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WHO: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health
- zabzonk 4y agowhat, even a microgram a day? well, sod it [slurps first large g&t of the day].
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- newsclues 4y agoIs there a shortage of alcohol?
- sph 4y agoEthanol is one of the easiest things to synthesize, also found in outer space. So, no.
- moonchrome 4y agoI thibk that's a joke about WHO and masks advice with COVID
- newsclues 4y agoMore a joke that they are hoarding wine and fine spirits for themselves.
- willis936 4y agoHow much does a bottle of space everclear cost? Edit: 6500 light years away, so quite expensive. Also, it's mostly methyl so it would still need distillation. https://phys.org/news/2014-09-alcohol-clouds-space.html https://phys.org/news/2014-09-alcohol-clouds-space.html
- RandomLensman 4y agoNo fruit juice then.
- sph 4y agoYou mean fruit-flavoured sugary water? Better eat an actual fruit.
- zwirbl 4y agoThere is such a thing as directly pressed apple (or $FRUIT) juice, which usually contains at least a small amount of alcohol
- RandomLensman 4y agoI really meant a fruit juice, i.e., taking fruit and extract juice - no water or sugar added.
- switch007 4y agoGood idea. Pointless calories
- RandomLensman 4y agoYou don't need calories?
- dplgk 4y agoI think they want pointful calories.
- steve1977 4y agoI would probably avoid fruit juice anyway for sugar reasons
- gpvos 4y agoSaving you a click: https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
- stephen_g 4y agoAnd this is the Lancet article summarising the research: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(22)00317-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2... The proportion of cancers attributable to alcohol is 4.1% of all cases, from [1]. Of that, the ‘Light to Moderate’ alcohol category (<=1.5L of wine per week or <=3.5L of beer per week) had 13.3% of cases for alcohol-attributable cancers and 2.3% of alcohol-related cancer cases. 1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(21)00279-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...
- Loic 4y ago2 bottles of wine per week is already quite a bit. If you are a couple, you pop a bottle more than every second day.
- scotty79 4y ago3.5liter beer per week is just one beer per day which a lot of people consider completely benign.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mytailorisrich 4y agoWhat matters is obviously per person... So "if you are a couple" is completely irrelevant. Terms like 'light', 'moderate' or 'heavy' drinking are relative and must be taken in context. For instance, historically it has been customary in many countries to drink wine with every meal. So 2 bottles per week is indeed moderate as it's about 1-2 glasses per meal. Likewise, 3.5l a beer per week is one beer at dinner, which is considered quite moderate, indeed. Basically, if your drinking is moderate during meals only and no hard liquor this is considerate 'moderate' to normal in traditional terms.
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- tjpnz 4y agoSo we can expect conflicting advice and maybe even some backpedaling in a few days?
- hilbert42 4y agoNeither is life, it eventually kills you.
- jeroen 4y agoSource: https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
- gizmo 4y ago> To identify a “safe” level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption. The new WHO statement clarifies: currently available evidence cannot indicate the existence of a threshold at which the carcinogenic effects of alcohol “switch on” and start to manifest in the human body. The headline is not accurate it looks like. The article states that we don’t know if occasional drinking is harmful. And it makes sense we don’t know, because you can’t do an effective longitudinal study where you compare very light drinking to no drinking because the expected effect size is small and all the confounders will muddy the water. Toasted bread and cinnamon are carcinogenic but I can’t imagine a WHO headline asserting that “no amount of cinnamon is safe for your health”.
- zabzonk 4y agoyou don't need the cinnamon, just the toast [studies say]
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoLink? I thought cinnamon was good for blood pressure?
- zabzonk 4y agocinnamon may be - don't know. i was talking about browned/burnt toast, in which several carcinogens have been identified, as they are in just about everything, if you look hard enough.
- Penyngton 4y agoApparently, this is a myth: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/cancer-myths/can-eating-burnt-foods-cause-cancer https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-canc...
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- pfdietz 4y agoEthanol is metabolized to acetaldehyde in the body. Acetaldehyde causes DNA damage. https://academic.oup.com/carcin/article/43/1/52/6373372 https://academic.oup.com/carcin/article/43/1/52/6373372
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoUV too. So basically direct exposure to Sun light should be avoided. edit: UV do cause DNA damage, so following the same logic, no amount of Sun light can be considered safe. Which is true, but the effects are usually negligible, so, as usual, common sense is your best friend.
