6 ms·

Why Alcohol Is Good for You

39 points by subbu 16y ago

jseifer 16y ago
Summary: the author of the article speculates that moderate alcohol consumption leads people to socialize and not be lonely. People who are lonely are more likely to die from "just about everything." There's no actual study done here -- the author only references other studies. This article is about the author's hypothesis.
- NationalHQ 16y ago
  thanks for the tldr. btw tldr
- andre3k1 16y ago
  This article, similar to "The Web Is Dead", is about nothing more than link baiting. Wired has been going down hill as of late.
  - kiba 16y ago
    How do you measure that rate of "becoming worse"?
    - falsestprophet 16y ago
      with careful consideration and scientific rigor, I'm sure
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- mcn 16y ago
  Which is weird, given that the most interesting thing about the study linked in the article is that it has more controls than previous alcohol mortality studies, including social behavior factors, and it still finds that moderate drinking correlates with reduced mortality rates among older white adults.
dooshydoo 16y ago
These studies that whet the appetite for 'sin secrets' are entertaining, but that's about it. I favor reductionism. Maybe it's not forced brain evolution or African-plain-life recreation. Maybe it's because when you drink you tend to eat less, which is, good.
- billswift 16y ago
  The only inherent advantage in eating less is getting fewer calories; alcohol has a substantial number of calories itself, so no benefit there.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Also, I think that studies (and my own experience) have shown that alcohol increases the amount you eat anyway.
weston 16y ago
I'd drink to this.
tfh 16y ago
Correlation does not strictly mean causation. Our statistics professor brought this example once, he explained it that people who don't drink (in a western society) have often problems with their health or are taking medication. Statistics could be often misleading. Another example was that people with bigger feet were more likely to be earn more money. Guess why?
- travisp 16y ago
  While true, it's not just correlation that alcohol may be good for you. There's growing evidence that, among other things, alcohol boosts your HDL (good) cholesterol. For one controlled study see: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/102/19/2347 http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/102/19/2347 The conclusion from the controlled study? "Alcohol intake increases HDL-C in a dose-dependent fashion, associated with and possibly caused by an increase in the TR of HDL apolipoproteins apoA-I and -II." Of course, this is different from the author's hypotheses about socializing and loneliness, something much harder to test.
  - carbocation 16y ago
    But now we are several steps removed from the outcome of interest. We can postulate the following: EtOH -> higher HDL -> increased reverse cholesterol transport (or another HDL function) -> reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. But there is a problem here. While higher HDL epidemiologically correlates with reduced CVD, the only clinical trial of a drug that purely raises HDL showed increased mortality. Now, the trial was complicated by off-target effects of the drug, but my point is that we actually do not know if raising "good" cholesterol is good!
    - carbocation 16y ago
      Given that this actually is my area of expertise, I'd be quite interested to hear an explanation for the downvotes.
    - tshtf 16y ago
      Doesn't niacin reduce mortality?
randallsquared 16y ago
Since I've taken up light drinking almost entirely for the health benefits, and since I don't drink socially, I hope this hypothesis isn't really the answer. The other day when a co-worker was trying to get me to go to a scotch tasting, he said, "What, do you only drink at home, alone, in the dark?!" I replied that it wasn't usually dark... :)
- Psyonic 16y ago
  Even if your focus is health, why does it always have to be at home, alone?
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    It doesn't have to be -- my co-worker was successful at getting me to agree to go out with the group -- but typically, if I'm around more than a couple people with whom I'm expected to interact, I'm not going to be having fun, so why waste alcohol on that situation? With lowered inhibitions, I might actually announce that I'm not having fun. :)
etal 16y ago
Complete abstinence from alcohol is also correlated with lower education level and poverty. People with less certainty and control over their lives are more likely to distrust alcohol, justifiably -- the risk that comes with it is more serious for them.
- hnhg 16y ago
  In which part of the world is it correlated?
  - etal 16y ago
    The U.S., especially the southeast.
- retube 16y ago
