8 ms·

Surprising: one of the healthy habits mentioned is drinking alcohol only in moderation (defined in this study as just under 2 units for women and 4 units for me

Surprising: one of the healthy habits mentioned is drinking alcohol only in moderation (defined in this study as just under 2 units for women and 4 units for men daily). If I drank any alcohol on a daily basis, I would be scared that it would go downhill from there. Habits are hard to change, so better do not pick up bad ones at all. I'm convinced that just avoiding to do stupid things is half the battle already.

Dirlewanger 7y ago
I'm surprised this was mentioned at all. There's even newer research that basically shows any amount of alcohol regularly is bad for you.
- izzydata 7y ago
  The idea that any amount of alcohol is bad for you is about as surprising of a concept to me as vaping actually being bad for you. Drinking poison or filling your lungs with anything that isn't air is not healthy.
  - bosie 7y ago
    Presumably you are not including any mental benefits? Or consider 'stress' of any sorts as a non-health issue?
    - thebean11 7y ago
      Or social benefits, depending on which country you live in. Way too broad to say that any alcohol is "bad for you".
      - kristofferR 7y ago
        And social benefits can have massive physical repercussions. Happiness breeds healthiness, loneliness the opposite. Of course I'm not implying that alcohol is in any way healthy, but it's probably healthier to have great drunk moments with your friends once in a while than it is to be lonely and not drink. It's important to note that you certainly can be social without alcohol though.
    - izzydata 7y ago
      Of course stress is a problem, but the thought that you have to drink to solve that problem is a terrible thought to me. It is unfortunate if this is what society thinks.
  - Cougher 7y ago
    "What can we say? We know alcohol's a toxin. We'll never believe alcohol can be good for you. This is America, for chrissake! We're willing to die for our true beliefs!" https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-in-society/201011/science-is-what-society-says-it-is-alcohols-poison https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-in-society...
  - zip1234 7y ago
    Also, air can often be unhealthy. Even places where the air is 'clean.'
- Cougher 7y ago
  That's mighty convincing evidence you have right there.
  - Dirlewanger 7y ago
    Here's one: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2/fulltext#seccestitle200 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... From the conclusion: "Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none."
alamortsubite 7y ago
The reported BMJ study does not recommend teetotalers take up drinking; it only suggests moderation for individuals who already consume alcohol. "We observed a relatively small difference in life expectancies across different levels of alcohol consumption compared with other individual lifestyle factors. The cardiovascular benefits of moderate alcohol consumption have been consistently observed in large cohort studies, but alcohol consumption and risk of cancer showed a dose-response relation. Thus, current guidelines do not encourage a non-alcohol drinker to start drinking just for the benefit of preventing cardiovascular disease."
- _Microft 7y ago
  My mistake, I should have been more precise in my formulations. I was rather surprised that daily alcohol consumption still counted as moderate.
  - laurencerowe 7y ago
    This seems to be a cultural UK/US difference which I've noticed moving to the US. In the UK a glass of wine with food every night would be seen as part of a healthy mediterranean diet and health advice on alcohol was refocussed to discourage binge drinking, emphasizing daily rather than weekly consumption limits. In the US daily drinking seems to be seen as bad (perhaps a legacy of prohibition?) while binge drinking once a week doesn't seem to be seen as particularly problematic.
    - pkaye 7y ago
      In the US its a pretty skewed distribution. 30% don't drink at all. Another 30% less than once per week. The top 10% drinks a crazy amount. https://drinksfeed.com/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/ https://drinksfeed.com/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will...
      - Bartweiss 7y ago
        The data is also an unbelievable mess. We can work towards drinking from two directions: self report consumption and alcohol sales ought to lead to the same number. Not perfectly of course - drinks get thrown away, saved as gifts, used to cook, and so on. But last I looked, the ratio of drinks sold to drinking reported in the US was two to one. (I'd love to see the same data for other countries.) So either people understating their drinking by a huge amount, or the studies are undersampling groups that do a lot of drinking. Probably both. We can make some good guesses: minors probably don't admit to their drinking, teetotalers probably self-report more accurately than occasional drinkers, and so on. But it's a gap so big that it's hard to talk confidently about what people here are doing.
LinuxBender 7y ago
Not only that, but these articles always say the "what" and not the "why". Daily consumption of alcohol for example, depletes glutathione. The more you drink, the more that is depleted. Once your reserves are gone, the liver will still protect you, at the cost of itself. It essentially slowly self destructs to neutralize the alcohol once the glutathione is gone. People will always give examples of someone they knew that lived to 100 and had a shot of whiskey every day. Makes sense, they were replenishing their glutathione reserves faster than depleting it. It's obviously much more complicated of a process than what I described, but people don't have a way to measure it. The liver will try to detox people until it hits something like 5% capacity and then the symptoms are really obvious. By then, it is too late.
capkutay 7y ago
Also have to factor in the opportunity cost of drinking...going for a drink after work instead of the gym? What comes next? Bar food with your beer and maybe a pizza? I'd rather have the work out, good meal, hydrate, and get good sleep. It's obvious that good habits snowball into more good habits, while bad habits snowball into more bad habits.
