3 ms·

Just one drink per day can shrink your brain, study says

41 points by maxwell 5y ago

mrlonglong 5y ago
I'd take that with a pinch of salt, and wonder who commissioned the study? Anti-alcohol or temperance groups? Last time they succeeded in getting alcohol banned it directly led to the Mafia getting established in the US in the 1920s.
themodelplumber 5y ago
> “Small amounts of alcohol are associated with health benefits for some conditions, such as ischemic heart disease and diabetes, but harmful for others, such as road traffic accidents and breast cancer,” This made me curious, is a road traffic accident considered a condition? It seems a bit strange at first, thinking of e.g. "I have a road traffic accident condition, it is associated with the boozing events of my past" but I'm curious to know if that's the nomenclature.
- lovich 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure that’s just a tongue in cheek joke
- SnowDunes 5y ago
- tsol 5y ago
  I mean it's not a condition, but it is a associated health risk. I think they just wrote that out a little weird
carlos__sorry 5y ago
But don’t we need water to survive?
credit_guy 5y ago
Here's the link to the actual study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5 The crucial figure is Figure 3. Take it with a big grain of salt though. From the figure it would follow that if you are female and you drink an average of 1 alcoholic drink per day, then your brain actually "grows". And the effect is more pronounced (about double) than the "shrinkage" effect observed for males.
- mackatap 5y ago
  Safe to say it's a misleading title then
zwaps 5y ago
Okay so people with who are less smart tend, on average, to drink more? Jokes aside, I am shocked that a study without a causal identification strategy is still published in such a journal. The authors straddle the line in their discussion, all but making causal claims regardless. This would never get greenlit in fields that have been emphasizing rigorous science despite the lack of pure experimental data. Ironically, this now includes most social sciences. Apparently, medicine has still ways to go. Edit: of course, the newspaper writers who wrote this exact headline deserve to figuratively burn in hell. This seriously contributes to the mispractice and misaligned incentives, such as in fields like nutrition science, where we have many great headlines but just about zero scientific advances in about a century

41 points by maxwell 5y ago

I'd take that with a pinch of salt, and wonder who commissioned the study? Anti-alcohol or temperance groups? Last time they succeeded in getting alcohol banned it directly led to the Mafia getting established in the US in the 1920s.

themodelplumber 5y ago

> “Small amounts of alcohol are associated with health benefits for some conditions, such as ischemic heart disease and diabetes, but harmful for others, such as road traffic accidents and breast cancer,” This made me curious, is a road traffic accident considered a condition? It seems a bit strange at first, thinking of e.g. "I have a road traffic accident condition, it is associated with the boozing events of my past" but I'm curious to know if that's the nomenclature.

lovich 5y ago
I’m pretty sure that’s just a tongue in cheek joke
SnowDunes 5y ago
tsol 5y ago
I mean it's not a condition, but it is a associated health risk. I think they just wrote that out a little weird

carlos__sorry 5y ago

But don’t we need water to survive?

credit_guy 5y ago

Here's the link to the actual study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28735-5 The crucial figure is Figure 3. Take it with a big grain of salt though. From the figure it would follow that if you are female and you drink an average of 1 alcoholic drink per day, then your brain actually "grows". And the effect is more pronounced (about double) than the "shrinkage" effect observed for males.

mackatap 5y ago
Safe to say it's a misleading title then

zwaps 5y ago

Okay so people with who are less smart tend, on average, to drink more? Jokes aside, I am shocked that a study without a causal identification strategy is still published in such a journal. The authors straddle the line in their discussion, all but making causal claims regardless. This would never get greenlit in fields that have been emphasizing rigorous science despite the lack of pure experimental data. Ironically, this now includes most social sciences. Apparently, medicine has still ways to go. Edit: of course, the newspaper writers who wrote this exact headline deserve to figuratively burn in hell. This seriously contributes to the mispractice and misaligned incentives, such as in fields like nutrition science, where we have many great headlines but just about zero scientific advances in about a century