  Hmm, I'm quite surprised. For sure, high levels of alcoholism are correlated with poverty and lack of education. Random study: "In the weighted model, a one-unit increase in neighborhood poverty at the prior examination was associated with a 86% increase in the odds of binging" http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/2010/07000/The_Relationship_Between_Neighborhood_Poverty_and.10.aspx http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/2010/07000/The_Relat... Anecdotally, all the cases of alcohol abuse I hear about tend to be in disadvantaged homes.
  - stavrianos 16y ago
    Homes might be disadvantaged by the presence of an alcoholic. A friend of mine came from a home like this- her father spent truly stupendous amounts on alcohol. There was never enough money afterwards.
  - mcn 16y ago
    I'm not sure about the wider population, but the abstainers in the study linked by the article were both "lower SES" and more likely to have had drinking problems in the past.
retube 16y ago
"But here’s the really weird data point: Heavy drinkers also live longer than abstainers." Really? Really? I don't believe it. I'd like to look more closely at the data that supports this. And it depends on the definition of "heavy" drinking. If it's a regular one glass a day, sure. If it's a bottle a gin a couple of times a week I would beg to differ. Alcohol is insanely destructive. Whilst no doubt this study is picking up on correlations between lifestyle characteristics which would explain these results, there's no doubt that booze is bad for you. It rots your brain, wrecks your liver, makes you depressed and makes you violent. It's mental that for £20 I can pop into any off-licence, corner shop or supermarket in the land and buy enough alcohol to literally kill myself. It's a factor in 100s of thousands of deaths a year (UK) via heart disease, liver cirrhosis, car accidents or violence. It costs the NHS and police forces 10s of billions of pounds a year. It turns town-centres into virtual no-go areas on the weekend. It ruins lives. Yet for some reason not only is it legal, it occupies a cherished position in our culture. Edit: just to clarify, i'm not a prohibitionist. I think alcohol _should_ be legal. Personally I love booze and having a few. But our stance on alcohol versus our stance on other drugs (pot, coke etc) is just utterly illogical, non-sensical, even I would argue, immoral.
- brownleej 16y ago
  The full study is available online, and is linked to in the article. Their definition of "heavy drinking" seems to be more than three drinks per day, which seems like a reasonable definition to me.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    The problem with that definition is that it still lumps modestly-heavy drinkers (two small beers after work, two glasses of wine with dinner) with really heavy drinkers (guzzle whisky until you pass out every afternoon). If you plotted "health problems" vs "amount drunk" you'd probably see a fairly flattish curve from zero up to some level, combined with a sudden increase at very high levels of consumption. The "heavy drinking" number you're getting here is going to be a section of the flat curve combined with a section of the sudden increase, so the number you're getting doesn't tell you much.
- 16y ago
vishaldpatel 16y ago
A thought about "having more friends". People like people who are like them. Since most people drink, you are more likely to have friends if you do.
antirez 16y ago
Great article. Now it's time to go out at the local bar to have a few beers with my friends :)
lucyfor 16y ago
"It’s also essential to note that all of the aforementioned health benefits of alcohol (such as de-stressing and socializing) can also be achieved for free, such as with meditation or by simply being a good friend."
yosho 16y ago
if alcohol drinkers are happier people, and happier people live longer... does that mean people who have a lot of good sex live longer too? I bet they do!
zach 16y ago
So the referenced study prompts a basic but hopefully interesting question about statistics and epidemiology which I hope someone could answer. When they controlled for former problem drinking status and medical status (among other factors), there was a major change in abstainers from 200% increased mortality over moderate drinkers to 51%. So it seems like current abstainers included a significantly death-prone cohort who were former problem drinkers and/or in poor health. Okay, so that makes me wonder what the difference is between controlling for major factors and simply excluding the cohort with factors having that very significant impact on mortality. My question is, at what point should one correct for major factors and at what point is it appropriate to completely segregate the data? What if the size of the group with major factors excluded would be statistically insignificant (i.e. heavy drinkers who have never been problem drinkers)?

