9 ms·

Even moderate drinking could harm the brain

90 points by obeone 9y ago

stuartd 9y ago
From Money by Martin Amis: -- I gestured at my litre of fizzy red wine. “Want a drop of this?” I asked him. "No thanks. I try not to drink at lunchtime.” "So do I. But I never quite make it.” "I feel like shit all day if I drink at lunchtime.” "Me too. But I feel like shit all lunchtime if I don’t.” "Yes, well it all comes down to choices, doesn’t it?” he said. "It’s the same in the evenings. Do you want to feel good at night or do you want to feel good in the morning? It’s the same with life. Do you want to feel good young or do you want to feel good old? One or the other, not both.” "Isn’t it a tragedy?”
- nicolashahn 9y ago
  Until technology advances far enough to where hangovers are a thing of the past, or liver replacements get cheap, or we just live forever.
letitgo12345 9y ago
https://twitter.com/f2harrell/status/872496449241718787 https://twitter.com/f2harrell/status/872496449241718787
- letitgo12345 9y ago
  Why the downvote? Guy is a well known statistician pointing out some statistical flaws in the study...
  - neogodless 9y ago
    The first rule of Hacker News is that you don't talk about downvotes. But I'd like to educate you, so here goes. While I didn't personally vote you down, I can absolutely make a guess why. You posted a URL (a Twitter one, no less) with absolutely zero context at all. You didn't say "Here's what [well known statistician] has to say about this study." You also pointed to the Tweet, rather than the article (or in this case, more specifically, the recent update to an already existing article) that the statistician Tweeted about. You left all the work up to the reader (two clicks and a bunch of reading before they know why you posted a nondescript URL). Why should anyone click on a URL to a Tweet without context? They shouldn't, which means that the URL adds no value to the conversation, which means the comment gets voted down.
  - mikestew 9y ago
    neogodless got it right. I didn’t downvote your particular comment, but I often downvote similar ones that effectively say, “I have no counter argument, so read this random link that’s probably some wackadoodle conspiracy theory, but I’ll give you absolutely no context to signal ‘wackadoodle’ from ‘reasonable argument’.” If you have something to say, say it. Don’t just barf up a link to $DEITY knows where. IOW, don’t be lazy with your comments.
- andai 9y ago
  > A very high-profile paper was published in BMJ on 2017-06-06: Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study by Anya Topiwala et al. > The authors had a golden opportunity to estimate the dose-response relationship between amount of alcohol consumed and quantitative brain changes. Instead the authors squandered the data by doing analyzes that either assumed that responses are linear in alcohol consumption or worse, by splitting consumption into 6 heterogeneous intervals when in fact consumption was shown in their Figure 3 to have a nice continuous distribution. > How much more informative (and statistically powerful) it would have been to fit a quadratic or a restricted cubic spline function to consumption to estimate the continuous dose-response curve. Article: http://www.fharrell.com/2017/04/statistical-errors-in-medical-literature.html#alcohol http://www.fharrell.com/2017/04/statistical-errors-in-medica... Study: http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 PDF: http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/357/bmj.j2353.full.pdf http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/357/bmj.j2353.full.pdf
ihaveajob 9y ago
I take issue with the way moderate drinking is defined in this and other studies. Drinking, like the article states, "about 5 to 7 beers or 6 to 8 glasses of wine" in one week is very different if you have one beer a day, or if you drink the same amount on a Saturday night outing. In Mediterranean countries it's pretty common to have a glass with some/most meals, but the regular weekend binging is a relatively new practice. Perhaps that explains overall population health differences with Anglo countries.
- pdexter 9y ago
  > "about 5 to 7 beers or 6 to 8 glasses of wine" in one week is very different if you have one beer a day, or if you drink the same amount on a Saturday night outing. Is this true?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - andai 9y ago