- maximente 7y ago
  haha, this reads like some abstinence only sex education argument or something. don't let that one beer turn in to a good time! i think it's funny that having a good (if not optimally healthy) time would be so ridiculed, but maybe that's just me. FWIW i know a lot of people who work out at 4:30am in order to gain that time for after work social activities which often include alcohol, so not mutually exclusive.
  - joshschultheiss 7y ago
    Not the commenter you replied to, but I feel like you both have valid points. > Bar food with your beer and maybe a pizza? > don't let that one beer turn in to a good time! Personally, I prefer to enjoy the social benefits of going out without the consequences of alcohol or "bar food." I accept people's drug habits - it's fine to consume drugs responsibly (alcohol included). For me, I am able to have a good time and "let loose" without being under the influence of drugs. There's nothing wrong with being sober. You can still participate in the local economy, engage in social events, and live a healthy life without fitting the routine you described of going to the bar and hitting the gym. Anyways, my point of saying this is that I wonder if alcohol for most people increases their life expectancy because it lets them socialize more. In the same way that people buy essential oils and it has a placebo effect on the that make them feel better, I think the bar scene has the same effect on many Americans. My social experience is that people are mentally unable to "let loose" and socialize without the aide of drugs.
    - capkutay 7y ago
      Exactly. Personally I don't like drinking. I see the fun of getting drunk with friends and all..experienced it in my college years...but I don't like the unspoken pressure/expectation that you have to be on something to have a good time.
lelf 7y ago
Quite surprising for me too. Or rather, I don't understand the unit they mention. From the article linked: also collected alcoholic beverage consumption, including red and white wine separately (4 ounces, increasing to 5 ounces in 2006), beer (one glass, can, or bottle), and liquor (one drink or shot). We multiplied the amount of alcohol in grams per specified portion size by servings per day, determined the midpoint of the frequency category, and summed across all beverages to estimate the average alcohol consumption (g/day). We defined moderate alcohol consumption as 5-15 g/day for women and 5-30 g/day for men Surely it cannot be 4 bottles of beer daily (or 4*7 bottles on weekend).
- laurencerowe 7y ago
  A unit is 10ml of pure alcohol, roughly half a pint of 4% beer or half a glass of wine. This unit value is printed clearly on pretty much all alcohol containers. (In the US it seems incredibly difficult to find the ABV % for the drinks you buy.) A bottle of beer is usually 330ml so 1.3 units, so moderate drinking would be defined as up to 2 pints or 3 bottles of 4% beer daily.
  - kyleee 7y ago
    I believe ABV is printed on every alcohol label in the US (I suspect there is a regulation mandating it)
    - laurencerowe 7y ago
      While most does, at least the box of Heineken in my fridge (don't judge me, left over from a party!) doesn't have the ABV on the box, though does on the cans inside.
- jimam 7y ago
  A bottle of beer (say 500ml) at 5% strength would be 2.5 units, so not as much as 4 bottles a day [1]. Also worth noting that alcohol you buy in shops in the UK has the number of units printed on the label, so it's fairly easy to keep track of. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_alcohol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_alcohol
izzydata 7y ago
That one doesn't make any sense to me. Alcohol is basically poison. Perhaps small amounts of it won't do any harm to you, but how could it possibly have a positive effect on your health?
- twinkletwinkle_ 7y ago
  The key word is definitely "only".
  - izzydata 7y ago
    I don't agree. Even if you "only" drank in moderation forever and never drank too much for your liver to deal with it isn't helping anything. At the absolute best it simply isn't hurting anything. Which I'm really not convinced that is even true.
    - freetime2 7y ago
      I didn’t read that advice to mean you should drink daily. Rather that if you do drink, it should be limited to a certain amount per day.
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  It’s also a stress-reliever, and is frequently consumed in the company of others, so it has social benefits as well.
- mrlala 7y ago
  Maybe it can have a positive affect on your mental health, in moderation? Sharing a bottle of wine or champagne with my wife can be one of the most enjoyable experiences to us.. going out to the pub having some beer with family & friends is great. An argument could be "you can have just as much fun doing something else", but I don't know.. that's not really my experience. A moderate amount of drinking usually makes things even more fun.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
Hoasi 7y ago
> Surprising: one of the healthy habits mentioned is drinking alcohol only in moderation (defined in this study as just under 2 units for women and 4 units for men daily). These figures are not absolute. Other studies consider someone an alcoholic as soon as there is a craving for alcohol. The risk is higher for someone who drinks daily. Standards of what is acceptable also vary from country to country.
rantwasp 7y ago
no. you need to start drinking 4 units per day if you want to live longer /s
loblollyboy 7y ago
I get drunk and act like an absolute idiot, but I also don't really care. it's like the ying to my yang of trying really hard and being serious/ pretending to be serious about things. Hedonism is just as valid as a lifestyle choice as the other options (prove me wrong!) The one thing I don't like about drinking is that it's basically a cheat code. It makes mundane stuff fun, if it were removed as an option, then maybe I would try other stuff and live a more interesting life.