39 points by subbu 16y ago

Summary: the author of the article speculates that moderate alcohol consumption leads people to socialize and not be lonely. People who are lonely are more likely to die from "just about everything." There's no actual study done here -- the author only references other studies. This article is about the author's hypothesis.

NationalHQ 16y ago
thanks for the tldr. btw tldr
andre3k1 16y ago
This article, similar to "The Web Is Dead", is about nothing more than link baiting. Wired has been going down hill as of late.
- kiba 16y ago
  How do you measure that rate of "becoming worse"?
  - falsestprophet 16y ago
    with careful consideration and scientific rigor, I'm sure
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mcn 16y ago
Which is weird, given that the most interesting thing about the study linked in the article is that it has more controls than previous alcohol mortality studies, including social behavior factors, and it still finds that moderate drinking correlates with reduced mortality rates among older white adults.

dooshydoo 16y ago

These studies that whet the appetite for 'sin secrets' are entertaining, but that's about it. I favor reductionism. Maybe it's not forced brain evolution or African-plain-life recreation. Maybe it's because when you drink you tend to eat less, which is, good.

billswift 16y ago
The only inherent advantage in eating less is getting fewer calories; alcohol has a substantial number of calories itself, so no benefit there.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Also, I think that studies (and my own experience) have shown that alcohol increases the amount you eat anyway.

weston 16y ago

I'd drink to this.

tfh 16y ago

Correlation does not strictly mean causation. Our statistics professor brought this example once, he explained it that people who don't drink (in a western society) have often problems with their health or are taking medication. Statistics could be often misleading. Another example was that people with bigger feet were more likely to be earn more money. Guess why?

travisp 16y ago
While true, it's not just correlation that alcohol may be good for you. There's growing evidence that, among other things, alcohol boosts your HDL (good) cholesterol. For one controlled study see: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/102/19/2347 http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/102/19/2347 The conclusion from the controlled study? "Alcohol intake increases HDL-C in a dose-dependent fashion, associated with and possibly caused by an increase in the TR of HDL apolipoproteins apoA-I and -II." Of course, this is different from the author's hypotheses about socializing and loneliness, something much harder to test.
- carbocation 16y ago
  But now we are several steps removed from the outcome of interest. We can postulate the following: EtOH -> higher HDL -> increased reverse cholesterol transport (or another HDL function) -> reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. But there is a problem here. While higher HDL epidemiologically correlates with reduced CVD, the only clinical trial of a drug that purely raises HDL showed increased mortality. Now, the trial was complicated by off-target effects of the drug, but my point is that we actually do not know if raising "good" cholesterol is good!
  - carbocation 16y ago
    Given that this actually is my area of expertise, I'd be quite interested to hear an explanation for the downvotes.
  - tshtf 16y ago
    Doesn't niacin reduce mortality?

randallsquared 16y ago

Since I've taken up light drinking almost entirely for the health benefits, and since I don't drink socially, I hope this hypothesis isn't really the answer. The other day when a co-worker was trying to get me to go to a scotch tasting, he said, "What, do you only drink at home, alone, in the dark?!" I replied that it wasn't usually dark... :)

Psyonic 16y ago
Even if your focus is health, why does it always have to be at home, alone?
- randallsquared 16y ago
  It doesn't have to be -- my co-worker was successful at getting me to agree to go out with the group -- but typically, if I'm around more than a couple people with whom I'm expected to interact, I'm not going to be having fun, so why waste alcohol on that situation? With lowered inhibitions, I might actually announce that I'm not having fun. :)

etal 16y ago

Complete abstinence from alcohol is also correlated with lower education level and poverty. People with less certainty and control over their lives are more likely to distrust alcohol, justifiably -- the risk that comes with it is more serious for them.