    Having done both, it certainly feels true. I can't speak for my liver, though.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    Binge drinking is more harmful, so don't binge. But people incorrectly think you can just spread out the drinks over a week and be fine, Drinking one glass (275 ml, not that big) of wine (12%, not that strong) every day is something like 23 units. We know that's increasing risks of a range of harm. EDIT: I got my mls wrong! (Thanks mattmanser for pointing this out). 175 * 12 = just over 2 units.
    - yladiz 9y ago
      Who is "we"?
    - mattmanser 9y ago
      275ml is half a pint, or one VERY LARGE glass, so, yes it is that big. That's over a third of a bottle of wine. UK standard measures are 125ml small, 175ml medium, 250ml large. 175ml is a normal glass of wine and is 2.3 units, or 16 units a week. 23 units is 2 and a bit bottles of wine. You've got your units wrong. https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-law/specified-quantities https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-law/sp... http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/alcohol/Pages/alcohol-units.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/alcohol/Pages/alcohol-units.aspx
daxorid 9y ago
were three times more likely to have hippocampal atrophy compared with those who did not drink. What is the baseline rate? 3x more likely has wildly different outcomes if the base rate of atrophy is 0.1% versus 10%.
atemerev 9y ago
Cheers!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sunstone 9y ago
Jeez, now you tell me.
likelynew 9y ago
I don't think I believe this. I know that it's associated with me and can be my bias purely. But for now I will refer to this well written article: https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8264355/research-study-hype https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8264355/research-study-hype (This is why you shouldn’t believe that exciting new medical study)
- aaronchall 9y ago
  I agree with your sentiment, I would appreciate it if we had an ongoing meta-analysis of pre-existing studies instead of hype - but non-hype doesn't get people to pay attention to the news, and if the news doesn't have everyone's attention, how can they sell advertising?
robg 9y ago
Uncontrolled common cause: Alcohol use, daily stress, and sleep quality. Stress and sleep affect "mental skills" more than any other, esp over a 30 year period.
- jjt-yn_t 9y ago
  not to mention mood, literacy...
edmanet 9y ago
Too late for me then
simonsarris 9y ago
From the study itself: http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 > Principal findings > The relation was dose dependent, and increased odds of hippocampal atrophy were found even in moderate drinkers (14-<21 units/week in men). That seems like a big range. > Strengths and limitations > The hippocampal atrophy associations we found in the total sample were replicated in men alone but not in women. This could reflect a lower power to detect an effect in women, in part because the sample was dominated by men (a reflection of the sex disparity in the civil service in the 1980s) and in part because few of the included women drank heavily. That seems like it should be mentioned in the CBS article. ~~~ I wish more studies accounted for how drinking is done. It is worth wondering if drinking 2 drinks a day, 3 days a week is better for you than drinking 1 drink 6 days in a row. Moderate drinking some days but not others, perhaps your liver/brain do better because they get "total rest days", whereas light/moderate drinking every day may put them in a constant state of irritation or stress. Just like with workouts.
- kafkaesq 9y ago
  I wish more studies accounted for how drinking is done. Indeed. From what my own innards tell me, drinking almost any amount just before sleeping feels particularly disruptive to the various housekeeping activities said innards are entrusted with. The same amount in the afternoon (or well before nocturnal drowsiness sets in), rather less so. It would also be nice to know to what extent the various damages detailed in the article compare with those of, say, loss of sleep or poor nutrition - or even (seriously now) social isolation, stress, or watching too much TV. And to what extent the body and brain may be able to repair these damages, over time.
