13 ms·
Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?
- nibs 8y agoBecause the studies that looked at it didn't control for wealth.
- tomp 8y agoNah that’s an obvious one. Having unrelated health problems is a more important confunder (i.e. people with health problems, or old, or mentally ill, are mole likely to not drink).
- wjnc 8y agoPeople with health problems or mentally ill are more likely not to drink? That seems false. Any sources? I found [1] that suggests comorbidity. [1] https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/15771/1/cheers_report%255B1%255D.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj90bDmsNHdAhUFDuwKHauYBckQFjAMegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw3NxmGCkmEurvp_foYKyvq8 https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://...
- mpweiher 8y agoPeople with health problems are told by their doctors to stop drinking alcohol. From TFA: "An analysis from 2007 by an international group of alcohol epidemiologists and addiction researchers, published in Annals of Epidemiology, notes that “as people progress into late middle and old age, their consumption of alcohol declines in tandem with ill health, frailty, dementia, and/or use of medications.” That decline means that, as people become less well—even if they’re not elderly—they will also tend to stop drinking."
- wjnc 8y agoI might have been too subtle since you TFA so nicely. The article points to adverse health related events that cause abstainment. Clear and good the AoE-article works that out. I however point out that it's pretty clear within the drinking categories you have effects that go in tandem with other illnesses as well (like self-medicating with alcohol for psychological issues). So the whole argument they propose should at least be carried out to its full, working both ways. You've got illnesses moving people into abstainment and illnesses moving people into moderate or high alcohol usuage. The only way to control this is to use changes in comorbidity over time as a factor. TBH the scientists in the underlying article write this down as an issue as well.
- tomp 8y agoRight, I mis-summarized the article. A more accurate summary would be: non-drinkers are more likely to have pre-existing health problems than light-moderate drinkers.
- kens 8y agoLink is to page 2 of the article (in case you wonder why you ended up in the middle). Maybe someone can update it?
- lngnmn1 8y agoLet me guess - food technology and cost cutting? ;)
- carbocation 8y ago1. The best evidence that there is no safe amount of alcohol consumption is the Mendelian randomization (MR) by Holmes et al from 2014 [1]. I believe that the more recent paper making such claims is no better than the usual observational studies. But the MR paper is convincing to me. The risks for mild drinking appear to be low enough that I don't abstain, and I am happy to tell my patients about my thought process. 2. While we like to claim that a study randomizing people to alcohol wouldn't be ethical, pre-2014 I don't think that would have been true. I think there was enough equipoise. Post-2014, I would need to see some strong counter-evidence to make me think there is equipoise once again. 3. The environment changes. A trial came out last week showing that ASA may be harmful for older healthy people [2]. This probably reflects that our bloodstream is no longer nicotine-filled, etc., so the heart attack risk is low enough that the bleeding risk may outweigh it. There may be something about alcohol that was helpful in the 1950s that is no longer so today, due to these environmental changes. 1 = (Free full link): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4091648/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4091648/ 2 = https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1800722?query=featured_home https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1800722?query=fe...
- beefman 8y agoThe first paper is about blood lipids and CHD and doesn't seem to mention alcohol. Did you post the wrong link?
- carbocation 8y agoWhoops, yes. Correcting it now. Thank you. Also updated 2015 to 2014.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sjbase 8y agoEdit: disregard, seeing the updated link you posted. ---- If I'm reading correctly, that 2015 MR paper establishes that LDL and triglycerides play a role in heart disease by filtering populations used in prior studies for genetic blood lipid factors. But it doesn't make any claims about alcohol. Is there already a well established link between alcohol and LDL / triglycerides? My impression is that the relationship between LDL, HDL, and triglycerides and what we eat/drink is not well understood. But I'm not involved in biology or medicine, so maybe you can help me understand this better?
- _null_ 8y agoI have been reading for years about the numbers of studies being done (especially in the public health field) that can be whittled down to correlation without any strongly proven causality. Is this an issue with science, or with how the media reports on science? Is it really as bad as it seems? I understand that it's difficult to control for various factors when doing large scale studies of health and behavior, but my perception as a layman is that there is some willful ignorance or absence of rigor. I realize this is perhaps too harsh a statement; I'm just trying get my point across.
- maehwasu 8y agoThe incentive structure in "science" is completely fucked, and it's a well-known dirty secret. Of course there is great research being done. The problem is that the cognitive load of evaluating which research is useful has been shifted to the end "consumers" of that research.
