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“The level of alcohol consumption that minimised harm across health outcomes was zero (95% UI 0·0–0·8) standard drinks per week.” Seems pretty clear. It’s like

by jnovek 4y ago

“The level of alcohol consumption that minimised harm across health outcomes was zero (95% UI 0·0–0·8) standard drinks per week.” Seems pretty clear. It’s likely that the risk of,(e.g.) one drink per month is also very low. What’s not here is the inflection point where alcohol consumption goes from a (subjective) minimal risk to an elevated risk.

dionidium 4y ago
I would just note here that the CDC is unequivocal on this point with respect to cigarettes, saying always that there is "no safe level of consumption." I think that sort of language is basically absurd, but the message it sends is crystal clear: this thing is bad for you, even in small amounts, and you're doing harm when you use it. I think the CDC could easily settle on the same language with respect to alcohol, if there weren't socio-cultural reasons not to. Another aspect of this is that we discourage even light cigarette use because of the fear that users might become addicted and escalate their usage. [0] It's interesting how rarely you hear that kind of an argument against drinking alcohol, and yet, unlike with smoking, increased usage can actually be ruinous. On the day you take your first sip of alcohol you're accepting a 1 in x risk that you'll end up a problem drinker (where x is anywhere from 3 or 4 to 20, depending on what definition of "problem drinker" you're willing to accept). [0] I remember many years ago when I was a very light smoker trying to find statistics online about moderate cigarette use and it was basically impossible, because every single statement about cigarettes was of the form, "you won't be able to only smoke a little, so don't even bother trying."
- sarchertech 4y ago
  I know plenty of people who have 1 drink a day, I know absolutely no one who smokes 1 cigarette per day. I’m sure they exist, but not in my n of several hundred, so I’d bet that’s it’s pretty rare. Smoking is also much more obnoxious and directly harms anyone near. This is a first order effect, not a 2nd order effect like increased risk of car accidents.
  - dionidium 4y ago
    Lots of people smoke cigarettes socially. There are in-jokes amongst smokers about the people who "don't smoke" who want to bum a cigarette in the smoking area outside at bars. It's extremely common. > Smoking is also much more obnoxious I'm not sure I've ever disagreed more with a claim than I do this one. People who have consumed alcohol are practically unbearable to the sober. And that's before we get into stuff like the fact that alcohol is implicated in some staggering percentage of all violent crime. Or drunk driving. Etc, etc.
    - sarchertech 4y ago
      We’re talking about light use here. I very rarely drink, and people who consume a drink or 2 with dinner are totally fine to be around. On the other hand, a person smoking 1 or 2 cigarettes near me is actively harmful to my health. If you want to find a field somewhere to smoke sure, I won’t find it obnoxious, but no one does that. >Extremely common sure I’ve met those people, I’ve never met one who does it anywhere near daily. Also most of the ones I’ve known drift in and out of periods of being heavy smokers. Again I have met many people who can drink a glass of wine every night. I have never met a single person who smokes a single cigarette after dinner. To me that says there is something different about cigarettes that makes them harder to moderate.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
        > I have never met a single person who smokes a single cigarette after dinner. On the other hand, there are people who smoke one cigar occasionally: cigarettes, for whatever reason, seem to be a lot more addictive than other forms of tobacco consumption.
        rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
        Cigarette breaks are a great -feeling way to punctuate your day because they force you to step outside for a brief moment once in a while with only your thoughts, and so they easily become tremendously habit-forming. The good thing about cigars is that they're terribly inconvenient. They're harder to acquire, harder to store properly, harder carry around, and they take nearly 10x as long to smoke. I've smoked a few cigars per year for almost 2 decades, and I can't imagine doing the same with cigarettes. Nobody really buys and smokes an entire pack of cigarettes in one night every few months (because it would be insane), but if they did, it's unlikely they'd become addicted.
- lupire 4y ago
  Smoking a cigarette makes you want more. Drinking a beer doesn't do that.
  - MandieD 4y ago
    You know there's a reason you don't offer even a single drink to a recovering alcoholic, right? A single drink is unlikely to hurt anyone, as long as it stays a single drink. There are a lot of people who can do a good job of not having that first drink, but have a really hard time stopping once they've had it. And beer is the beverage of choice of a surprising number of alcoholics. So yeah, for a lot of people, drinking a beer makes them want more.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    > Drinking a beer doesn't do that. There are a lot of binge drinkers that beg to differ.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wyclif 4y ago
    Ever met a binge drinker? I have, starting at university. Find one of those people and ask them if drinking one beer makes them want to drink more. I think you might be surprised by the answer.
TaupeRanger 4y ago
That does not support the claim that avoiding or stopping drinking lightly/socially will make you less likely to die or less likely to have disease. Drinking at all is associated with other unhealthy behaviors, alcohol drinking is just easy to tease out of data, but not necessarily causal. If you are a healthy person with healthy behaviors who drinks lightly (probably almost everyone reading this thread), there is no evidence that mortality or morbidity are increased with light drinking.
- jnovek 4y ago
  You really believe that light alcohol consumption carries no risk? For example, no one has ever, in the history of humans, had a single beer which has impaired them enough to get into a fatal crash? Even a single such accident would raise the impact of alcohol above the baseline by some tiny amount. Perhaps the impact is minimal but it certainly exists.
  - TaupeRanger 4y ago
    I didn't claim that. We are talking about population level trends, not individual anecdotes. The question is: does light drinking cause people to live shorter or worse lives overall? The answer is: we have no idea, and the answer may be that it has the opposite effect.
  - lazyasciiart 4y ago
    You have no idea of the actual baseline though. Perhaps the effects of one glass of alcohol on blood pressure and some random internal protein already give light drinkers an average extra three days of lifespan, which would far outweigh your one time a beer killed someone.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Someone in history has also teetotaled, failed to make friendships, and died choking on a piece of food while sitting at home alone.
    - rowanG077 4y ago