Dirlewanger 7y ago

I'm surprised this was mentioned at all. There's even newer research that basically shows any amount of alcohol regularly is bad for you.

izzydata 7y ago
The idea that any amount of alcohol is bad for you is about as surprising of a concept to me as vaping actually being bad for you. Drinking poison or filling your lungs with anything that isn't air is not healthy.
- bosie 7y ago
  Presumably you are not including any mental benefits? Or consider 'stress' of any sorts as a non-health issue?
  - thebean11 7y ago
    Or social benefits, depending on which country you live in. Way too broad to say that any alcohol is "bad for you".
    - kristofferR 7y ago
      And social benefits can have massive physical repercussions. Happiness breeds healthiness, loneliness the opposite. Of course I'm not implying that alcohol is in any way healthy, but it's probably healthier to have great drunk moments with your friends once in a while than it is to be lonely and not drink. It's important to note that you certainly can be social without alcohol though.
  - izzydata 7y ago
    Of course stress is a problem, but the thought that you have to drink to solve that problem is a terrible thought to me. It is unfortunate if this is what society thinks.
- Cougher 7y ago
  "What can we say? We know alcohol's a toxin. We'll never believe alcohol can be good for you. This is America, for chrissake! We're willing to die for our true beliefs!" https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-in-society/201011/science-is-what-society-says-it-is-alcohols-poison https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-in-society...
- zip1234 7y ago
  Also, air can often be unhealthy. Even places where the air is 'clean.'
Cougher 7y ago
That's mighty convincing evidence you have right there.
- Dirlewanger 7y ago
  Here's one: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2/fulltext#seccestitle200 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... From the conclusion: "Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none."

alamortsubite 7y ago

The reported BMJ study does not recommend teetotalers take up drinking; it only suggests moderation for individuals who already consume alcohol. "We observed a relatively small difference in life expectancies across different levels of alcohol consumption compared with other individual lifestyle factors. The cardiovascular benefits of moderate alcohol consumption have been consistently observed in large cohort studies, but alcohol consumption and risk of cancer showed a dose-response relation. Thus, current guidelines do not encourage a non-alcohol drinker to start drinking just for the benefit of preventing cardiovascular disease."

