Alcohol’s Effect on Women Weighed : Research: Study shows heart benefits for moderate drinkers while another shows increased risk of breast cancer.

Six out of 10 adult American women drink alcohol--and whether that hurts or helps their health is subject to confusion, according to Redbook magazine.

The portrait of a female drinker finds that 95% of them are light to moderate drinkers (by definition, light means three drinks a week and moderate means one drink a day).

On the other hand, of the 15.3 million alcohol abusers in the United States, about 4.1 million are women, mostly between the ages of 35 and 59, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

A woman who typically has four or more drinks a day or who experiences signs of dependence--memory lapses, gulping drinks, morning drinking, inability to quit or cut down and inability to stop drinking until intoxicated--may be a problem drinker or alcohol abuser.

The health positives and negatives of light to moderate drinking are confusing and sometimes contradictory.

One of the few currently undisputed findings is that moderate drinking for women reduces the risk of heart problems.

In a 1988 study of more than 87,000 nurses ages 34 to 59, Harvard University researcher Dr. Meir Stampfer reported that women who had one or two drinks a day had a 50% lower risk of heart attack, heart disease and the most common type of stroke than nondrinkers.

The protective effect was most pronounced in women over 50, presumably because they are at greater risk for heart problems than younger women. Men enjoy similar heart-health benefits.

This lends support to the theory that alcohol protects the heart by raising levels of beneficial high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, which helps flush coronary arteries of fatty deposits.

“I don’t think people need to drink for their health,” Stampfer said. “But I hope that women who already drink moderately will now feel more comfortable about it, and if a woman has a low HDL level, maybe she should consider having a glass of wine every now and then.”

The wine should be red, according to French researcher Martine Seigneur and her colleagues. They reported in 1990 that drinking one to three glasses of red wine each day significantly lowers artery-clogging low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, while elevating “good” HDL.

The secret is in the grape skins. Cornell University fruit scientist Leroy Creasy said grape skins contain a chemical--resveratrol--that appears to help lower bad cholesterol and raise good cholesterol.

Grape skins are removed to make almost all white wines, which would explain why only red boasts special benefits. Red grape juice contains the chemical.

The bad news for women who drink--even lightly--is a controversial 1987 Harvard study of more than 3,000 women that announced a correlation between alcohol consumption and breast cancer. Even women who drank only one or two alcoholic beverages per day were reported to have a 50% greater risk of developing the disease.

Many scientists have questioned the findings. Dr. William Harlan is associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health and co-director of the forthcoming Women’s Health Initiative, which will look at, among other diet-disease links, the question of alcohol and breast cancer.

“I find it surprising that one drink a day would put a woman at higher risk for breast cancer,” he said.

Alcohol abuse can be deadly for women. Death rates of female alcoholics are 50% to 100% higher than those of males, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. On the other hand women alcoholics are more likely than men to succeed in kicking the habit.