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Is moderate drinking healthy? Scientists say the idea is outdated
- teekert 1y ago"...among 100 women who have less than one drink per week, about 17 will develop an alcohol-related cancer." How does this insane number get unnoticed for so long. I really find it hard to believe. < One drink per day more dangerous than smoking a pack per day? Edit: Ok, looked into the reference and it's a bit more subtle, though I can't find numbers for people not consuming anything, allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers. "For example, a study of 226,162 individuals reported that the absolute risk of developing any alcohol-related cancer over the lifespan of a woman increases from approximately 16.5% (about 17 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume less than one drink per week, to 19.0% (19 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume one drink daily on average to approximately 21.8% (about 22 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume two drinks daily on average (Figure 5). That is about five more women out of 100 who would have developed cancer due to a higher level of alcohol consumption." Pretty significant, although "less than one drink per day" is a bit vague.
- PeterStuer 1y agoHow did they establish causality, or is it just a correlation potentially resulting from hidden variables? E.g., I do not know many smokers that do not touch alcohol, but plenty of non smoking abstinates. I also know plenty of sedentary obese heavy drinkers, where a higher percentage of the teetotal lot are more health obsessed in other ways.
- Gareth321 1y agoThey can't really. This data is almost always self-reported. They can attempt to eliminate common confounds but the data is very noisy. People have a lot of bias and inaccuracies when reporting the primary data. Even questions like "how many cigarettes per day/week/month/year do you smoke?" is subject to enormous inaccuracies. And the more questions re confounds which are asked, the more the noise, and the lower the number of questionnaires returned. And no matter how many confounds are included in the questionnaires, there are likely a thousand more which also matter. It's a fairly major issue in health research, and why we so often see headlines with conflicting findings every few years. See research into the health of eggs, for example. One should be highly skeptical of correlative health evidence at this point (and this is what most of the clickbait studies are). Instead, try to focus on the causative research where they identify specific genes or chemical mechanisms which cause outcomes. This is much more difficult, of course, and sparse.
- spacebanana7 1y agoI wish there was more causative research where nutrition was artificially changed in a highly managed population. For example in a prison or military barracks. I suspect there's a lot we could learn about the health of eggs, for example, if we could just pay some prisoners to eat varying quantities of them for 20 years, then look at the development of their health.
- laserdancepony 1y agoYou should message Vault-Tec about that opportunity you seek, they might already have a suitable Vault for that.
- IAmBroom 1y agoWhile I applaud your desire to have better controlled data, there may be some selection bias interfering with the results.
- asah 1y agoHahaha there's the rub. This data is self reported of course, and "one drink daily" are people who actually drink a lot more. If you actually drink less than daily, very little to worry about AFAICT.
- VagabundoP 1y agoJust the standard amount of worry then. For the standard person with the standard lifestyle.
- iLoveOncall 1y agoI imagine it's because they count any cancer that could be caused by heavy-drinking as an "alcohol-related cancer", regardless of whether it was actually caused by alcohol or not.
- ftrobro 1y ago> allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers I assume "alcohol related" in this context means that alcohol consumption increases the risk for those types of cancers, but you might still get those types of cancers even if you have never consumed any alcohol. And "less than once drink per week" is assumed to be almost the same as never consuming any alcohol at all, so 17% is the risk for women who never consume any alcohol.
- teekert 1y agoAh yes that must be it. 17% of women get these cancers, which are cancers that you have a higher risk of when drinking, but in this case they are not caused by drinking. I though < 1 per day is still drinking 6 special Belgian beers of 8-10 % alcohol on a Saturday so I thought, that's still quite something. At least I'd be heavily hung over the next day. I expected the baseline to just be "non-drinking". Very poorly written I'd say.
- IAmBroom 1y agoThen the phrase "alcohol related" is massively biased wording. That's like calling death from bleeding out "gun related death", because people who get shot often die of bleeding out.
- deadbabe 1y agoThere is no amount of alcohol that is good for you. It is a toxin that only harms your body. The rising popularity and creativity of mocktails shows that people can still have a fun drink that doesn’t involve poisoning their body. And if you use alcohol for social lubrication, you only screw yourself over by never learning how to truly socialize and let go of inhibition naturally.
