Drinking Soju Daily May Reduce Stroke Risk - Asian Scientist Magazine (2024)

AsianScientist (Jan. 12, 2016) – Challenging our long-held beliefs about daily drinking, a study recently revealed that a few shots of soju, a distilled Korean rice liquor, a day can significantly lower the risk of stroke in both men and women. The research paper was published in Neurology.

Soju, the national liquor of Korea, is also known as the Korean equivalent of Japanese sake. It’s the most popular alcoholic beverage in the nation due to its ready availability and low price. However, it has a high alcohol content of 20 percent; thus, like most liquors with high alcohol levels, soju is often frowned upon for its negative social and health effects.

In the present study, a team of neurologists at Seoul National University hospital in Bundang set out to find a correlation between alcohol consumption, particularly soju, and risk of stroke. Led by Professor Bae Hee Jun, the research team conducted the study on over 1,800 patients aged 20 and above who were registered with the 2011-2013 Clinical Research Center for Stroke database from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, along with almost 3,600 participants of the National Health and Nutrition Survey as the control group.

According to the study, consuming one shot a day reduced the risk of stroke by 62 percent in males. Having two shots reduced risk by 55 percent, and three to four shots, by 46 percent. For women, however, the anti-stroke effects of soju were most effective when one to two shots were consumed per day.

“Our findings suggest that light to moderate distilled alcohol consumption may reduce the risk of ischemic stroke in Koreans,” the authors wrote in the abstract of their published paper.

Although there have previously been investigations on the same topic which found similar results, these studies were only based on Western populations who consume mostly wine or beer. Thus, Bae claims the significance of this recent research is that it is the first to examine the effect of locally-brewed spirits on South Koreans.

However, he emphasized that the study only focused on the preventive effects of soju on stroke, and so intake was limited to four shots a day. He warned that excessive drinking will indeed increase risks of stroke and other illnesses.

The article can be found at: Soo et al. (2015) Moderate Alcohol Intake Reduces Risk of Ischemic Stroke in Korea.
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Source: Seoul National University; Photo: Graham Hills/Flickr/CC.
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