hnhg 16y ago
In which part of the world is it correlated?
- etal 16y ago
  The U.S., especially the southeast.
retube 16y ago
Hmm, I'm quite surprised. For sure, high levels of alcoholism are correlated with poverty and lack of education. Random study: "In the weighted model, a one-unit increase in neighborhood poverty at the prior examination was associated with a 86% increase in the odds of binging" http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/2010/07000/The_Relationship_Between_Neighborhood_Poverty_and.10.aspx http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/2010/07000/The_Relat... Anecdotally, all the cases of alcohol abuse I hear about tend to be in disadvantaged homes.
- stavrianos 16y ago
  Homes might be disadvantaged by the presence of an alcoholic. A friend of mine came from a home like this- her father spent truly stupendous amounts on alcohol. There was never enough money afterwards.
- mcn 16y ago
  I'm not sure about the wider population, but the abstainers in the study linked by the article were both "lower SES" and more likely to have had drinking problems in the past.

retube 16y ago

"But here’s the really weird data point: Heavy drinkers also live longer than abstainers." Really? Really? I don't believe it. I'd like to look more closely at the data that supports this. And it depends on the definition of "heavy" drinking. If it's a regular one glass a day, sure. If it's a bottle a gin a couple of times a week I would beg to differ. Alcohol is insanely destructive. Whilst no doubt this study is picking up on correlations between lifestyle characteristics which would explain these results, there's no doubt that booze is bad for you. It rots your brain, wrecks your liver, makes you depressed and makes you violent. It's mental that for £20 I can pop into any off-licence, corner shop or supermarket in the land and buy enough alcohol to literally kill myself. It's a factor in 100s of thousands of deaths a year (UK) via heart disease, liver cirrhosis, car accidents or violence. It costs the NHS and police forces 10s of billions of pounds a year. It turns town-centres into virtual no-go areas on the weekend. It ruins lives. Yet for some reason not only is it legal, it occupies a cherished position in our culture. Edit: just to clarify, i'm not a prohibitionist. I think alcohol _should_ be legal. Personally I love booze and having a few. But our stance on alcohol versus our stance on other drugs (pot, coke etc) is just utterly illogical, non-sensical, even I would argue, immoral.

brownleej 16y ago
The full study is available online, and is linked to in the article. Their definition of "heavy drinking" seems to be more than three drinks per day, which seems like a reasonable definition to me.
- hugh3 16y ago
  The problem with that definition is that it still lumps modestly-heavy drinkers (two small beers after work, two glasses of wine with dinner) with really heavy drinkers (guzzle whisky until you pass out every afternoon). If you plotted "health problems" vs "amount drunk" you'd probably see a fairly flattish curve from zero up to some level, combined with a sudden increase at very high levels of consumption. The "heavy drinking" number you're getting here is going to be a section of the flat curve combined with a section of the sudden increase, so the number you're getting doesn't tell you much.
16y ago

vishaldpatel 16y ago

A thought about "having more friends". People like people who are like them. Since most people drink, you are more likely to have friends if you do.

antirez 16y ago

Great article. Now it's time to go out at the local bar to have a few beers with my friends :)

lucyfor 16y ago

"It’s also essential to note that all of the aforementioned health benefits of alcohol (such as de-stressing and socializing) can also be achieved for free, such as with meditation or by simply being a good friend."

yosho 16y ago

if alcohol drinkers are happier people, and happier people live longer... does that mean people who have a lot of good sex live longer too? I bet they do!

zach 16y ago

So the referenced study prompts a basic but hopefully interesting question about statistics and epidemiology which I hope someone could answer. When they controlled for former problem drinking status and medical status (among other factors), there was a major change in abstainers from 200% increased mortality over moderate drinkers to 51%. So it seems like current abstainers included a significantly death-prone cohort who were former problem drinkers and/or in poor health. Okay, so that makes me wonder what the difference is between controlling for major factors and simply excluding the cohort with factors having that very significant impact on mortality. My question is, at what point should one correct for major factors and at what point is it appropriate to completely segregate the data? What if the size of the group with major factors excluded would be statistically insignificant (i.e. heavy drinkers who have never been problem drinkers)?