Groups and drinking
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
A study indicates people are more likely to be heavy drinkers if people linked to them socially are heavy drinkers. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard and colleagues saw this in data on social ties in a long-running health study of residents of Framingham, Massachusetts.
Christakis says that, if your friends drink a lot, the chances become 50 percent greater that you will. And it doesn't end there:
"If your friends' friends drink, it increases the likelihood that you'll be a drinker by about 36 percent. And if your friends' friends' friends drink, it'll increase the likelihood that you'll be a drinker by about 15 percent." (10 seconds)
Christakis says that, if one person stops heavy drinking, it also can affect others in the group.
The study in Annals of Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.
HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.