- schwartzworld 4y agoAsk any dermatologist and they'll absolutely tell you to protect yourself from the sun.
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoSolar radiation is group 1 carcinogen Literally the light from the Sun is in the same group of tobacco and asbestos So unless you live in a cave, you're exposed to it constantly. Paracelsus knew it already a long time ago: dosis sola facit venenum (only the dose makes the poison)
- schwartzworld 4y agoDose does make the poison, and factors like sunscreen, long sleeve shirts, avoiding being out when the sun is high, all affect your dose. Pretty much everybody in my family wears hats and long sleeve shirts to the beach because we have a family history of skin cancer
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago> pretty much everybody in my family wears hats and long sleeve shirts to the beach the sun shines even when you are not at the beach though. So you accept some of the risks involved, but get some precautions, because it's not smart to risk without any benefit. People do the same thing with alcoholic beverages, they drink them, but they are not trying to kill themselves when they do it, usually. So, for example, it they have to drive, they do not drink. If they are good, they stop drinking. They do not, in other words, abuse of it. because people take care of themselves, there's no kind A people who live and prosper and kind B who are suicidal and do not care at all. We are all mostly self preserving animals. Also, risk of cancer before and after the 40s, it's a completely different beast. We can safely say that at 19 the risk of getting a cancer on average is almost zero. So age plays a big role too, much bigger than people imagine.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago> To identify a “safe” level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption that's such a broken premise that everything that comes after that must be broken as well. We could prove, using the same logic, that "no level of life consumption is safe for our health" It is impossible to prove that everyone's injuries over the course of an entire life are not associated with being alive. edit: meanwhile car accidents in my country are responsible for 12 deaths every 100,000 people every year. Avoidable deaths. Please WHO go back to being a reliable source of good information and not an "ora et labora" kind of publication.
- fsloth 4y agoAlcohol consumption is always a net health risk. It's also quite fun and adults should be allowed to do what they want with their bodies. But one should always be aware of the risks. The statement "alcohol is not bad for my health" is only true if a person is about to die from alcohol withdrawal symptoms.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago> Alcohol consumption is always a net health risk No. Or, if you accept that definition, the air you breathe is even more dangerous for your health. Food is even more dangerous than air. [1] > The statement "alcohol is not bad for my health" is somewhat true. The kind of food popular in USA average diet is killing a lot more people. The solution is not to stop eating altogether, but to eat less and better. It's exactly the same for alcohol. Because I can assure you that working is not good for your health too. [1] edit: number 1 cause of death in USA is heart diseases, for both men and women. There are a lot of studies that associated processed food with an increase of heart related disease, it's also not news anymore at this point. an excerpt from this NYT article, among many of the same kind More than 100 million adults — almost half the entire adult population — have pre-diabetes or diabetes. Cardiovascular disease afflicts about 122 million people and causes roughly 840,000 deaths each year, or about 2,300 deaths each day. Three in four adults are overweight or obese. More Americans are sick, in other words, than are healthy. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/opinion/food-nutrition-health-care.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/opinion/food-nutrition-he...
- Ekaros 4y agoTime to start treating it as any other drug then. Bring back the prohibition, throw the users, producers, sellers and so on to jail. It is least we can do to protect the young from it.
- shaftoe444 4y agoDrinking alcohol is Lindy.
- fsloth 4y agoSo is the strategy of dying early due to alcohol consumption.
- shaftoe444 4y agoBut moderate drinkers live longer?
- B8MGHCBekDuRi 4y agoactually people who drink moderately live longer. Epidemiological studies indicate that moderate drinkers live longer than non-drinkers and heavy drinkers. https://www.med.unc.edu/alcohol/education-prevention/alcoholism-and-alcohol-abuse/but-i-heard-drinking-was-good-for-my-health/ https://www.med.unc.edu/alcohol/education-prevention/alcohol...
- fsloth 4y agoAfaik that is debunked according to latest data but I leave the details for any medical professionl who is reading this and would like to clarify the issue. Since it’s apparently not bleedingly obvious which way it is moderate drinking is clearly not as bad as, say. a heroin addiction. So go ahead, be a moderate drinker but don’t fool yourself by delusions of better health outcomes.
- pneumatic1 4y agoThat does not mean it's beneficial.