- sjg007 9y ago
  The study says that it is dose dependent with atrophy seen at moderate drinking levels. So total amount of alcohol consumed per week.
  - bryondowd 9y ago
    That's the point. If they see atrophy in people who drink 14-20 units per week, that leaves room to wonder whether there's a significant difference between people within that group depending on whether they drink 2-3 units every day or drink 4-7 units three days a week with four rest days. You could then go further and see if it is different to have four consecutive rest days and three consecutive drinking days versus having each drinking day spaced with at least one rest day. Etc. The point is that lumping everyone who has 14-20 drinks in a week into one category makes for a large variation in behaviors and possible interactions.
omginternets 9y ago
Given how terrible mainstream news outlets are at reporting scientific results, I strongly feel that we should discourage users from linking to such "stories". It lowers the quality of discourse. Sci-Am is one thing, CBS News really is another...
pc2g4d 9y ago
This study seems small and with the effect being the opposite of that previously found it basically amounts to "What's going on here???" I did like this from the article, though: In an accompanying editorial, Killian Welch, consultant neuropsychiatrist at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, says the findings "strengthen the argument that drinking habits many regard as normal have adverse consequences for health." "This is important," he writes. "We all use rationalizations to justify persistence with behaviors not in our long term interest. With publication of this paper, justification of 'moderate' drinking on the grounds of brain health becomes a little harder." --- In company with Ioannidis's article "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"[1], I believe the rationalization effect is big in such studies. People want to believe that the things they already do are virtuous, thus there's a bias toward finding that chocolate, wine, etc., are all actually good for you. Not to mention respective industries that would benefit from such findings. 1: http://faculty.dbmi.pitt.edu/day/Bioinf2118/Bioinf-2118-2013/Ioannidis-journal.pmed.0020124.pdf http://faculty.dbmi.pitt.edu/day/Bioinf2118/Bioinf-2118-2013...
_RPM 9y ago
I really dislike the culture of drinking at startups. I don't like to drink unless I'm with my girlfriend.
- david-cako 9y ago
  I don't like to drink unless I'm with her either.
  - Infernal 9y ago
    Appreciate the subtle levity :)
  - _RPM 9y ago
    I didn't realize you were insulting me until I read the child comment. I thought you meant you don't like to drink unless you're with your own girlfriend.
- digitalshankar 9y ago
  I don't drink even if I'm with my gf, FYI I don't have gf.
akyu 9y ago
Quit drinking completely 6 months ago. Don't have any intention of picking it back up. Friends think I'm weird, but the mental clarity is worth it. Funny how alcohol is so ingrained in our culture that it's strange not to drink it.
- stinos 9y ago
  Yeah, not really related to the study directly and being anecdotal, but I can attest that during periods in which I drank daily, and sometimes heavily, mental clarity was indeed the exact opposite of what I felt.
- emerongi 9y ago
  Recently I heard my mother utter something like (not about me): "Does so-and-so drink? He does? Ok, I was just afraid he is a weirdo." My father and mother and step-father all smash it hard on weekends. Like passing-out-hard. Most friends as well. It's absolutely ridiculous. There's way more interesting things to do in life.
  - antisthenes 9y ago
    That isn't normal. Drinking to the point of passing out is alcoholism no matter how you look at it. Try to get them help if you value them.
    - stinos 9y ago