- everdev 8y agoI think it's an issue with studies funded by someone that has an interest in a certain result, and also a media that is happy to publish a story that is nearly written for them.
- gweinberg 8y agoJudea Pearl literally wrote the book on causality.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago>correlation without any strongly proven causality How would one really prove causality or does it even matter. When I think of science, I try to think of it like how I think of physics, where we create a model that best describes the evidence but which doesn't have any guarantee of being how things really work. Take Newtonian gravity. It is a pretty good model that describes a lot of basic interactions. Given a state at a given moment in time, it lets us determine things going forward or backwards (though for more complex physics, backwards stops working because of assumptions and estimates in the model). But at the same time, it is wrong. More complex physics shows there is a model that fits even more experimental data which contradicts what we thought was happening in the Newtonian model. Mass doesn't attract mass. Mass bends space time and impacts objects traveling through it in such a way that it appears mass attracts mass (though even this may end up being wrong and something else entirely is at play). So, is it really important to describe why a ball falls to the ground when I release it, or is it good enough to have a system that describes the interactions enough that I can apply it to problems? If I solve a problem, say what angle and what speed I need to throw a ball to get over fence, does it really matter if I think the ball falls back to earth because mass attracts mass or because mass bends spacetime? Or is it just important for my equations to be accurate enough that any error is less than what is innate in applying the solution to real life (measuring the exact height of the fence, throwing at an exact angle). What does applying a similar mind set in something dealing with vastly more complicated systems, such as in medicine, looks like?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nadont8 8y agoCache link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:73LY6vG7EDcJ:https://www.popsci.com/moderate-drinking-benefits-risks+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=en https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:73LY6v... (I am shown a consent dialog that does not work.)
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoFor me it works only after enabling JS and disabling adblocking, but the contents is appalling: > To continue enjoying the free content made available to you on this website, you must indicate that you understand and accept Bonnier Corp.’s use of cookies by selecting the "Allow all cookies" button below.
- huffmsa 8y agoPopular science. It answers its own question in the name of the publication. Not the best way to get your ad revenue up.
- thrownaway954 8y agobecause more people are becoming alcoholics and the penalties for a DWI are getting harsher. bottom line is... if you think you have a problem, you already have a problem. Get help and get help now before you hurt someone (you don't want this on your conscience... trust me). Go to AA, NA, a therapist, a doctor, rehab, a detox, doesn't matter, open up and tell someone you have a problem and get the help you need before you destroy your life or someone elses. https://www.aa.org/ https://www.aa.org/ https://www.na.org/ https://www.na.org/
- jMyles 8y ago> because more people are becoming alcoholics Do you have a source for this claim, which both does a good job of defining a measurement schema for alcoholism and also shows convincingly that it is on the incline? Do you also have a source for the claim that this particular increase is the reason (or even a contributing factor) to the apparent decline in correlation between moderate wine consumption and positive health outcomes? > if you think you have a problem, you already have a problem Now this just seems like toxic thinking to me. Plenty of thoughtful, responsible people continually ask themselves whether they are experiencing various problems in life, and sometimes the answer really is "no." > Go to AA, NA, a therapist, a doctor, rehab, a detox, doesn't matter Really? It doesn't matter? Your links at the end of your comment are only to AA and NA. Can you explain what aspects of these programs are preferable to you? I hope that my comment isn't minimizing the issues of drug abuse (including alcoholism) in our culture - I totally respect that these are serious issues with many grave outcomes. I just want to be sure that we're discussing them in a way that is... well, sober. Anyway, even if you don't have answers to the above questions, your perspective is welcome IMO.
- pcmaffey 8y ago"Is it a problem?" is always relative. The question would be better phrased, "is it a problem worthy of expending limited resources on fixing?" with the usual considerations of opportunity costs, etc. So yes thinking about whether something is a problem worth addressing is totally healthy behavior for anyone with a modicum of self-awareness.
- 8y ago
- kurtisc 8y agoThis same reasoning was in Bad Science by Ben Goldacre 10 years ago.
- known 8y agoL-ornithine L-aspartate pill can flush out excess alcohol from body
- justtopost 8y agoThey increase urea, which lowers blood ammonia. I have never heard of using LOLA for alcohol, but seems possible. Got any links, and rurthermore, how this would be useful in this context?
- Something1234 8y agoSource?
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoThat page was nearly unreadable in Chrome on my phone due to bizarre scrolling ads everywhere and eventually crashed and died. A pity, I was learning a lot.