- shaftoe444 4y agoCertainly benefits me
- ascotan 4y agoWell according to the American Cancer Society, alcoholic beverages are a Group 1 Carcinogen. Right up there with Asbestos, UV radiation, Tobacco smoke, and Diesel exhaust. https://www.cancer.org/healthy/cancer-causes/general-info/known-and-probable-human-carcinogens.html https://www.cancer.org/healthy/cancer-causes/general-info/kn... There probably a story somewhere as to why cigarettes get big labels and beer cans don't.
- zabzonk 4y agothe story is that cigarettes are well researched and documented to cause agressive lung cancers, heart disease and many other problems. the story on alcohol is much less clear and even if true, much lower risk
- fsloth 4y ago"the story on alcohol is much less clear and if it even true, much lower risk" What? Afaik alcohol is pretty well known to increase risks of several cancers in population. Individual response to alcohol is of course a much more complex topic with genetics affecting a large palette of physiological and neurological responses to alcohol. For populations - alcohol is a health risk. For individual - the narrative is far more nuanced (more risk for some than others etc).
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoThe article mentions that it is not widely known that alcohol causes cancer. Used to be the same with cigarettes. We need to change that!
- epmaybe 4y agoThis is correct. Do you know what percent of lung cancer is attributable to smoking? 90%! 9/10 lung cancer deaths are attributable to smoking. Compare this to ~5% of cancer related death attributable to alcohol use. It's just not even an accurate comparison. To be honest though? I am willing to bet that cost to healthcare system for alcohol related illness is outpacing that of smoking related illness. Cirrhosis of the liver is a very costly disease when it gets close to end stage.
- k__ 4y agoI stopped drinking due to the pandemic. Which was probably good for my health but bad for my social life. On the other hand, I probably would have developed better social skills, if I didn't start drinking socially earlier in my life.
- LatteLazy 4y agoIt would be very useful to rate all sorts of things in terms of the effect on life expectancy so people could make educated decisions. Is one serving of beer/wine better or worse than being say 5kg over weight? Or 2 portions of red meat? Or living next to a main road? Without the ability to actually measure these numbers and compare them we don't actually know anything. This is data but not information...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ahofmann 4y agoI understand that the statement "only no alcohol is really safe" is correct. But it is not helpful in my everyday life. Exactly the same problem exists with gasoline. It is simply not possible (or extremely costly) to completely avoid the substance or their effects. To refuse a beer in Germany is an affront that I would like to weigh against the risk of cancer. In fact, I have found information on the question: The daily consumption of 50 grams of pure alcohol - equivalent to about 1.5 liters of beer or 0.5 liters of wine - increases the risk of cancer two- to threefold. Continuously high alcohol consumption is also one of the main causes of liver cancer. Consuming more than 80 grams of alcohol (about 2 liters of beer) per day increases the risk of liver cancer by a factor of four to seven. Women have a significantly higher alcohol-related liver cancer risk than men. Increased risk of cancer of the colon and rectum begins at four glasses per day. Compared to people living abstinent from alcohol, this increases the risk of cancer by 1.4 times. The risk of breast cancer in women increases from just one daily glass of an alcoholic beverage (e.g. 0.3 liters of beer). Each additional glass increases the risk by about seven percent. Source: https://www.kenn-dein-limit.de/alkoholkonsum/folgen-von-alkohol/alkohol-und-krebs https://www.kenn-dein-limit.de/alkoholkonsum/folgen-von-alko... (the website is from a German authority that provides information about addiction, etc.)
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago> refuse a beer in Germany is an affront that I would like to weigh against the risk of cancer Refusing a cigarette used to have a similar insult; and also you weren’t cool if you refused That’s changed after decades of press and cancer warning labels on tobacco. Let’s hope the same happens with alcohol.
- shanebellone 4y ago"Let’s hope the same happens with alcohol." Why? You have all the required information to make an educated decision for yourself. Others do too. Allow them to decide without harassment. I quit smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol years ago now. As the calculus changed, my habits followed suit. Everyone should be allowed to choose how they live.
- jansan 4y ago> valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol Could by the same logic be argued that no kilometer traveled by car/bus/plane is safe for your health? In other words, isn't this totally useless?
- acomjean 4y agoI mean this comes not as surprise to anyone who’s had a drink or a few. I enjoy a drink on occasion but the after effects are noticeable. I mean your body tells you the next day. Though an occasional drink reduces stress, which is a positive effect, though it’s not advised to use as medicine.
