5 ms·

I'd like to know how my drinking behaviour affects my mortality. And how that effect is compared to the consumption of tobacco, marijuana, participating in road

by 1ris 10y ago

I'd like to know how my drinking behaviour affects my mortality. And how that effect is compared to the consumption of tobacco, marijuana, participating in road traffic, jogging and overwight. While it's clear that alcohol is not particular healthy, I feel the risk is negligible compared to other common behaviours. I like alcohol very much and I'd like to make a informed decision about it. But i dearly miss the curial, end-user friendly information.

chestervonwinch 10y ago
About 3 drinks per day puts you from 1.5 to 3 times more likely to develop various cancers, according to: http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet#q2 http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/al...
- brador 10y ago
  It's just sugary yeast water though. My guess is it's the obesity from drinking that increases the chance of the cancers not the drink itself. Which has then created a correlation between alcohol and the cancers cited.
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
    It's not just sugary yeast water, it's alcohol, a toxin. If alcohol were not the cause but fat/obesity, we wouldn't see cancer concentrated on the oropharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon and rectum.
  - icegreentea 10y ago
    Its not just sugary yeast water. The first step of alcohol metabolism is conversion to acetaldehyde, which is then processed further into acetic acid. Acetaldehyde is very much a carcinogen (and its also directly DNA damaging). The science is super clear. We even have this control population called "east asians". The "asian flush" phenomenon is the result of hyperactive ADH1 (which converts ethanol to acetaldehyde) and relatively inactive forms of the enzymes required for the result of the conversion, resulting in acetaldehyde sticking around in higher quantities and for much longer than say a european population.
    - joshyeager 10y ago
      Do East Asians have a higher likelihood of types of cancer that could be linked to alcohol use? I've never seen that claim, but it would be interesting if it were true.
      - icegreentea 10y ago
        You can give this a shot. http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000050 http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...
        joshyeager 10y ago
        Very interesting, thanks!
      - ekianjo 10y ago
        Japanese and south koreans are known to have the highest rates in the world of stomach cancer. And they happen to be East Asian and drink often.
- 1ris 10y ago
  Yes, this is what I'm referring to. This information is completly meaningless to me. How does a 1.5 to 3 times higher cancer risk affect my mortality? A 100 times elevated risk in extreme uncommon diseases is absoluty irrelevant, but a 10 percent increase to get something very common is quite important. Likewise is the age when these disease typically break out. If it's typically not before 85, I wouldn't mind. If it's often before 40, I would dearly. I know that alcohol increases the risk for prostate cancer. But prostate cancer typically starts at very high age and is usually just a minor hassle. The typical infected person dies of something else and has a usual life expectancy. How to these factors from 1.5 to 3 affect my mortality? Should I care? I want to say something like say "I'm drinking $n drinks a week, and in order to compensate that I stop doing other things with a similar risk".
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    Cancer is not uncommon, 1 person out of 3 gets it if they live long enough.
    - vonmoltke 10y ago
      "Cancer" is not a single disease that can be lumped together like this. It is a large group of different diseases that share a similar mechanism (cell mutation and unchecked growth). Without information about what specific cancers are involved, it may be as the GP said: an elevated risk of a rare cancer.
      - ekianjo 10y ago
        Alright, how about that then ? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172907/table/tbl2/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172907/table/tb...
  - conception 10y ago
    It's sorta hard to say because most of your risk just depends on your genetics. You could be in a happy genetic lottery of 1 : 1,000,000,000 of getting cancer before 50 or you could have terrible genes and be in the 1:100,000 lotto of getting cancer before your 50. If you drink in excess, you're buying three tickets for whichever lotto your in instead of the single ticket you get when you're born. And you collect these tickets all through your life - flying in airplanes a lot, staying in the sun a lot, smoking, etc. You just never know which lotto you're in so it's hard to say, with today's technology, how it will affect you. That's why some people smoke till their 90 without a problem and others get lung cancer much younger. Different lottos.
tshtf 10y ago
"Light-to-moderate alcohol consumption has been shown in several prospective studies to reduce the risk of all-cause mortality and several cardiac outcomes, including cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality in men " https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140194/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140194/
- lern_too_spel 10y ago
  See the articles that cited that one, and a different picture emerges. "Beneficial associations between low intensity alcohol consumption and all cause mortality may in part be attributable to inappropriate selection of a referent group and weak adjustment for confounders." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4353285/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4353285/
wwweston 10y ago
I'm more or less lifelong teetotal, but about 4 years ago, I started considering light drinking based off of widely popular reports of health benefits of the occasional glass of wine and some all-cause mortality reduction studies. Given that I wasn't sure how well the media had reported these and if I was either motivated enough of or enough of a scientist to evaluate research directly, I decided to ask doctors if I should do this. In short, to provide me with curial end-user friendly information. So I've pretty much asked most MD I've seen since, five total. The responses fell into two categories: * "Eh, if you already drink, it's probably OK, but for heavens sake, of all the new things to take up for health benefits, one could do so much better. Get your exercise, diet, dental health, stress levels, and sleep quality dialed in, then maybe statins, then maybe a glass of wine for health." * "We never advise people to start. There are too many risks. If you enjoy alcohol, be responsible and moderate, but it the opposite of an asset to your health." Of course, doctors aren't perfect, I have a limited sample of them, and I may not be summarizing their response correctly. It's probably best for most people to ask doctors directly along with conducting what review of medical literature they can if they're up to it.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  It's not a hard subject to research yourself and I would bet that it wouldn't take too long to be more up to date that a lot of the people you have gone to see.
lucaspiller 10y ago
> I like alcohol very much Could I ask what you actually like about it? I used to be a moderate drinker but a few years ago I just thought "what's the point?". The only reason why I drank was because my friends drank, and nearly all the times I met my friends was to drink. Since then I've moved to a different city for work, and I've made new friends with mostly people who don't drink. Yesterday we went to a lake to swim and chill out, which I couldn't even dream about doing with my old friends. A lot of people who I've spoken to who like to drink say it helps their stress levels. In my case I've always been quite a stressful person, and I haven't noticed it get worse since I've stopped. Not having woken up hung over for over 2 years is good though :D As for the supposed health benefits of drinking, I think in my case I'm better off not drinking. A few times I got blind drunk, but even being tipsy I would be concerned about accidentally walking in front of a car or slipping onto a railway track.
- ascorbic 10y ago
  Good alcoholic drinks taste great, and there are few non-alcoholic drinks that can match the complexity of flavour that you'll find in the best of them. And of course the effects of the alcohol in a couple of drinks feel nice too. I very rarely get actually drunk to the extent of feeling ill, but I'll have a beer or two most days because I really like beer. Beer is my favourite because really great stuff is relatively accessible. I can buy best the beers in the world for the cost of a pretty average bottle of wine. I can buy a bottle of Duvel in a convenience store for less than any bottle of wine they sell (admittedly most convenience stores don't sell it, but almost all supermarkets do). I can buy a 75cl bottle of Rodenbach Grand Cru for £12. You couldn't get an empty bottle of a Bordeaux Grand Cru for that!

