamin-infused

The problem with cocktail hour, we've always thought, is that it lacks good nutrition. Sure, the five olives you downed with your martini count for something, but do those pimientos really provide minimum daily requirements of anything?

Now we no longer need to worry. One of the latest trends in cocktails is enhanced alcoholic beverages. They're like those allegedly healthful enhanced waters, iced teas, sodas and sports drinks, only these will make you feel woozy after a few.

Lotus Vodka, for instance has vitamins B-3, B-5, B-6, B-12 and C, L-Arginine, L-Cysteine (both amino acids), and ginseng extract in its White Lotus brand, and Blue Lotus contains vitamins B-3, B-5, B-6 and B-12, plus guarana extract (a stimulant), caffeine and taurine (an amino acid).

Stimulants like caffeine are found in other vodkas as well (p.i.n.k. and Vicious Vodka are two brands, and Belvedere IX has guarana, ginseng and a bunch of other stuff), the influence coming from young partiers combining Red Bull with vodka to provide some energy for a long night ahead. The vitamins' origin is another story.

Rob Bailey is the founder and chief executive of the San Francisco-based Delicious Brands, parent company of Lotus (the vodka rolled out to major markets last year). Some market research led him to discover that what people really wanted out of a vodka were taste and something that didn't bring about a head-pounding, dry-mouthed, gut-spilling hangover the next day. Savvy guy that he is, Bailey decided what vodka needed was what people typically lost while drinking -- vitamins, specifically B-vitamins.

"Alcohol is a diuretic, and it causes you to deplete some essential vitamins and minerals from your body," he explained. "If you put those back, you can potentially feel better." He quickly added -- and pay attention here -- that because a serving has 15% to 20% of the USDA recommended amounts of B-vitamins, that doesn't mean you should drink more to get more vitamins. Also, it's not healthful. OK?

As weird as we think it is to infuse vodka with vitamins (is eating a balanced diet that difficult?), we actually came across a 2006 study in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism that found B-vitamin supplements improved sensory perception and function in 253 people with alcohol dependence.

Something tells us Bailey won't be recruiting drinkers for a clinical trial anytime soon. In the meantime, as they say in the ads, drink responsibly.

-- Jeannine Stein

Photo courtesy of Lotus Vodka

Substance abuse expert regrets raising drinking age

One of the people who was instrumental in pushing for laws to increase the legal drinking age to 21 now calls his actions "the single most regrettable decision" of his career.

Dr. Morris Chafetz, a psychiatrist who was on the presidential commission in the 1980s that recommended raising the drinking age to 21, made his remarks in an editorial that he is shopping for publication and which he released to the advocacy group Choose Responsibility. Chafetz wrote the editorial to mark the 25th anniversary of the law that was signed by President Ronald Reagan on July 17, 1984.

"Legal Age 21 has not worked," Chafetz said in the piece. "To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982. But they are lower in all age groups. And they have declined just as much in Canada, where the age is 18 or 19, as they have in the United States."

Chafetz said the law instead has resulted in "collateral, off-road damage" such as binge drinking that occurs in underage youth and crimes like date rape, assaults and property damage.

Chafetz is not new to controversy. A former presidential appointee at the White House Conference for a Drug-Free America, he is the author of two books that question the expertise of scientists, lawmakers and other experts: "Big Fat Liars," and "The Tyranny of Experts." His latest remarks on the legal age drinking law were applauded by Choose Responsibility, which is a leading advocacy organization working to lower the legal age. The group's efforts, and opposition to it, were profiled last year by the Los Angeles Times.

-- Shari Roan

Photo credit: Phil Coate  /  Associated Press

Alcohol and pregnancy: A volatile mix

A British scientist is criticizing doctors over the advice they give to pregnant women about drinking, saying that pregnant women are big girls who can make up their own minds about the risks.

In the United States, most medical advice on drinking during pregnancy centers on one word: "Don't." But the British have wrangled over the issue with considerable angst in recent years. In 2007, United Kingdom government officials recommended that women abstain from drinking any alcoholic beverages during pregnancy. The advice was controversial because, while excessive drinking in pregnancy is clearly harmful to a developing fetus and can result in fetal alcohol syndrome, there is debate over the harm of light or moderate drinking during pregnancy. In 2008, the U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence reported that there was no evidence of harm if women drank no more than one or two drinks a week.

Studying the issue seems to be a favorite pastime in the U.K. One recent study suggested that even drinking small amounts of alcohol during pregnancy can affect maternal-child bonding and delay the mother's recovery from childbirth. Another study found that children born to mothers who drank one or two drinks per week during pregnancy were not at increased risk for behavioral or cognitive problems at age 3 compared with kids whose mothers did not drink.

In the United States, both the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advise women to avoid alcohol during pregnancy.

In an article published today in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Colin Gavaghan warns doctors against telling women to abstain instead of a more truthful message. Women, he says, should be presented with the medical facts as they stand at the moment and trusted to make good decisions.

"The days where doctors routinely withheld information ... on the groups that patients would become confused and make bad decisions are, supposedly, consigned to history," he writes. "It is far from clear why a paternalistic exception is permitted in the case of pregnant women."