- simonbarker87 4y agoI’ve not had drink in 15 years and I’m 35. I stopped for a number of reasons but the main one was that when I had a drink I became a fairly unpleasant person. Seeing friends around me evolve their relationship with alcohol has been interesting. Many have reduced their intake over years, some have drifted it up and without a doubt those who drink less are healthier and happier. None have been able to go tea total for more than a few months but are happy I am as always being sober comes in handy sometimes (dealing with emergencies primarily when out/away from home)
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoReading through the comments here there seems to be much negative sentiment against this study. But what they are right? What if alcohol is actually just bad for you full stop. Would this really be that shocking or controversial that a known poison is poisonous?
- zabzonk 4y agoit's neither shocking or controversial to say that excess alcohol (for example, falling-down drunk) is bad for the majority of people. what is irritating to people of a logical/scientific bent is saying that ANY alcohol at all is going to lead to a a bad result, with minimal or no evidence. for example, the bottle of gin that i have beside me has a label on it that says i should not exceed 2 small glasses a day. where did this figure come from? somebody made it up!
- rightbyte 4y agoTwo small glasses of gin every day is probably way to much? Just from the high frequency.
- zabzonk 4y agothat is not a high frequency for a regular drinker who is not an alcoholic. and my point was that this figure was made up by people who, with no evidence, simply made up this figure.
- vixen99 4y agoI guess people can make their own deductions as to good or bad. Alcohol is mostly detoxified in the body by two enzymes. Alcohol dehydrogenase breaks down alcohol to acetaldehyde which is a highly toxic substance and a known carcinogen. Acetaldehyde is then thankfully further metabolized to acetate (harmless) and thence to water and carbon dioxide. Neither alcohol or acetaldehyde are exactly friendly to cells to put it mildly. As we know, the former is an excellent preservative once the cells are dead. As with the rest of life, it's a balance of risks. Having the right genes may be helpful. Jeanne Calment lived to 111 and apparently enjoyed a daily spot of port. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment
- jwie 4y agoAll cause mortality is lower among light drinkers than non-drinkers. Small doses of harms are typically beneficial. Not all harm is bad, and safety is not always desirable.
- pfdietz 4y agoThis could just mean that light drinking is correlated with other behaviors that offset the damage from the alcohol.
- endisneigh 4y agoI know you’re trying to be clever but harm is definitionally bad.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI think he is referring to hormetic stress. But WHO says the same about lead… there is no safe level. I wouldn’t want to stress my body lightly with a light amount of lead.
- ergonaught 4y agoBy failing to note that moderate (or lower) consumption is associated with less than 1% of global “alcohol attributed cancer”, while raising the specter of cancer itself as a leading cause of death, they’ve basically just behaved like shrill, manipulative prohibitionists instead of scientists. “All alcohol consumption appears to be harmful” can be stated without “OMG CANCER UR GONNA DIE” equivalents if you are serious and responsible.
- tyjen 4y agoAlcohol's ill effects have been known for awhile, but alcohol companies continuously undermined studies that would conclusively demonstrate it. Basically, unless you're older and have a certain type of heart disease that alcohol may help, the costs of alcohol are always greater than the benefits. Then again, this is up for the individual to decide, whether they believe their perceived benefits outweigh the potential health costs. At least now, they can make a more informed choice knowing the risks involved.
- sn41 4y agoOne needs a stiff drink to cope with such bad news!
- timbit42 4y agoOnly the weak ones.
- refurb 4y agoThis needs a true cost-benefit analysis. Thats what we do for any type of medical intervention. Some surgeries are super risky and some drugs have severe side effects that can kill you. Still, the overall benefit is positive. Benefits: reduced stress, increased social interactions, improved mood Costs: reduced lifespan, liver issues, addiction I’ll bet the benefits outway the costs over an entire population. Maybe not by much, but i bet its a net benefit.
- TOMDM 4y agoDon't forget drink driving. ~30% of car crashes involve a driver with alcohol in their system. In the US alone that's approximately 11,000 deaths a year. https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving#:~:text=About%2030%25%20of%20all%20traffic,g%2FdL%20or%20higher https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving#:~:text=Ab...).
- nemo44x 4y agoConsidering humans have been using it thousands of years I’d tend to agree. We have a habit today of quickly throwing away things people have done forever believing, arrogantly, that we are the first people to finally be right. We tend to privilege certain types of information (scientific study in this case) without considering the broader context and practical realities. And that trying to live forever is futile.