by jnovek 4y ago

dionidium 4y ago

I would just note here that the CDC is unequivocal on this point with respect to cigarettes, saying always that there is "no safe level of consumption." I think that sort of language is basically absurd, but the message it sends is crystal clear: this thing is bad for you, even in small amounts, and you're doing harm when you use it. I think the CDC could easily settle on the same language with respect to alcohol, if there weren't socio-cultural reasons not to. Another aspect of this is that we discourage even light cigarette use because of the fear that users might become addicted and escalate their usage. [0] It's interesting how rarely you hear that kind of an argument against drinking alcohol, and yet, unlike with smoking, increased usage can actually be ruinous. On the day you take your first sip of alcohol you're accepting a 1 in x risk that you'll end up a problem drinker (where x is anywhere from 3 or 4 to 20, depending on what definition of "problem drinker" you're willing to accept). [0] I remember many years ago when I was a very light smoker trying to find statistics online about moderate cigarette use and it was basically impossible, because every single statement about cigarettes was of the form, "you won't be able to only smoke a little, so don't even bother trying."

sarchertech 4y ago
I know plenty of people who have 1 drink a day, I know absolutely no one who smokes 1 cigarette per day. I’m sure they exist, but not in my n of several hundred, so I’d bet that’s it’s pretty rare. Smoking is also much more obnoxious and directly harms anyone near. This is a first order effect, not a 2nd order effect like increased risk of car accidents.
- dionidium 4y ago
  Lots of people smoke cigarettes socially. There are in-jokes amongst smokers about the people who "don't smoke" who want to bum a cigarette in the smoking area outside at bars. It's extremely common. > Smoking is also much more obnoxious I'm not sure I've ever disagreed more with a claim than I do this one. People who have consumed alcohol are practically unbearable to the sober. And that's before we get into stuff like the fact that alcohol is implicated in some staggering percentage of all violent crime. Or drunk driving. Etc, etc.
  - sarchertech 4y ago
    We’re talking about light use here. I very rarely drink, and people who consume a drink or 2 with dinner are totally fine to be around. On the other hand, a person smoking 1 or 2 cigarettes near me is actively harmful to my health. If you want to find a field somewhere to smoke sure, I won’t find it obnoxious, but no one does that. >Extremely common sure I’ve met those people, I’ve never met one who does it anywhere near daily. Also most of the ones I’ve known drift in and out of periods of being heavy smokers. Again I have met many people who can drink a glass of wine every night. I have never met a single person who smokes a single cigarette after dinner. To me that says there is something different about cigarettes that makes them harder to moderate.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - fiddlerwoaroof 4y ago
      > I have never met a single person who smokes a single cigarette after dinner. On the other hand, there are people who smoke one cigar occasionally: cigarettes, for whatever reason, seem to be a lot more addictive than other forms of tobacco consumption.
      - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
        Cigarette breaks are a great -feeling way to punctuate your day because they force you to step outside for a brief moment once in a while with only your thoughts, and so they easily become tremendously habit-forming. The good thing about cigars is that they're terribly inconvenient. They're harder to acquire, harder to store properly, harder carry around, and they take nearly 10x as long to smoke. I've smoked a few cigars per year for almost 2 decades, and I can't imagine doing the same with cigarettes. Nobody really buys and smokes an entire pack of cigarettes in one night every few months (because it would be insane), but if they did, it's unlikely they'd become addicted.
lupire 4y ago
Smoking a cigarette makes you want more. Drinking a beer doesn't do that.
- MandieD 4y ago
  You know there's a reason you don't offer even a single drink to a recovering alcoholic, right? A single drink is unlikely to hurt anyone, as long as it stays a single drink. There are a lot of people who can do a good job of not having that first drink, but have a really hard time stopping once they've had it. And beer is the beverage of choice of a surprising number of alcoholics. So yeah, for a lot of people, drinking a beer makes them want more.
- kortilla 4y ago
  > Drinking a beer doesn't do that. There are a lot of binge drinkers that beg to differ.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wyclif 4y ago
  Ever met a binge drinker? I have, starting at university. Find one of those people and ask them if drinking one beer makes them want to drink more. I think you might be surprised by the answer.

TaupeRanger 4y ago

That does not support the claim that avoiding or stopping drinking lightly/socially will make you less likely to die or less likely to have disease. Drinking at all is associated with other unhealthy behaviors, alcohol drinking is just easy to tease out of data, but not necessarily causal. If you are a healthy person with healthy behaviors who drinks lightly (probably almost everyone reading this thread), there is no evidence that mortality or morbidity are increased with light drinking.

jnovek 4y ago
You really believe that light alcohol consumption carries no risk? For example, no one has ever, in the history of humans, had a single beer which has impaired them enough to get into a fatal crash? Even a single such accident would raise the impact of alcohol above the baseline by some tiny amount. Perhaps the impact is minimal but it certainly exists.
- TaupeRanger 4y ago
  I didn't claim that. We are talking about population level trends, not individual anecdotes. The question is: does light drinking cause people to live shorter or worse lives overall? The answer is: we have no idea, and the answer may be that it has the opposite effect.
- lazyasciiart 4y ago
  You have no idea of the actual baseline though. Perhaps the effects of one glass of alcohol on blood pressure and some random internal protein already give light drinkers an average extra three days of lifespan, which would far outweigh your one time a beer killed someone.
- lupire 4y ago
  Someone in history has also teetotaled, failed to make friendships, and died choking on a piece of food while sitting at home alone.
  - rowanG077 4y ago