I was taught that to live a long healthy life avoid alcohol and take your vitamins

Turns out that seemingly sound advice will kill'ya.

Headlines from this week:

Any drinking lowered the risk of heart disease but the more patients drank the greater the protection. And the amount they drank was pretty staggering:

• light drinking, about a glass of wine or 1.5-beers per day, reduced risk by 35%
• moderate drinking, 2 glasses of wine or 2-3 beers reduced the risk 51%
• Moderate and heavy drinking, 5+ glasses of wine or 7+ beers, resulted in 54 and 50% risk reduction.

The health benefits of alcohol were touched upon in ths prior post.

Not only did the patients randomized to folic acid + B12 have a higher rate of developing cancer, they had a higher cancer mortality. Most of the cancer mortality came from excess lung cancer in the folic acid + B12 group. This was despite the fact that there were more smokers in the placebo group (38% vs 40% p=0.01). (JAMA) 

The fall of folic acid was touched on in this prior post.

So parents, remind your kids to drink their beer and forget their vitamins.