A new study that looks into the effects of drinking alcohol has suggested that drinking beer and wine up to four times a week can help protect against diabetes.

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Researchers said that compared to people who don’t drink alcohol at all, men who drink three or four days a week were 27% less likely to develop the condition, while women were 32% less likely. That’s a pretty significant figure.

The team, led by Professor Janne Tolstrup from the University of Southern Denmark, published the promising findings in the journal ‘Diabetologia’.

One of the best types of drinks for preventing diabetes (it didn’t distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2) was found to be wine, which is probably due to the fact that it contains chemicals that are good for restoring blood sugar balance.

The study looked at 70,551 men and women across five years – overall 859 men and 887 women developed diabetes. The authors wrote:

Our findings suggest that alcohol drinking frequency is associated with the risk of diabetes and that consumption of alcohol over 3 to 4 weekdays is associated with the lowest risks of diabetes, even after taking average weekly alcohol consumption into account.

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On the other side of the coin, gin and spirits had a negative effect, with just one drink of these per day increasing the risk of 83%.

So basically this study found that to avoid diabetes, you just need to get bang on it for a significant chunk of the week – unless you’re drinking G&Ts that is, in which case the opposite is the truth.

In all seriousness though, this is only one study and there are hundreds of others out there that have found that boozing regularly is not a healthy thing to do. Still, it’s good to know that drinking beer and wine on the reg does have some potential benefits.

We’ve had a quite a few positive booze-related studies come out recently. Check out this one that claims drinking alcohol can actually improve your memory. I’ll drink to that.