- ljlolel 1y agoAlcohol is lindy
- IAmBroom 1y agoObscure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
- PeterStuer 1y agoSeeing the amount of sugar and sweeteners in the "mocktails" and alcohol free beers/wines, I'd say it most certainly does involve poisoning your body.
- deadbabe 1y agoThere are sugar free mocktails.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoLike a glass of just water?
- Ekaros 1y agoAlcoholic wines also have massive range. Very dry ones do not have much, but once you get to medium and beyond they are in soft drink territory or even more... I think normal cocktails can end up in similar place, especially if say juices are component.
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- pixelpoet 1y agoI wish the popular and completely absurd phrase "drugs and alcohol" would become outdated. Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/whatever use healthy?"
- imjonse 1y agowhile the special treatment of alcohol is due to cultural,historical and commercial reasons, from a toxicology point of view it makes sense to treat them all separately. But I agree with your sentiment.
- Dylan16807 1y agoModerate nicotine use is fine if you aren't using a carcinogenic method to get it into your body. Moderate meth use, uh, what does moderate mean? But when I laugh it's more that I doubt the very premise. Moderate ecstacy use, go for it.
- IAmBroom 1y agoMeth is just a particularly strong variant of amphetamines, which absolutely are used safely in some cases. Like heroin versus morphine, safe uses are probably possible, but highly risky.
- jasode 1y ago>Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/ The "drugs" of alcohol and caffeine are more deeply integrated into public social life. Wine is mentioned in the Bible. Beer is sold at family outings like baseball games. The White House serves alcohol at official state dinners. President Obama had the famous "beer summit" https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+beer+summit&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+beer+summit&tbm=isch Also, the existence of alcohol is caused by common natural processes. E.g. leaving apples or pears out on the kitchen counter too long and it naturally ferments which creates alcohol. I remember leaving some old pears in the kitchen and they eventually smelled like alcohol. I ate the pears and they definitely tasted like alcohol. The point is, alcohol can come into existence without even doing anything. In contrast, the White House isn't handing out crystal meth or heroin at state dinners and there aren't any natural decaying processes that turns random food into ecstasy. Marijuana is natural but it isn't culturally accepted by the public. (President Clinton's "Yes, but I didn't inhale.") Alcohol/caffeine have a lot of acceptable functional uses that the other drug categories don't have which is why society continues to talk about them as a separate class.
- malablaster 1y agoYou’d be hard pressed to convince me to consume a class 1 carcinogen in moderation for health benefits.
- Dylan16807 1y agoClass 1 just means "confirmed" with absolutely nothing stated about what the risk level is. You'd be hard pressed to convince me to make any decision based on that alone.
- IAmBroom 1y agoCell byproducts are known carcinogen, and definitely ingested for health benefits (not for themselves, but en masse).
- 1970-01-01 1y agoSunlight is a class 1 carcinogen too. Dracula is the only person that avoids it.
- FinnLobsien 1y agoIf I recall correctly (and I might not), the idea that moderate drinking is healthy came from a faulty study where people who didn't drink at all were less healthy. But the people who didn't drink at all often didn't drink because they self-excluded because of alcoholism or disease. They weren't less healthy because they didn't drink, they didn't drink because they were less healthy.
- HPsquared 1y agoI wonder if the same applies to exercise and physical activity in general.
- FinnLobsien 1y agoIs anyone saying exercise is unhealthy? Not sure I follow the point
- ofrzeta 1y agoExercise releases free radicals, which is bad. Following the hormesis theory this is still benefical in the long run.
- dmurray 1y agoI think you're broadly correct. But it's not one "faulty study". Every attempt to do a broad population-based study of alcohol use vs health outcomes finds this effect. Controlling for why people don't drink is difficult to do without introducing bias. So there are still two competing theories: either the non-drinkers were a less healthy cohort to begin with, or moderate drinking has net health benefits.
- FinnLobsien 1y agoThe current WHO and IARC guidance is that there's no safe level of alcohol consumption that doesn't affect health and that alcohol is a clear carcinogen. I don't know how that could have health benefits.
- djmips 1y agoIt's poison. If it never existed and someone tried to bring it to market today it would never fly. Should have skull and crossbones on it. Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline.
- themafia 1y ago> and someone tried to bring it to market today it would never fly In a regulatory domain? Perhaps not; however, we did try prohibition. It didn't go well. > Should have skull and crossbones on it. Which didn't work. So some people go the idea to poison it. Then people learned to re-distill it to avoid the blindness it would otherwise cause. > Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline Most people don't regularly drink to the kinds of excess that would make this an apt comparison.
