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I am fine with abstinence as a general recommendation, but critical thinking pointed out two issues with the WHF Policy Brief, which I suppose I have read in su
by solox3 5y ago
I am fine with abstinence as a general recommendation, but critical thinking pointed out two issues with the WHF Policy Brief, which I suppose I have read in sufficient depth:
1. There is no citation on the sentence, "Recent evidence has found that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for health." This is really the only line we are interested in.
2. There is no comparison on the effects of alcohol on the body by dosage (and frequency), which is, again, what is required from the brief to make that claim.
Again, while I don't necessarily disagree with what's in the report, and that it is already established that drinking too much is not good for the heart, considering many otherwise toxic substances have a hormetic zone, it is critical that a study like this rules out the its existence for ethanol.
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoWould any non-trivial substance be deemed "safe" under these criteria?
- jcadam 5y agoThere's a very small chance you'll choke to death every time you eat something.
- avgcorrection 5y agoAnother score for fasting!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- slothtrop 5y agoAs I recall, for this particular bit of research that I read a couple of months ago, more precisely it states there is no clear discernible level of consumption that could be deemed "safe". That's not really a surprise if you look at the data because it's such a mess. You also can't pin a point at which consumption is a high risk. What does that tell us? You can however surmise that low / moderate consumption is not associated with high risk of mortality. There is "risk" insofar as it is non-null, anything above zero is unsafe. So what? That doesn't mean it's significant. edit: this appears to criticize the paper - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2757309 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...
- allturtles 5y agoExactly. I find the claim "no level of alcohol consumption is safe" hyperbolic. You could claim with far more justification that "no amount of driving is safe" since you could be killed pulling out of your driveway but I think most people who drive on a daily basis would find this claim odd. "safety" is a relative, not an absolute condition, since in some sense being alive is unsafe.
- zelphirkalt 5y agoThat is a weird comparison. No one is forcing you to drink alcohol, but you might be forced to drive to the office. One is avoidable, the other one is not. Or if you want to be even more precise: One is easily avoidable and the other might cost you your job.
- chucksta 5y agoNo one is forcing you to drive to work either. Many people in don't even have a license, yet make it to work each day. You even said it, "might be forced" meaning there are possibilities in which you aren't.
- pnt12 5y agoIf you live outside the city, you basically are. In my home town, transportation is limited, eg a bus in the morning and one in the afternoon, both which can be late, and the stops are kilometers apart and the sidewalks are shitty. So when I'm there, I take my car everywhere, as does everyone else. But when I lived in a big city, the opposite happened: parking was expensive and the traffic sucked, so I always took the bus and subway. Let's not make blank statements about transportation, as it differs so much from one place from another.
- nuclearnice1 5y agoTo point 1. In the brief I find at the red download link [1] contains the line “ Based on recent evidence, it has been concluded that there is “no safe level of alcohol consumption”(5).” The reference points to an article from The Lancet [2] [1] https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF-Policy-Brief-Alcohol.pdf https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF-Po... [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31310-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- f38zf5vdt 5y agoAnother article from The Lancet from around the same time reported a whopping... 6 months of life expectancy reduction when consuming 100-200g of alcohol a week versus 0-100g of alcohol a week. [1, Figure 4] A drink is 14 grams of alcohol, so that means that your risk from consuming 150 grams, or over 10 drinks a week, is still relatively low in terms of all-cause mortality. Figure 1 also shows that consumption of 0-100g per week has virtually no consequence on all-cause mortality. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(18)30134-X.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736...
- clpm4j 5y agoQueue the Winston Churchill quote "I've taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me". I believe he died at age 91. Although it seems crazy that we could have ever believed alcohol is healthy in any way.
- deltaonefour 5y agoAnecdotal accounts could be one offs. We need data for a full picture and even than the data could be biased. It may very well be Churchill could have survived longer were it not for alcohol. This recent post seems to imply that they now have more accurate and more unbiased data leading them to this new conclusion. I think a lot of people at the WHF drink some amount of alcohol as do most people in the world. However, despite this, their conclusions and announcements must be based off data which is exactly the right thing to do and exactly what they are doing here.
- BurningFrog 5y agoA lot is riding on the unspecific usage of "safe" here.
- some_random 5y agoI've noticed that most health recommendations like these do not have any evidence associated with them, or a description of the actual risks. It seems that the doctors and health officials who write them have the evidence, but don't believe that the public needs to see it and rather should just go with whatever they say.
- ethanbond 5y agoThat’s because you’re reading a mass media report on the recommendation. It takes less than a minute of earnest effort to find the actual studies or briefs and scroll down to the sources. https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF-Policy-Brief-Alcohol.pdf https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF-Po...
- bhk 5y agoHmm... looks like fake receipts. For the claim "Alcohol consumption increases the risk of CVD", they cite the following paper, which actually shows statistically significant reductions in CVD from 75 to 150 g/wk. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29676281/#&gid=article-figures&pid=figure-1-uid-0 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29676281/#&gid=article-figur...