      I wanted to say that is too general of a statement and depends of your definition of alcoholism, but then I looked up the current definition [1]. In a medical context, alcoholism is said to exist when two or more of the following conditions is present: a person drinks large amounts over a long time period, has difficulty cutting down, acquiring and drinking alcohol takes up a great deal of time, alcohol is strongly desired, usage results in not fulfilling responsibilities, usage results in social problems, usage results in health problems, usage results in risky situations, withdrawal occurs when stopping, and alcohol tolerance has occurred with use So yes it's not a stretch to consider just drinking to the point of (almost) passing out alcoholism (ignoring whether or not the person drinks outside of these episodes). Doing that like twice in a year doesn't feel like alcoholism though. More like one of the many means to satisfying my constant urge and craving to 'go hard'. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism
openasocket 9y ago
Do they take into account diet? I don't know anything about hippocampal atrophy, but I know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsakoff%27s_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsakoff%27s_syndrome which is a form of severe memory loss is usually seen in very heavy drinkers, but isn't caused by the drinking, but rather thiamine deficiency (alcoholics tend do have poor diets). I'm wondering if moderate drinkers may have slightly worse diets and so you see the same effect on a much smaller scale. There's also other factors like sleep and daily stress that may also play a role. I'm sure the scientists who performed this 30-year study knew about all this, are there things they did (or could have done) in this study to isolate the effects due to alcohol?
- sjg007 9y ago
  Measure thiamine levels?
andai 9y ago
Link to the study: http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 PDF: http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/357/bmj.j2353.full.pdf http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/357/bmj.j2353.full.pdf Criticism by Frank Harrell: > A very high-profile paper was published in BMJ on 2017-06-06: Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study by Anya Topiwala et al. > The authors had a golden opportunity to estimate the dose-response relationship between amount of alcohol consumed and quantitative brain changes. Instead the authors squandered the data by doing analyzes that either assumed that responses are linear in alcohol consumption or worse, by splitting consumption into 6 heterogeneous intervals when in fact consumption was shown in their Figure 3 to have a nice continuous distribution. > How much more informative (and statistically powerful) it would have been to fit a quadratic or a restricted cubic spline function to consumption to estimate the continuous dose-response curve. Article: http://www.fharrell.com/2017/04/statistical-errors-in-medica.. http://www.fharrell.com/2017/04/statistical-errors-in-medica....
jacquesm 9y ago
Programmers that drink (hard) are like cooks blunting their knives. I knew a couple in my 20´s that went down this route, they are not programming today. The brain is a complex piece of machinery and damage that you do to it when you are young will come back to haunt you later in life, when the aging of the brain removes some of the reserves. It is really hard to see people that were whip smart lose their faculties, especially if they had a hand in the change themselves.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
chicob 9y ago
If I didn't know what the findings were, and if I looked merely at the graph in Fig. 6 of the BMJ article, I'd say that higher lexical scores in younger years correlate with higher declines in that same score. Does abstinence correlate with lower scores? I don't understand the three different starting points. I was expecting a normalized score (~20) with several different levels of decline.
mothers 9y ago
we've been telling people this for years. drinking is stupid if health is your priority. (we understand there are other reasons you may drink, like fitting in, which is invaluable in its own right) we challenge anyone to give any health benefits of drinking that are not social (because drinking is not necessary to have the social benefits) that drinking water doesn't also give you. we will wait
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  Meh, I come from a family of moderate-heavy drinkers. All my ancestors lived into their 90s and stayed relatively healthy until the end. Probably just lucky genes, but health nuts generally don't live much longer than people who partake in unhealthy things in moderation...