by 1ris 10y ago

chestervonwinch 10y ago

About 3 drinks per day puts you from 1.5 to 3 times more likely to develop various cancers, according to: http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet#q2 http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/al...

brador 10y ago
It's just sugary yeast water though. My guess is it's the obesity from drinking that increases the chance of the cancers not the drink itself. Which has then created a correlation between alcohol and the cancers cited.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
  It's not just sugary yeast water, it's alcohol, a toxin. If alcohol were not the cause but fat/obesity, we wouldn't see cancer concentrated on the oropharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colon and rectum.
- icegreentea 10y ago
  Its not just sugary yeast water. The first step of alcohol metabolism is conversion to acetaldehyde, which is then processed further into acetic acid. Acetaldehyde is very much a carcinogen (and its also directly DNA damaging). The science is super clear. We even have this control population called "east asians". The "asian flush" phenomenon is the result of hyperactive ADH1 (which converts ethanol to acetaldehyde) and relatively inactive forms of the enzymes required for the result of the conversion, resulting in acetaldehyde sticking around in higher quantities and for much longer than say a european population.
  - joshyeager 10y ago
    Do East Asians have a higher likelihood of types of cancer that could be linked to alcohol use? I've never seen that claim, but it would be interesting if it were true.
    - icegreentea 10y ago
      You can give this a shot. http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000050 http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...
      - joshyeager 10y ago
        Very interesting, thanks!
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      Japanese and south koreans are known to have the highest rates in the world of stomach cancer. And they happen to be East Asian and drink often.
1ris 10y ago
Yes, this is what I'm referring to. This information is completly meaningless to me. How does a 1.5 to 3 times higher cancer risk affect my mortality? A 100 times elevated risk in extreme uncommon diseases is absoluty irrelevant, but a 10 percent increase to get something very common is quite important. Likewise is the age when these disease typically break out. If it's typically not before 85, I wouldn't mind. If it's often before 40, I would dearly. I know that alcohol increases the risk for prostate cancer. But prostate cancer typically starts at very high age and is usually just a minor hassle. The typical infected person dies of something else and has a usual life expectancy. How to these factors from 1.5 to 3 affect my mortality? Should I care? I want to say something like say "I'm drinking $n drinks a week, and in order to compensate that I stop doing other things with a similar risk".
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Cancer is not uncommon, 1 person out of 3 gets it if they live long enough.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    "Cancer" is not a single disease that can be lumped together like this. It is a large group of different diseases that share a similar mechanism (cell mutation and unchecked growth). Without information about what specific cancers are involved, it may be as the GP said: an elevated risk of a rare cancer.
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      Alright, how about that then ? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172907/table/tbl2/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3172907/table/tb...
- conception 10y ago
  It's sorta hard to say because most of your risk just depends on your genetics. You could be in a happy genetic lottery of 1 : 1,000,000,000 of getting cancer before 50 or you could have terrible genes and be in the 1:100,000 lotto of getting cancer before your 50. If you drink in excess, you're buying three tickets for whichever lotto your in instead of the single ticket you get when you're born. And you collect these tickets all through your life - flying in airplanes a lot, staying in the sun a lot, smoking, etc. You just never know which lotto you're in so it's hard to say, with today's technology, how it will affect you. That's why some people smoke till their 90 without a problem and others get lung cancer much younger. Different lottos.