- seandougall 8y agoSame on mobile Safari. On page load it immediately scrolled halfway down the article and covered up half the screen with a “trending articles” popover whose assets — including the dismiss button — failed to load. Seriously, does anybody in publishing actually visit their own sites? I see UX like this and all I can think is, “gee, somebody got _paid_ to make this?” Edit: I see from another comment that the scrolling was (partly) a result of the link being to an anchor tag. I stand by the rest of my point, though.
- danmg 8y agoRead it through rss: "https://damng.github.io/hackernews-rss-with-inlined-content/output.rss https://damng.github.io/hackernews-rss-with-inlined-content/...
- mcguire 8y agoI've often felt that there was something sketchy about meta-analysis,... "But as the headline-generating study in The Lancet notes, “Until recently, most meta-analyses of alcohol consumption have not controlled for the composition of the reference category,” and that “subsequently, assessments of harm relying on these studies have been biased.”" ...but overall systemic bias wasn't what I was thinking of.
- sytelus 8y agoGlass of wine in the night is a very bad habit and you don't need a large scale study to prove it. If you have a watch that can track your sleep cycle, you will see that your deep sleep doesn't start until much later if you consuming alcohol before going to sleep. In other words, a glass of wine might make you feel relaxed but it robes you from your deep sleep.
- dhimes 8y agoIf you have a watch that can track your sleep cycle, you will see that your deep sleep doesn't start until much later if you consuming alcohol before going to sleep. Maybe that's good.
- akvadrako 8y agoThat seems ridiculous but indeed, we shouldn't make assumptions. We have to measure assumed negative effects, like impaired cognition. Or maybe that's good too.
- dhimes 8y agoAgree. It speaks to the broader point that studies in fields like this- with so many degrees of freedom, are hard.
- jotm 8y agoYeah, OK, so what if I can't fall asleep even if I only slept 4 hours the previous night and I'm so tired I hear things? One beer works :/
- mindfulplay 8y agoWhy is it that hard to do actual research? Like science? Observe what alcohol does to the body and identify risks. I know this is hard. Lazy survey door to door salespeople posing as scientists dominate this field unfortunately. This is not science. This is guesswork. And this causes serious problems to people who trust this crap. Throw away your shitty biased studies and start doing actual science. It took Newton a lot of time to observe and repeat and prove the physics of gravity. And that stood the test of time for several decades at least. This shitty research area needs to stop. People post media coverage as somehow being the final validators of their crappy research.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoBecause there isn’t sufficient funding to pay for non biased scientists who have the understanding of statistics and probability to perform the correct experiments and analysis. And there isn’t sufficient funding for the types of large scale control groups needed for studying health effects on a complex organism such as humans, especially when mechanisms of actions can’t directly be observed.
- mindfulplay 8y agoEconomics should not play a role in science. I agree it is hard. But this isnt a choice between hard science and shitty survey based science. I am saying this is a choice between hard science and NOTHING. Do nothing. Don't do lazy work. That's my point.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoYes, I was answering why it’s so hard to do legitimate research. I agree that it would be better if the garbage research didn’t exist at all. No info is better than bad info.
- r0f1 8y agoHey, can I set 91 different cookies in your browser?
- another-cuppa 8y agoObviously I can't say anything about my own longevity, but over the past few years my alcohol consumption has decreased to virtually zero and I've never felt better. I was never a big drinker, but I would semi-regularly go out and drink a few pints of beer or have wine with dinner. I never intended to cut down on alcohol, but my lifestyle changed, I stopped going out so much, and the drinking went with it. I would still drink maybe once a month, but I've realised that it makes me feel bad every time, so I now completely abstain. The interesting thing is how people react to it. For some reason you are expected to provide a reason for why you don't drink. I don't smoke either but nobody asks me why. I've noticed also that it makes people uncomfortable if you're not drinking. When I do go out now I drink diet soft drinks so that I don't get constantly asked why I don't have a drink. I foresee a shift in cultural views towards alcohol much like the shift with respect to tobacco of last century. I wonder if the USA and UK will again lead the way with this leaving much of continental Europe behind.
- KozmoNau7 8y agoIf that was the extent of your drinking, I doubt that was the major factor in your improved health. I would look to the things you consumed while drinking, such as rich full-fat restaurant food in big portions, salty carb-heavy fatty snacks and second-hand smoke. Cutting out alcohol completely is certainly not a bad thing health-wise, but I think it was much more significant that you stopped going out so much.
- another-cuppa 8y agoNah, I still do eat rich full-fat, salty, and carb-heavy food. Trust me, it's the alcohol. The day after drinking used be completely wasted for me. Now every day can be very productive.