90 points by obeone 9y ago

From Money by Martin Amis: -- I gestured at my litre of fizzy red wine. “Want a drop of this?” I asked him. "No thanks. I try not to drink at lunchtime.” "So do I. But I never quite make it.” "I feel like shit all day if I drink at lunchtime.” "Me too. But I feel like shit all lunchtime if I don’t.” "Yes, well it all comes down to choices, doesn’t it?” he said. "It’s the same in the evenings. Do you want to feel good at night or do you want to feel good in the morning? It’s the same with life. Do you want to feel good young or do you want to feel good old? One or the other, not both.” "Isn’t it a tragedy?”

nicolashahn 9y ago
Until technology advances far enough to where hangovers are a thing of the past, or liver replacements get cheap, or we just live forever.

letitgo12345 9y ago

https://twitter.com/f2harrell/status/872496449241718787 https://twitter.com/f2harrell/status/872496449241718787

letitgo12345 9y ago
Why the downvote? Guy is a well known statistician pointing out some statistical flaws in the study...
- neogodless 9y ago
  The first rule of Hacker News is that you don't talk about downvotes. But I'd like to educate you, so here goes. While I didn't personally vote you down, I can absolutely make a guess why. You posted a URL (a Twitter one, no less) with absolutely zero context at all. You didn't say "Here's what [well known statistician] has to say about this study." You also pointed to the Tweet, rather than the article (or in this case, more specifically, the recent update to an already existing article) that the statistician Tweeted about. You left all the work up to the reader (two clicks and a bunch of reading before they know why you posted a nondescript URL). Why should anyone click on a URL to a Tweet without context? They shouldn't, which means that the URL adds no value to the conversation, which means the comment gets voted down.
- mikestew 9y ago
  neogodless got it right. I didn’t downvote your particular comment, but I often downvote similar ones that effectively say, “I have no counter argument, so read this random link that’s probably some wackadoodle conspiracy theory, but I’ll give you absolutely no context to signal ‘wackadoodle’ from ‘reasonable argument’.” If you have something to say, say it. Don’t just barf up a link to $DEITY knows where. IOW, don’t be lazy with your comments.
andai 9y ago
> A very high-profile paper was published in BMJ on 2017-06-06: Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study by Anya Topiwala et al. > The authors had a golden opportunity to estimate the dose-response relationship between amount of alcohol consumed and quantitative brain changes. Instead the authors squandered the data by doing analyzes that either assumed that responses are linear in alcohol consumption or worse, by splitting consumption into 6 heterogeneous intervals when in fact consumption was shown in their Figure 3 to have a nice continuous distribution. > How much more informative (and statistically powerful) it would have been to fit a quadratic or a restricted cubic spline function to consumption to estimate the continuous dose-response curve. Article: http://www.fharrell.com/2017/04/statistical-errors-in-medical-literature.html#alcohol http://www.fharrell.com/2017/04/statistical-errors-in-medica... Study: http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 PDF: http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/357/bmj.j2353.full.pdf http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/357/bmj.j2353.full.pdf

ihaveajob 9y ago

I take issue with the way moderate drinking is defined in this and other studies. Drinking, like the article states, "about 5 to 7 beers or 6 to 8 glasses of wine" in one week is very different if you have one beer a day, or if you drink the same amount on a Saturday night outing. In Mediterranean countries it's pretty common to have a glass with some/most meals, but the regular weekend binging is a relatively new practice. Perhaps that explains overall population health differences with Anglo countries.

pdexter 9y ago
> "about 5 to 7 beers or 6 to 8 glasses of wine" in one week is very different if you have one beer a day, or if you drink the same amount on a Saturday night outing. Is this true?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- andai 9y ago
  Having done both, it certainly feels true. I can't speak for my liver, though.
- DanBC 9y ago
  Binge drinking is more harmful, so don't binge. But people incorrectly think you can just spread out the drinks over a week and be fine, Drinking one glass (275 ml, not that big) of wine (12%, not that strong) every day is something like 23 units. We know that's increasing risks of a range of harm. EDIT: I got my mls wrong! (Thanks mattmanser for pointing this out). 175 * 12 = just over 2 units.
  - yladiz 9y ago
    Who is "we"?
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    275ml is half a pint, or one VERY LARGE glass, so, yes it is that big. That's over a third of a bottle of wine. UK standard measures are 125ml small, 175ml medium, 250ml large. 175ml is a normal glass of wine and is 2.3 units, or 16 units a week. 23 units is 2 and a bit bottles of wine. You've got your units wrong. https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-law/specified-quantities https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-law/sp... http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/alcohol/Pages/alcohol-units.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/alcohol/Pages/alcohol-units.aspx

daxorid 9y ago

were three times more likely to have hippocampal atrophy compared with those who did not drink. What is the baseline rate? 3x more likely has wildly different outcomes if the base rate of atrophy is 0.1% versus 10%.

atemerev 9y ago

Cheers!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sunstone 9y ago

Jeez, now you tell me.

likelynew 9y ago

I don't think I believe this. I know that it's associated with me and can be my bias purely. But for now I will refer to this well written article: https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8264355/research-study-hype https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8264355/research-study-hype (This is why you shouldn’t believe that exciting new medical study)

aaronchall 9y ago
I agree with your sentiment, I would appreciate it if we had an ongoing meta-analysis of pre-existing studies instead of hype - but non-hype doesn't get people to pay attention to the news, and if the news doesn't have everyone's attention, how can they sell advertising?

robg 9y ago

Uncontrolled common cause: Alcohol use, daily stress, and sleep quality. Stress and sleep affect "mental skills" more than any other, esp over a 30 year period.

jjt-yn_t 9y ago
not to mention mood, literacy...