tshtf 10y ago

"Light-to-moderate alcohol consumption has been shown in several prospective studies to reduce the risk of all-cause mortality and several cardiac outcomes, including cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality in men " https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140194/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140194/

lern_too_spel 10y ago
See the articles that cited that one, and a different picture emerges. "Beneficial associations between low intensity alcohol consumption and all cause mortality may in part be attributable to inappropriate selection of a referent group and weak adjustment for confounders." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4353285/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4353285/

wwweston 10y ago

I'm more or less lifelong teetotal, but about 4 years ago, I started considering light drinking based off of widely popular reports of health benefits of the occasional glass of wine and some all-cause mortality reduction studies. Given that I wasn't sure how well the media had reported these and if I was either motivated enough of or enough of a scientist to evaluate research directly, I decided to ask doctors if I should do this. In short, to provide me with curial end-user friendly information. So I've pretty much asked most MD I've seen since, five total. The responses fell into two categories: * "Eh, if you already drink, it's probably OK, but for heavens sake, of all the new things to take up for health benefits, one could do so much better. Get your exercise, diet, dental health, stress levels, and sleep quality dialed in, then maybe statins, then maybe a glass of wine for health." * "We never advise people to start. There are too many risks. If you enjoy alcohol, be responsible and moderate, but it the opposite of an asset to your health." Of course, doctors aren't perfect, I have a limited sample of them, and I may not be summarizing their response correctly. It's probably best for most people to ask doctors directly along with conducting what review of medical literature they can if they're up to it.

lostlogin 10y ago
It's not a hard subject to research yourself and I would bet that it wouldn't take too long to be more up to date that a lot of the people you have gone to see.

lucaspiller 10y ago

> I like alcohol very much Could I ask what you actually like about it? I used to be a moderate drinker but a few years ago I just thought "what's the point?". The only reason why I drank was because my friends drank, and nearly all the times I met my friends was to drink. Since then I've moved to a different city for work, and I've made new friends with mostly people who don't drink. Yesterday we went to a lake to swim and chill out, which I couldn't even dream about doing with my old friends. A lot of people who I've spoken to who like to drink say it helps their stress levels. In my case I've always been quite a stressful person, and I haven't noticed it get worse since I've stopped. Not having woken up hung over for over 2 years is good though :D As for the supposed health benefits of drinking, I think in my case I'm better off not drinking. A few times I got blind drunk, but even being tipsy I would be concerned about accidentally walking in front of a car or slipping onto a railway track.

ascorbic 10y ago
Good alcoholic drinks taste great, and there are few non-alcoholic drinks that can match the complexity of flavour that you'll find in the best of them. And of course the effects of the alcohol in a couple of drinks feel nice too. I very rarely get actually drunk to the extent of feeling ill, but I'll have a beer or two most days because I really like beer. Beer is my favourite because really great stuff is relatively accessible. I can buy best the beers in the world for the cost of a pretty average bottle of wine. I can buy a bottle of Duvel in a convenience store for less than any bottle of wine they sell (admittedly most convenience stores don't sell it, but almost all supermarkets do). I can buy a 75cl bottle of Rodenbach Grand Cru for £12. You couldn't get an empty bottle of a Bordeaux Grand Cru for that!