_Microft 7y ago
My mistake, I should have been more precise in my formulations. I was rather surprised that daily alcohol consumption still counted as moderate.
- laurencerowe 7y ago
  This seems to be a cultural UK/US difference which I've noticed moving to the US. In the UK a glass of wine with food every night would be seen as part of a healthy mediterranean diet and health advice on alcohol was refocussed to discourage binge drinking, emphasizing daily rather than weekly consumption limits. In the US daily drinking seems to be seen as bad (perhaps a legacy of prohibition?) while binge drinking once a week doesn't seem to be seen as particularly problematic.
  - pkaye 7y ago
    In the US its a pretty skewed distribution. 30% don't drink at all. Another 30% less than once per week. The top 10% drinks a crazy amount. https://drinksfeed.com/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you/ https://drinksfeed.com/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will...
    - Bartweiss 7y ago
      The data is also an unbelievable mess. We can work towards drinking from two directions: self report consumption and alcohol sales ought to lead to the same number. Not perfectly of course - drinks get thrown away, saved as gifts, used to cook, and so on. But last I looked, the ratio of drinks sold to drinking reported in the US was two to one. (I'd love to see the same data for other countries.) So either people understating their drinking by a huge amount, or the studies are undersampling groups that do a lot of drinking. Probably both. We can make some good guesses: minors probably don't admit to their drinking, teetotalers probably self-report more accurately than occasional drinkers, and so on. But it's a gap so big that it's hard to talk confidently about what people here are doing.

LinuxBender 7y ago

Not only that, but these articles always say the "what" and not the "why". Daily consumption of alcohol for example, depletes glutathione. The more you drink, the more that is depleted. Once your reserves are gone, the liver will still protect you, at the cost of itself. It essentially slowly self destructs to neutralize the alcohol once the glutathione is gone. People will always give examples of someone they knew that lived to 100 and had a shot of whiskey every day. Makes sense, they were replenishing their glutathione reserves faster than depleting it. It's obviously much more complicated of a process than what I described, but people don't have a way to measure it. The liver will try to detox people until it hits something like 5% capacity and then the symptoms are really obvious. By then, it is too late.

capkutay 7y ago

Also have to factor in the opportunity cost of drinking...going for a drink after work instead of the gym? What comes next? Bar food with your beer and maybe a pizza? I'd rather have the work out, good meal, hydrate, and get good sleep. It's obvious that good habits snowball into more good habits, while bad habits snowball into more bad habits.

maximente 7y ago
haha, this reads like some abstinence only sex education argument or something. don't let that one beer turn in to a good time! i think it's funny that having a good (if not optimally healthy) time would be so ridiculed, but maybe that's just me. FWIW i know a lot of people who work out at 4:30am in order to gain that time for after work social activities which often include alcohol, so not mutually exclusive.
- joshschultheiss 7y ago
  Not the commenter you replied to, but I feel like you both have valid points. > Bar food with your beer and maybe a pizza? > don't let that one beer turn in to a good time! Personally, I prefer to enjoy the social benefits of going out without the consequences of alcohol or "bar food." I accept people's drug habits - it's fine to consume drugs responsibly (alcohol included). For me, I am able to have a good time and "let loose" without being under the influence of drugs. There's nothing wrong with being sober. You can still participate in the local economy, engage in social events, and live a healthy life without fitting the routine you described of going to the bar and hitting the gym. Anyways, my point of saying this is that I wonder if alcohol for most people increases their life expectancy because it lets them socialize more. In the same way that people buy essential oils and it has a placebo effect on the that make them feel better, I think the bar scene has the same effect on many Americans. My social experience is that people are mentally unable to "let loose" and socialize without the aide of drugs.
  - capkutay 7y ago
    Exactly. Personally I don't like drinking. I see the fun of getting drunk with friends and all..experienced it in my college years...but I don't like the unspoken pressure/expectation that you have to be on something to have a good time.