- B8MGHCBekDuRi 4y ago> reduced lifespan said it before, this one is not true. Epidemiological studies indicate that moderate drinkers live longer than non-drinkers and heavy drinkers.
- fumblebee 4y agoI'm sure many folks here will be familiar with Andrew Huberman. If not, I highly recommend listing to his podcast, The Huberman Lab Podcast. Relevant to this discussion is his brilliant episode on alcohol [1]: "What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health". Boy, was this episode a life-changing listen for me. The conclusion is the same as the linked study, that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health. [1] https://hubermanlab.com/what-alcohol-does-to-your-body-brain-health/ https://hubermanlab.com/what-alcohol-does-to-your-body-brain...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoThere is more solid evidence for alcohol causing cancer than for RoundUp(glyphosate). Yet people will happily have a beer while discussing how evil Monsanto is.
- phyphy 4y agoRelevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_effects_of_alcohol_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_effects_of_alcohol_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_alcohol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_alcohol
- tremon 4y agoNot even zero?
- Apreche 4y agoWe know that banning alcohol doesn’t work. We should do what we did for tobacco. Ban advertisements for alcohol. Do the same for other vice. If consenting adults want to engage in vice that doesn’t hurt other people such as gambling, alcohol, etc. then allow it. Just don’t allow it to be advertised. Can’t deny that as someone who has abstained from alcohol my entire life, feeling pretty smart every time more of these studies come out.
- brianwawok 4y agoAs a drinker, I feel pretty smart every time I take a drink.
- Ekaros 4y agoAnd after that we could put age restrictions to any media that markets alcoholic drinks in positive light. Just make them R rated, and add suitable warnings before any old programs. This should direct producers of such programs to steer clear.
- lo_zamoyski 4y agoIn other news: obsessing irrationally over one's health is unsafe for one's health.
- mabbo 4y agoWhat's fascinating about this isn't the study itself - it's the reactions people here are having. From "I guess that means fruit juice should be illegal since it can contain alcohol!" to "Life leads to death too!". Just any justification to call the WHO's point bunk. Denial, in a word. This is the world's leading body on science health giving a result that I'm guessing most of us don't want to hear. Because we like alcohol and want to be told we're right for liking it. I think the result is completely true. Just the same, I plan to keep occasionally drinking a beer, the same as I occasionally consume horrendously unhealthy food or spend too long in front of a computer screen. It's okay to do unhealthy things in moderation. But if being told it would be best to drink only in moderation, if at all, triggers an angry response and denial, maybe you should have a sit down and think about what that means.
- B8MGHCBekDuRi 4y ago> Denial, in a word. I think it's more like: yeah, we know, but people are able of being responsible too. So don't assume that living a week more in a lifetime should be a goal, I assume these studies are published to get some funding for the team who publish them, not because they are useful for the public debate. Because they are not. Alcohol is much less dangerous than the car tyres, moderate alcohol consumption is also associated in many studies to health benefits, just like drugs are not good for your health but without them the chances of dying of common disease increase two fold, so they're not as bad as they look. Maybe people should care about important stuff, not the sensationalistic stuff. Meanwhile: The car tyre particles pollute air, water and soil and contain a wide range of toxic organic compounds, including known carcinogens, the analysts say, suggesting tyre pollution could rapidly become a major issue for regulators. Air pollution causes millions of early deaths a year globally
- notacoward 4y ago> Because we like alcohol and want to be told we're right for liking it. That works the other way too. It's all too easy for people who don't like alcohol anyway to jump on studies like these, but the fact that their personal preference aligns with health advice doesn't justify their expressions of moral superiority. There's no moral dimension to it. It's little more than happenstance. "Don't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes" still applies.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ekianjo 4y agoYet there's no scary labels about alcohol "about to kill you" on bottles sold in the market.
- haunter 4y agoWhy link reddit not the original source? https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
- singularity2001 4y ago"No level is safe " should probably be the new norm for all kinds of chemicals, especially Roundup...
- sbmyft 4y agoThis does not even talk about neurodegeneration.
- proc0 4y agoI bet sugar is even more harmful, yet I doubt there will be any raising of awareness on that front (from the health industry). I think removing sugar from most foods in the grocery store would have much more impact than banning all alcohol. It just seems the priorities on harmful substances are not in order, from a perspective of a healthy society.
- yencabulator 4y agoNewer duplicate linking to real source and with more conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34752193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34752193