Gavaghan suggests that if a woman enjoys a drink or two and it helps her relax, that may be might be just as important to consider as the "interest of the future child."

Moreover, if doctors exaggerate the risk, he says, "their advice on genuine risks will carry less authority."

Paternalism has no place in medicine, but many doctors advise women to abstain from alcohol while pregnant or while trying to become pregnant because it's not really clear if there is any safe level of alcohol use. Women who drink at mild to moderate levels and then find out they are pregnant shouldn't panic, experts say, but they should stop drinking. The emerging field of epigenetics suggests that a fetus may be vulnerable to small and subtle changes in the mother's diet or environment that may alter its later risk for disease. It's not appropriate to frighten women unnecessarily. But it's wise to be prudent.

-- Shari Roan

Photo: Martin Berinetti / AFP/Getty Images

Let them drink less wine

Shock horror alert:

Pubs will soon be forced to offer patrons smaller glasses of wine, according to Britain's Daily Mail. It's part of the government's efforts to curb the cult of binge drinking and also to not encourage women to exceed a safe limit of alcohol.

The Mail article notes that, in the U.K., "a standard glass of wine used to be 125 ml -- around one unit of alcohol. But most pubs now serve wine in a 'small' 175 ml glass or a 'large' 250 ml glass -- as much as a third of a bottle of wine." And, the article further notes that "one in 10 bars use 250 ml as their standard size, which with certain strengths of wine can ... contain 3.5 units of alcohol -- enough to put a woman over the driving limit and exceed safe drinking limits."

I can speak for the mega-serving trend. Just two weeks ago, I was in the U.K. and went out with a sibling for a demure evening on the town involving a glass or two of wine at a pub or two. The glasses were behemoths! Filled to the brim! We surely had but a couple before popping round to visit my (practically teetotaler) brother and sister-in-law and treating them and our young nephew to an hour of witty banter and a knocked-over mug of coffee. If the mini-glass option had been available, I am sure this would not have happened.

The new, mandatory mini-servings would be offered in 125-milliliter glasses.

-- Rosie Mestel

PS: A number of reader comments make it clear that the tongue-in-cheek intention of my remark, "If the mini-glass option had been available, I am sure this would not have happened," may not have registered with all. For the record, it was tongue-in-cheek. But I don't think offering the option of a smaller glass of wine is a bad one, just as it's not a bad idea to offer people smaller servings of food in restaurants instead of the (also behemoth) portions so many places serve up.

Also for the record, re: a comment below, no driving was involved in the above-mentioned evening.

Photo: F. Carter Smith / Bloomberg News

Anti-smoking drug may curb drinking, too

A drug to help people quit smoking appears to reduce the desire for alcohol as well, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

The drug, varenicline, is approved as a smoking cessation aid and is sold under the brand name Chantix. Researchers at Yale decided to test the drug on a small group of people who were heavy smokers and heavy drinkers because there was some evidence that the drug may reduce drinking in a similar manner to how it works for smoking. Drinking and smoking are behaviors that often go hand-in-hand. Smokers are four times more likely than nonsmokers to meet the criteria for alcohol-use disorders. Diseases related to tobacco use are the leading cause of death in alcoholics.

The study was comprised of 20 adults who were daily smokers (smoking at least 10 cigarettes a day) and nonalcoholic heavy drinkers (consuming seven to 14 drinks per week and three or four drinks per episode at least once a week). The participants were given varenicline or a placebo for seven days. Then, in an experiment conducted in a laboratory, they were given one drink and then had the option of drinking more alcohol -- up to eight drinks -- in a two-hour period. The study found that varenicline reduced the desire to drink. Those people consumed one-half of one drink compared with the placebo group, which consumed an average of 2.6 drinks. Eighty percent of the participants receiving the drug did not take a drink at all compared with 30% of the placebo group. The drug reduced alcohol cravings and the feeling of being intoxicated.

Varenicline is thought to reduce the desire to smoke and drink by acting on receptors in the brain that stimulate the chemical dopamine. There were no adverse effects associated with taking varenicline and consuming alcohol.

The study was performed on heavy drinkers, and it's not known whether the drug would have any effect on people with alcohol dependence. But further studies should be conducted, said the lead author of the study, Sherry McKee, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. "A medication such as varenicline, which may target shared biological systems in alcohol and nicotine use, holds promise as a treatment for individuals with both disorders," McKee said in a news release.

-- Shari Roan

Photo credit: Stephen Chernin / Getty Images

Frequent binge drinking is common among active military

Binge drinking among military personnel is common, according to a new study, and it may have serious health and social repercussions.

Among the 16,037 men and women surveyed in 2005, 43% reported binge drinking in the last month, resulting in almost 30 episodes per person per year. About 67% of binge drinking episodes were reported by military personnel ages 17 to 25, and that age group made up a little under half of all the active personnel surveyed. Researchers define binge drinking as consuming five or more drinks during a single occasion for men, and four or more for women.

Men were twice as likely to binge drink as women, but women weren't immune to the scenario — they averaged about 12 binge-drinking episodes per person per year.