- TrololoTroll 1y ago>however, we did try prohibition. It didn't go well ... Because it was already there. The hypothetical would imply a world where people weren't already high functioning addicts
- IAmBroom 1y agoIt also has to assume the average, or even uneducated, person couldn't whip up a reasonably good batch of the stuff over a week's time on their own, given ordinary supplies and equipment found in their own home already. But that isn't true of this particular drug.
- mettamage 1y agoSure, but so is society on our psychological health in general. Apparently, we're so anxious that a lot of us subconsciously feel we need to drink in order to just have an actual conversation. Social anxiety is the true poison in society. Without it, we wouldn't drink nearly as much. I have nuanced takes that don't agree with the take that I just wrote, but I find there to be a kernel of truth in it. I've fought social anxiety for years, and started out clubbing sober when I was 17. I did start drinking around 18 but mostly out of curiosity. It was only around the age of 30 that I really noticed that by then I did it to alleviate social anxiety. It caught me off-guard since my teenage self would scoff at the idea of it. I'd never need alcohol to alleviate my social anxiety, I'd just grit through it and talk to whomever I want. I think I just became a bit comfortable and soft. It's easy-ish for me to switch back though due to the reference experiences I have being a teen, dealing with social anxiety sober. So that's a huge blessing. Not everyone is that lucky.
- lwansbrough 1y agoHumans have been drinking alcohol for like 10,000 years. The real question is who cares if it’s healthy. Caring about the health effects of casual drinking is like counting the calories in a cupcake. If it matters to you, it’s probably not for you.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoThe fallacy of appeal to tradition.
- lwansbrough 1y agoYou’re god damn right. I’ll cheers to that.
- echelon_musk 1y agoI care.
- IAmBroom 1y agoElephants consume alcohol, so the first drinker in our line was probably not even a hominid. Birds do as well. Trout do not (in the wild). The LCU drinker might be "some tetrapod".
- benbristow 1y agoI'll drink to that. More state sponsored propoganda to make us miserable. They don't like you having a few drinks with friends and speaking truths. It makes you hard to control and govern.
- carlosjobim 1y agoLooks like you've had a little much to think, mister.
- ddingus 1y ago#BAM! Indeed, tip of the hat to you. I want that on a t-shirt
- gonzo41 1y agoIt's not about control. It's about money.
- lm28469 1y agoNo worries, all the kids ditched alcohol a while ago and are on n2o these days. On my morning walks I see a few 3L+ tanks discarded around my block of flats, there are new ones almost every day https://www.quickwhip.de/collections/miami-magic/products/miami-magic-infusions-2048g-3-3l-n2o-canister https://www.quickwhip.de/collections/miami-magic/products/mi...
- renegade-otter 1y agoI don't drink it for the taste. It makes problems go away until you wake up and the problems are still there.
- gnfargbl 1y agoHere's an example of the "moderate drinking is healthy" risk curves that the article refers to: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmsctech/1536/1536vw08.htm https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmsc... This newer work seems basically to be arguing that the effect on the lefthand size of the curve is because drinking alcohol is so common that people who drink nothing are likely to be in poor health already.
- Stealthisbook 1y agoI remember the exploration of alcohol consumption stats from one of Michael Hobbes' podcasts and how hard it is to untangle both self-reporting and confounding factors. Like, the population of reported non-drinkers is dominated by both religious abstainers who may otherwise differ culturally from the broader population, and alcoholics who've needed to cut out drinking entirely
- ofrzeta 1y agoWhat about hormesis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis There's a paragraph about alcohol.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoWikipedia isn't a reputable source of health information.
- SebFender 1y agoAlcohol is a toxin that your liver must work to break down, provides empty calories with no nutritional value, disrupts sleep quality, impairs judgment and coordination, and even moderate consumption increases risks of cancer, heart disease, and other health problems. Any perceived benefits are vastly outweighed by these inherent harms.
- IAmBroom 1y agoYou have argued one half of the equation, and stated that the other side cannot possibly add up that high. You've just replicated the "Watchmaker" argument of creationists: "Random chance can't account for these low probabilities that we can't yet quantified."
- burnt-resistor 1y agoLots of empty calories: 7 kcal/g.