- airstrike 8y agoYou didn't ask for this suggestion, but I'll say it anyway: evidence suggests that making a similar switch in your regular diet would have a material impact on your well-being beyond what you've experienced with alcohol. If you think back to your drinking days and think you would have gained more from quitting alcohol much earlier, just imagine how you would feel by improving your diet.
- rossdavidh 8y ago"But if the same 100,000 people drank nothing at all, 914 would still have one of those same problems. That’s only 4 more people per year (per 100,000) who will have a problem that’s attributable to alcohol—that’s tiny. But it’s also not zero." ...and it's also far too little to be statistically significant. Moreover, nutritional studies of any kind have been infamously bad at giving reliable information. The advice from one decade is almost routinely found in the next to be invalid, or even the opposite of the truth. That's for things like carbohydrates, about which there were few religious injunctions or political polarization. For a topic with as much emotional and political baggage as alcohol, I find it unlikely to be any better. Whatever your decision about alcohol, I think the reliability of the science (pro- or anti-) is just not sufficient to help you make your decision.
- negamax 8y agoAlcohol consumption and our attitudes towards it, is pretty much the result of marketing, movies and shows. We are literally made consumers of literal poison. Has anyone paid attention to recent WHO report that 5% of all deaths are due to alcohol, number has high as 23% in 20 somethings.
- ardfie 8y agoHumans have been making alcohol since prehistory. There are plenty of breweries, distilleries, and vineyards in Europe and Asia that have been continuously active for centuries.
- negamax 8y agoTrue and it was never mass consumed and celebrated to this extent. Current situation is that despite the facts and knowledge, social pressure makes people drink. Despite the facts. The facts are overwhelming and we shouldn't just keep consuming alcohol because muah cultur. Many alcoholics end up causing traffic accidents and require lots of state support in other ways. Just walk into ED on any Saturday/Friday night. I have done that
- thrower123 8y agoPeople used to be drunk constantly - why do you think 19th century temperance movements were such a cultural force? Alcohol consumption was staggering in the past, to a degree we would consider insane today. Naval everyday rum rations alone would be well above the guidelines of being considered an alcoholic.
- malvosenior 8y agoAlcohol was consumed en mass more than it is now. Little kids would regularly drink. Often alcohol was drank instead of water for sanitation reasons. It's been a huge part of nearly every culture for thousands of years.
- negamax 8y ago
- sildur 8y agoThat’s why I drink what I want and I eat what I want. I stopped caring about studies changing each year. Also, I’d very much prefer to die earlier from a heart attack than live longer and die from Alzheimer’s.
- coldtea 8y agoWhat about the loss of quality of life from not drinking? Are those things ever taken into account? We could a nutritionally determined portion of specific foods every day, sit at home to avoid accidents outside, get out enough for the required sunlight, and exercise the optimal around. While it's good to know whether a "glass of wine" is good or not, it bad when such research is used to cut off any bad-for-us enjoyment we get. Besides, it's a bunch of factors which makes the whole "one glass of wine is harmful" a moot point if you can take care of the rest (and why not start with them?). In the "blue zone" of Icaria for example, one of the places in the globe where people live the most, people regularly drink several glasses of wine per meal and have been doing so for millennia. Yet, there they are regularly at 90+ and 100+. Then again, they're stress free, sleep whenever they feel like (no really, they'll casually open their shops at 2pm or at 3am if they feel like it), and don't eat junk food.
- archagon 8y agoIf anyone's interested, I recently built a free and open source¹ drink tracking app for iOS called Good Spirits: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/good-spirits/id1434237439?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/good-spirits/id1434237439?mt... You set a weekly limit and the app tells you when you're getting too close. Features Untappd integration, HealthKit calorie syncing, and various charts and stats of your drinking over the past year. Figured I'd build it after reading numerous articles like this and deciding that 100g/week was the optimal risk/reward point for my health. ¹ https://github.com/archagon/good-spirits https://github.com/archagon/good-spirits
- KozmoNau7 8y agoThere has been a rather disturbing post-2000 neo-puritan thing going on for a while now, shaming people for purely personal choices, such as eating meat, smoking, drinking alcohol, enjoying cannabis in various forms, and generally acting in ways that are "impure". Sure, banning smoking in restaurants makes sense, as it actively ruins the experience for other people. But this whole vegan teetotaler thing is getting extremely aggravating. Shaming people for enjoying alcohol responsibly is just as bad as shaming people for choosing to not drink. Both groups of shamers need to cut it the hell out.