Both genders who engaged in binge drinking were more likely to have adverse consequences such as getting into a fight, not being promoted, and drinking and driving, than those who drank but didn't binge drink. More than half of all binge drinkers said they experienced one or more undesirable results or engaged in high-risk behavior.

Researchers looked at data from the Department of Defense Survey of Health Related Behaviors Among Military Personnel, an anonymous health survey of active military in the U.S., overseas and on ships. The study was published in the March issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

In the general population, 22% of moderate drinkers in the U.S. reported binge drinking, according to a 2003 study in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Researchers also found that people ages 18 to 25 had the highest rates of binge drinking, and that men were responsible for the vast majority of binge-drinking episodes.

-- Jeannine Stein

Photo credit: Jay L. Clendenin / L.A. Times

Living close to where alcohol is sold could affect teen drinking

Peer pressure may be a key cause of teen drinking, but it might not be the only factor.

A new study reveals that the closer teens live to where alcohol is sold, the greater the risk may be of binge drinking and driving under the influence.

Researchers from the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica looked at the number and location of alcohol retailers in zones around homes in California to see what relationship existed between proximity to those stores and drinking in children ages 12 to 17. They found a significant association among homes within walking distance of places selling alcohol (about half a mile) and evidence of binge drinking and driving after drinking, and predict that moving those stores and restaurants farther away could reduce those numbers.

The study also noted that alcohol is more readily available in minority and lower-income areas. In predominantly white neighborhoods, within a half-mile there are an average 5.5 locations with active alcohol licenses. In predominantly African American neighborhoods it’s 6.4 locations; in predominantly Latino, 8.6; and in predominantly Asian, 9.5. Researchers point out that living in areas with higher alcohol sales could also mean more exposure to violent crime and drunk driving.

"Our study suggests that living in close proximity to alcohol outlets is a risk factor for youth," write the authors, whose study appears online this month in the American Journal of Public Health. "In California, retail licenses are not typically approved within 100 feet of a residence or within 600 feet of schools, public playgrounds and nonprofit youth facilities, but proximity by itself is not sufficient to deny a license. Our study suggests that more attention on the proximity rule is needed and environmental interventions need to curb opportunities for youth to get alcohol from commercial sources, whether being through tightening licensure or enforcing minimum age drinking laws."

-- Jeannine Stein

Photo credit: Charlie Litchfield / AP

The language of intoxication: Drunk, hammered or merely tipsy?

"Drunk" is the oldest English-language synonym related to intoxication. But people who drink alcohol use a variety of words to describe their level of inebriation, and those descriptions are often at odds with the terms used by doctors and health professionals, say researchers from the University of Missouri.

Individuals do not perceive the word "drunk" in the same ways, says Ash Levitt, a graduate student in psychological science and a co-author of the study. The study of 290 college students found that "drunk" often reflected a level of intoxication between moderate and heavy. Intoxicated men tended to say they were "hammered" and women to say they were "tipsy."

"As social and cultural animals, humans have developed a rich and diverse vocabulary of intoxication-related slang to describe the subjective states they are experiencing while drinking," said Levitt in a news release. "However, alcohol researchers have largely ignored the language of intoxication."

Women's descriptions of alcohol use could have important public health implications, Levitt said. The study found that women's use of the word "tipsy" reflected an average of four drinks over two hours. That's a quantity that actually meets the criteria for binge drinking for women. When doctors and researchers ask about drinking, they should use terms that are personalized and relevant to the patient's gender, he said. The study is published online today in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

-- Shari Roan

Photo credit: Chris Vail / For The Times

When alcohol taxes go up, deaths go down

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a 5-cent excise tax increase per alcoholic drink as a way to ease the state's huge budget shortfall. According to a study published today, alcohol tax increases also save lives.

The study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that raising the alcohol tax in Alaska led to a significant decline in the number of people who died from alcohol-related diseases. In 1983, Alaska increased its beer tax, followed by another big tax hike in 2002. Researchers from the University of Florida tracked deaths from alcohol-related diseases and found that the 1983 tax was followed by a 29% reduction in deaths (23 per year) and the 2002 tax boost was followed by an 11% reduction in deaths (an additional 21 per year). The taxes had a two to four times larger effect on alcohol-related deaths than some other common alcohol prevention programs, such as school education programs or media campaigns.

Alaska is well-known for its high rate of alcoholism, noted the study's lead author, Alexander C. Wagenaar.

"Alaska was cognizant of its alcohol problems and decided to do something meaningful. We are now benefiting from the results of their unique experiment which shows what other states could gain if they were to implement a similar tax increase."

About 85,000 deaths per year nationwide are linked to drinking, including injuries, homicides, suicides and a range of diseases. Many studies have found that alcohol tax increases reduce vehicular deaths. But other research on the effect of tax increases has been mixed. Some studies suggest alcohol prices were linked to lower unintentional injury and homicide rates, but others dispute that connection.

It's also not clear from previous research whether alcohol prices or taxes are related to the rates of alcohol dependence. But the new study suggests that tax hikes affect drinking patterns over long periods of time.

-- Shari Roan

Photo credit: Carmel Zucker / Los Angeles Times