- jillianschuller 5y agoHaving recently become pregnant, a lot of the guidance for expectant mothers echos these blanket recommendations (sushi, deli meats, hot baths etc). On the topic of alcohol, FASD is a massive concern, but it's known that it's correlated to how much you drink and how frequently you drink (enjoying a glass of wine once a month is very different than binge drinking multiple times throughout your pregnancy). The thing is, researchers aren't getting pregnant women different levels of hammered, and then assessing how their babies turn out (unethical much), so they're left to infer based on reported behaviors. Hence the unreliability of the data, and the "no amount is proven safe" mantra. Maybe it's the same with this recommendation? The other thing not factored into inferred results is other associated behaviors. I'd bet that statistically, women that are binge drinking through pregnancy are more likely to also be taking hard drugs than their non-binge drinking counterparts. So is alcohol fully to blame here? I'm not here advocating for pregnant women and drinking. But it'd be nice to have the data and evidence behind these risks, so that people can be empowered to make their own decisions. I've seen so many women on forums stressing over a glass of wine they had at christmas, or the time they ate a cold cut without realizing. Needless stress that could be minimized if pregnant people weren't advised as if they're children.
- dionidium 5y agoIf you want to feel some dissonance about this, you might note that this is the exact language the CDC uses for things like secondhand smoke -- "There is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke" -- which everybody nods along to and accepts without much scrutiny. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/health_effects/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/seco... Meanwhile, when it's something like, say, cosmic radiation exposure from commercial air travel, suddenly the CDC is very interested in levels of exposure and has language that provides context intended to downplay the risks. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/air_travel.html https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/air_travel.html Why these statements bother us when they're about one thing and not another -- or, indeed, why our health agencies would choose language like this for some kinds of risks and not others -- is left as an exercise for the reader.
- ethanbond 5y agoThis would be a very meaningful comparison if people were regularly forcing a diner-full of people to hop on a plane with them several times per year.
- dionidium 5y agoObviously the analogy to getting on the plane is walking in the diner.
- Forgeties79 5y agoI think we can all agree there are stronger arguments for air travel than habitual smoking of cigarettes.
- slingnow 5y agoDo you live somewhere that forces you inside of diners several times per year? I'm interested in where that is.
- mattmaroon 5y agoThe CDC has been unfortunately hopelessly politicized. It happened long before the pandemic. OTOH, I would make the differentiating point that air travel has positive benefits to society and costs and one has to weigh those against each other. You can’t make the blanket statement “earth would be better off if air travel went away completely.” It’s hard to find any benefit to smoking, first hand or second, so it’s easy enough to just shit on it. The ROI on whatever ills aviation may have is a topic of discussion, there’s 0 ROI on smoking.
- shadowofneptune 5y agoWhat the studies have found is that drinking in moderation (at or below the 1–2 standard drinks a day limit) does not have cause a very large impact on life expectancy. This raises sharply after exceeding the limit. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/sorting-out-the-health-effects-of-alcohol-2018080614427 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/sorting-out-the-health-e... Personally unsure whether a reduced year or two of life is really that significant.
- ummonk 5y agoThat article seems to back up the idea that no level of alcohol is safe, given that low / moderate alcohol consumption is still associated with a small decrease in life expectancy. (Though there are always potential confounding factors in such studies)
- shadowofneptune 5y agoIt does lose you time, yes, but there's lots of other factors in a person's life like level of stress, air pollution, etc. that have similar or worse impact. Alcohol intake is at least somewhat more controllable than those factors, so it can be up to you whether that lost expectency matters.
- publicola1990 5y agoHow alcoholism can be triggered in some one is also not known. That is also an additional risk factor in every single drink consumed, perhaps?
- thinkling 5y agoHere's a paper that combined a 30 year study on intake with MRI data and came to similar conclusions (no safe level of consumption and no observed benefit from low-dosage consumption). https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 One thing to keep in mind when reading these papers is that a "unit" of alcohol in these studies is often equivalent to about half a standard drink in the US. So when they talk about 7 units a week, it's not 7 drinks, it's usually 3.5 drinks.
- gregwebs 5y agoChris Masterjohn theorizes that alcohol can have a beneficial hormetic effect by antagonizing vitamin A and the body adapting to supply more vitamin A. However, he theorizes the maximum beneficial dosage is about 2/3 of a single drink. https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/lite-videos/2018/12/13/is-alcohol-good-for-you https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/lite-videos/2018/12/13/is-alc...
- kirso 5y agoThis is a great comment. I am just usually employing a rule of: "If there is a conflict between healthy / unhealthy, then can just minimise or avoid it." Nobody really argues about vegetables... Meat and dairy products however, thats an interesting discussion.
- cleansingfire 5y agoWhat's disappointing is how quickly your observation was diverted to panic and inciting outrage. I'm interested to know why the CDC now says "no amount" when the evidence for decades has been that small amounts are cardioprotective. Is there truly none?
- Kutta 5y agoThe "small amounts is cardioprotective" is most likely false, the new recommendation simply reflects this. I recall reading about this in research more than 10 years ago. (Sorry for not citing, I'm on mobile rn)