edmanet 9y ago

Too late for me then

simonsarris 9y ago

From the study itself: http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 > Principal findings > The relation was dose dependent, and increased odds of hippocampal atrophy were found even in moderate drinkers (14-<21 units/week in men). That seems like a big range. > Strengths and limitations > The hippocampal atrophy associations we found in the total sample were replicated in men alone but not in women. This could reflect a lower power to detect an effect in women, in part because the sample was dominated by men (a reflection of the sex disparity in the civil service in the 1980s) and in part because few of the included women drank heavily. That seems like it should be mentioned in the CBS article. ~~~ I wish more studies accounted for how drinking is done. It is worth wondering if drinking 2 drinks a day, 3 days a week is better for you than drinking 1 drink 6 days in a row. Moderate drinking some days but not others, perhaps your liver/brain do better because they get "total rest days", whereas light/moderate drinking every day may put them in a constant state of irritation or stress. Just like with workouts.

kafkaesq 9y ago
I wish more studies accounted for how drinking is done. Indeed. From what my own innards tell me, drinking almost any amount just before sleeping feels particularly disruptive to the various housekeeping activities said innards are entrusted with. The same amount in the afternoon (or well before nocturnal drowsiness sets in), rather less so. It would also be nice to know to what extent the various damages detailed in the article compare with those of, say, loss of sleep or poor nutrition - or even (seriously now) social isolation, stress, or watching too much TV. And to what extent the body and brain may be able to repair these damages, over time.
sjg007 9y ago
The study says that it is dose dependent with atrophy seen at moderate drinking levels. So total amount of alcohol consumed per week.
- bryondowd 9y ago
  That's the point. If they see atrophy in people who drink 14-20 units per week, that leaves room to wonder whether there's a significant difference between people within that group depending on whether they drink 2-3 units every day or drink 4-7 units three days a week with four rest days. You could then go further and see if it is different to have four consecutive rest days and three consecutive drinking days versus having each drinking day spaced with at least one rest day. Etc. The point is that lumping everyone who has 14-20 drinks in a week into one category makes for a large variation in behaviors and possible interactions.

omginternets 9y ago

Given how terrible mainstream news outlets are at reporting scientific results, I strongly feel that we should discourage users from linking to such "stories". It lowers the quality of discourse. Sci-Am is one thing, CBS News really is another...

pc2g4d 9y ago

This study seems small and with the effect being the opposite of that previously found it basically amounts to "What's going on here???" I did like this from the article, though: In an accompanying editorial, Killian Welch, consultant neuropsychiatrist at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, says the findings "strengthen the argument that drinking habits many regard as normal have adverse consequences for health." "This is important," he writes. "We all use rationalizations to justify persistence with behaviors not in our long term interest. With publication of this paper, justification of 'moderate' drinking on the grounds of brain health becomes a little harder." --- In company with Ioannidis's article "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"[1], I believe the rationalization effect is big in such studies. People want to believe that the things they already do are virtuous, thus there's a bias toward finding that chocolate, wine, etc., are all actually good for you. Not to mention respective industries that would benefit from such findings. 1: http://faculty.dbmi.pitt.edu/day/Bioinf2118/Bioinf-2118-2013/Ioannidis-journal.pmed.0020124.pdf http://faculty.dbmi.pitt.edu/day/Bioinf2118/Bioinf-2118-2013...

_RPM 9y ago

I really dislike the culture of drinking at startups. I don't like to drink unless I'm with my girlfriend.

david-cako 9y ago
I don't like to drink unless I'm with her either.
- Infernal 9y ago
  Appreciate the subtle levity :)
- _RPM 9y ago
  I didn't realize you were insulting me until I read the child comment. I thought you meant you don't like to drink unless you're with your own girlfriend.
digitalshankar 9y ago
I don't drink even if I'm with my gf, FYI I don't have gf.

akyu 9y ago

Quit drinking completely 6 months ago. Don't have any intention of picking it back up. Friends think I'm weird, but the mental clarity is worth it. Funny how alcohol is so ingrained in our culture that it's strange not to drink it.