lelf 7y ago

Quite surprising for me too. Or rather, I don't understand the unit they mention. From the article linked: also collected alcoholic beverage consumption, including red and white wine separately (4 ounces, increasing to 5 ounces in 2006), beer (one glass, can, or bottle), and liquor (one drink or shot). We multiplied the amount of alcohol in grams per specified portion size by servings per day, determined the midpoint of the frequency category, and summed across all beverages to estimate the average alcohol consumption (g/day). We defined moderate alcohol consumption as 5-15 g/day for women and 5-30 g/day for men Surely it cannot be 4 bottles of beer daily (or 4*7 bottles on weekend).

laurencerowe 7y ago
A unit is 10ml of pure alcohol, roughly half a pint of 4% beer or half a glass of wine. This unit value is printed clearly on pretty much all alcohol containers. (In the US it seems incredibly difficult to find the ABV % for the drinks you buy.) A bottle of beer is usually 330ml so 1.3 units, so moderate drinking would be defined as up to 2 pints or 3 bottles of 4% beer daily.
- kyleee 7y ago
  I believe ABV is printed on every alcohol label in the US (I suspect there is a regulation mandating it)
  - laurencerowe 7y ago
    While most does, at least the box of Heineken in my fridge (don't judge me, left over from a party!) doesn't have the ABV on the box, though does on the cans inside.
jimam 7y ago
A bottle of beer (say 500ml) at 5% strength would be 2.5 units, so not as much as 4 bottles a day [1]. Also worth noting that alcohol you buy in shops in the UK has the number of units printed on the label, so it's fairly easy to keep track of. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_alcohol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_alcohol

izzydata 7y ago

That one doesn't make any sense to me. Alcohol is basically poison. Perhaps small amounts of it won't do any harm to you, but how could it possibly have a positive effect on your health?

twinkletwinkle_ 7y ago
The key word is definitely "only".
- izzydata 7y ago
  I don't agree. Even if you "only" drank in moderation forever and never drank too much for your liver to deal with it isn't helping anything. At the absolute best it simply isn't hurting anything. Which I'm really not convinced that is even true.
  - freetime2 7y ago
    I didn’t read that advice to mean you should drink daily. Rather that if you do drink, it should be limited to a certain amount per day.
enraged_camel 7y ago
It’s also a stress-reliever, and is frequently consumed in the company of others, so it has social benefits as well.
mrlala 7y ago
Maybe it can have a positive affect on your mental health, in moderation? Sharing a bottle of wine or champagne with my wife can be one of the most enjoyable experiences to us.. going out to the pub having some beer with family & friends is great. An argument could be "you can have just as much fun doing something else", but I don't know.. that's not really my experience. A moderate amount of drinking usually makes things even more fun.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago

Hoasi 7y ago

> Surprising: one of the healthy habits mentioned is drinking alcohol only in moderation (defined in this study as just under 2 units for women and 4 units for men daily). These figures are not absolute. Other studies consider someone an alcoholic as soon as there is a craving for alcohol. The risk is higher for someone who drinks daily. Standards of what is acceptable also vary from country to country.

rantwasp 7y ago

no. you need to start drinking 4 units per day if you want to live longer /s

loblollyboy 7y ago

I get drunk and act like an absolute idiot, but I also don't really care. it's like the ying to my yang of trying really hard and being serious/ pretending to be serious about things. Hedonism is just as valid as a lifestyle choice as the other options (prove me wrong!) The one thing I don't like about drinking is that it's basically a cheat code. It makes mundane stuff fun, if it were removed as an option, then maybe I would try other stuff and live a more interesting life.