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This is true for its well-known other health risks. Cancer risk doesn't care if you spread your seven drinks out over a week or over a night. Moderation might
by rriepe 6y ago
This is true for its well-known other health risks.
Cancer risk doesn't care if you spread your seven drinks out over a week or over a night. Moderation might even be a riskier strategy from a cancer risk standpoint, if the imbibed amounts are otherwise the same.
- nikolay 6y agoActually it does care about spreading over time. That's why plant toxins are good in small amounts and bad in large at once. It's always about weighing benefits and negative effects, not looking at things one-sidedly! I would never have vodka, cocktails, and other pure poison products, but I will have a glass of good red wine or a bottle of real beer! Pure ethanol is bad! Ethanol is metabolised as fructose! Sugary alcoholic drinks are the worst! So, let's not put all types of "alcohol" in the same bucket! With red wine and beer, you get benefits, which might outweigh the negative sides - even when not considering the hormetic effect of small amounts of ethanol!
- snazz 6y agoWe're talking about cancer risk here, not toxicity or effects on blood sugar. As far as I understand (as someone with no medical background), exposure is exposure. I'd love to be proven wrong if someone has some information to the contrary.
- nikolay 6y agoWell, I wonder how many of these studies have found a cause or just associations. I can tell you that most drinkers greatly underestimate how much they actually drink and even further if they have to report it to another person, so, a survey will always show people as moderate drinkers! Also, most regular drinkers have other unhealthy habits! Toxicity and cancer risks are also both about the dose. We all have cancerous cells in us, but they become a problem if they survive and grow (and by growing they get a bigger chance of mutating to the level they can trick the immune system). A cancer developers over the course of many years, except certain types, of course. Definitely alcohol is not an immediate killer - there are much worse things, but here we want to vilify one millenniums-old habit as the root of all evils!
- 08-15 6y ago> exposure is exposure Because damage to DNA adds up, and that's what causes cancer, right? Turns out, DNA is constantly being repaired, because it constantly suffers chemical insults, mostly from reactive oxygen species. A carcinogen is dangerous once it overwhelms these repair mechanisms, and for that, it clearly makes a difference whether you take a single large dose or many small ones.
- nikolay 6y agoAnd that's why hormesis works and explains a variety of phenomena that small amounts of disruptions is good to keep your mechanisms ready to take on challenges.
- mssundaram 6y agoI have this perspective too in large part due to the book "The Art of Fermentation" by Sandor Katz and the other resources/books that that book cites.
- nikolay 6y agoYeah, arguing that it's not about the dose means you shouldn't eat ripe fruit or drink kombucha.