stinos 9y ago
Yeah, not really related to the study directly and being anecdotal, but I can attest that during periods in which I drank daily, and sometimes heavily, mental clarity was indeed the exact opposite of what I felt.
emerongi 9y ago
Recently I heard my mother utter something like (not about me): "Does so-and-so drink? He does? Ok, I was just afraid he is a weirdo." My father and mother and step-father all smash it hard on weekends. Like passing-out-hard. Most friends as well. It's absolutely ridiculous. There's way more interesting things to do in life.
- antisthenes 9y ago
  That isn't normal. Drinking to the point of passing out is alcoholism no matter how you look at it. Try to get them help if you value them.
  - stinos 9y ago
    I wanted to say that is too general of a statement and depends of your definition of alcoholism, but then I looked up the current definition [1]. In a medical context, alcoholism is said to exist when two or more of the following conditions is present: a person drinks large amounts over a long time period, has difficulty cutting down, acquiring and drinking alcohol takes up a great deal of time, alcohol is strongly desired, usage results in not fulfilling responsibilities, usage results in social problems, usage results in health problems, usage results in risky situations, withdrawal occurs when stopping, and alcohol tolerance has occurred with use So yes it's not a stretch to consider just drinking to the point of (almost) passing out alcoholism (ignoring whether or not the person drinks outside of these episodes). Doing that like twice in a year doesn't feel like alcoholism though. More like one of the many means to satisfying my constant urge and craving to 'go hard'. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism

openasocket 9y ago

Do they take into account diet? I don't know anything about hippocampal atrophy, but I know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsakoff%27s_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korsakoff%27s_syndrome which is a form of severe memory loss is usually seen in very heavy drinkers, but isn't caused by the drinking, but rather thiamine deficiency (alcoholics tend do have poor diets). I'm wondering if moderate drinkers may have slightly worse diets and so you see the same effect on a much smaller scale. There's also other factors like sleep and daily stress that may also play a role. I'm sure the scientists who performed this 30-year study knew about all this, are there things they did (or could have done) in this study to isolate the effects due to alcohol?

sjg007 9y ago
Measure thiamine levels?

andai 9y ago

Link to the study: http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 PDF: http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/357/bmj.j2353.full.pdf http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/357/bmj.j2353.full.pdf Criticism by Frank Harrell: > A very high-profile paper was published in BMJ on 2017-06-06: Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study by Anya Topiwala et al. > The authors had a golden opportunity to estimate the dose-response relationship between amount of alcohol consumed and quantitative brain changes. Instead the authors squandered the data by doing analyzes that either assumed that responses are linear in alcohol consumption or worse, by splitting consumption into 6 heterogeneous intervals when in fact consumption was shown in their Figure 3 to have a nice continuous distribution. > How much more informative (and statistically powerful) it would have been to fit a quadratic or a restricted cubic spline function to consumption to estimate the continuous dose-response curve. Article: http://www.fharrell.com/2017/04/statistical-errors-in-medica.. http://www.fharrell.com/2017/04/statistical-errors-in-medica....

jacquesm 9y ago

Programmers that drink (hard) are like cooks blunting their knives. I knew a couple in my 20´s that went down this route, they are not programming today. The brain is a complex piece of machinery and damage that you do to it when you are young will come back to haunt you later in life, when the aging of the brain removes some of the reserves. It is really hard to see people that were whip smart lose their faculties, especially if they had a hand in the change themselves.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

chicob 9y ago

If I didn't know what the findings were, and if I looked merely at the graph in Fig. 6 of the BMJ article, I'd say that higher lexical scores in younger years correlate with higher declines in that same score. Does abstinence correlate with lower scores? I don't understand the three different starting points. I was expecting a normalized score (~20) with several different levels of decline.

mothers 9y ago

we've been telling people this for years. drinking is stupid if health is your priority. (we understand there are other reasons you may drink, like fitting in, which is invaluable in its own right) we challenge anyone to give any health benefits of drinking that are not social (because drinking is not necessary to have the social benefits) that drinking water doesn't also give you. we will wait

Mikeb85 9y ago
Meh, I come from a family of moderate-heavy drinkers. All my ancestors lived into their 90s and stayed relatively healthy until the end. Probably just lucky genes, but health nuts generally don't live much longer than people who partake in unhealthy things in moderation...