No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-20/is-a-glass-of-wine-a-day-good-for-me-heart-federation-says-no

by caaqil • 5 years ago

451 916 5 years ago

nradov7• 5 years ago

The problem with articles like this is that they lack context on the relative risks of various activities. Is drinking a daily glass of wine more or less bad for your heart than skipping your daily aerobic exercise? Surely we can put some numbers on that.

downrightmike• 5 years ago

daily, whoa there armstrong

bequanna• 5 years ago

Straight up comparisons like that are pry too simplistic when dealing with a complicated system like our bodies.

People seem to really want this kind of +1/-1 point system for health related behavior tho. Like: “I just spent 30mins at the gym so I racked up enough ‘health points’ to eat an apple pie at McDonalds”.

I think the reality is that you need to generally do a good job of following all advice all the time if you want to remain healthy. Keep very active and remember that indulgences are OK, but should be infrequent.

P_I_Staker9• 5 years ago

Why aren’t we looking into the merits of a daily or weekly cigarette? At a certain point it really looks like it’s just poison and wet should knock it off.

nradov7• 5 years ago

While smoking is harmful overall and I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to smoke, the nicotine it delivers does have some merits. So there is some nuance to the issue.

https://peterattiamd.com/ama23/

The dose makes the poison. For some poisons there is a minimum threshold dose below which there is no detectible harm. For others that threshold is zero.

lenzm• 5 years ago

I think a good measuring stick would be the distance you'd need to drive in a car to generate the same level of risk to your life. Driving is seemingly mundane but I think one of the riskiest things we do on a daily basis in the US.

nradov7• 5 years ago

Driving risk statistics are sort of artificially inflated by deaths and injuries of motorcyclists and DUI/ DWI drivers involved in single-vehicle crashes. If you avoid putting yourself in those categories then driving is much safer than the raw statistics suggest.

There's also a huge variance in risk based on what vehicle you drive. Some larger vehicles have a statistical driver death rate close to zero.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

tharne3• 5 years ago

Don't worry, in 5-10 years it will be good for you again.

I still remember being lectured in school on the food pyramid and the importance of getting your 8-10 servings of grains a day.

JKCalhoun• 5 years ago

This clip from Woody Allen's "Sleeper":

https://youtu.be/D2fYguIX17Q

melissalobos• 5 years ago

Don't worry, in 5-10 years it will be good for you again.

I don't know about that, it it looking more like Alcohol is heading down the path of cigarettes where the more unbiased funding and studies that are done, the worse it appears. There have been several convincing reviews[1] recently that showed an increased risk of cancer at any dosage.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32584303/ (First one I could find easily again)

P_I_Staker9• 5 years ago

Yeah, it’s really a myth that science is changing so much.

You can look at dietary recommendations from the 70s, and they’re fine. Eat your plants and don’t eat garbage. The food pyramid was more a product of lobbying than science. The doctors advice wasn't that bad, although there would be less knowledge of the dangers of refined carbs.

People want it to be true that the doctors don’t know what they’re doing, but it’s not (or these are bad examples of).

P_I_Staker9• 5 years ago

While the grains thing was particularly stupid advice, recommendations haven’t changed as much as you’d think. The guidelines from reputable sources as far back as the 60s and 70s were fine. They didn’t understand how deadly refined carbs were, but recommended eating fruits, vegetables while limiting desserts and too much fatty meat; now you might be eating a bit too much carbs without understanding the risks, but you should be perfectly fine with that diet.

People have been making noise about this issue for a very long time. Doctors know this stuff is poison and causes cancer. It’s always seemed silly that just the right amount of poison is good somehow. Of course, you don’t know without study, but experienced people can see areas where the data doesn’t seem to make sense.

I remember hearing about this stuff a few years ago and it was nothing new, even then. We know that early studies looked good because many “sick quitters” stop drinking due to their failing health. This makes non-drinkers look less healthy. Now this stuff is still actively studied and many of the pro-alcohol people insist it’s still healthy, but the writing has been on the wall for at least 5-10 years; no amount of alcohol is “healthy”.

tharne3• 5 years ago

It’s always seemed silly that just the right amount of poison is good somehow

Why is it silly? A lot of things are dose dependent. A small amount of tylenol makes you head feel better. A lot of tylenol kills you. Lifting weights is very good for your health, but if you overdo it, you can get seriously hurt. A stressful day here and there is harmless, but if you're under constant, chronic, stress, your health will deteriorate. Four hours of sleep will leave you feeling terrible, 7-8 hours will leave you feeling rested, and 14 hours will likely leave you feeling terrible. I could go on, but I'd argue that dose-dependency is the rule rather than the exception.

ravenstine4• 5 years ago

The first time I started to wake up to government one-size-fits-all health policies was back in my 8th grade health class when we were being taught about the food pyramid, and this one kid asked the teacher why hamburgers are considered junk food when they pretty much fit into the model food pyramid. I remember the teacher being stumped and uttered out a barely comprehensible response after an awkward moment.

At first I thought that kid was a smartass, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he wasn't wrong. I've you've got an American hamburger with all the fixin's, although its proportions aren't exactly like the food pyramid, it's close enough that it's hard to classify it as being unhealthy unless it's laced with extra cheese and barbecue sauce and whatnot. Yeah, there's fat in the patty, but the whole fat being bad thing is pretty much one of the biggest forms of bullshit ever invented by health policy.

This isn't to say that I actually think hamburgers are health food, but that the food pyramid is kind of a farce, especially in the sense that it implies that grains are some sort of nutritional necessity that should be consumed in greater quantities than everything else.

irthomasthomas• 5 years ago

That's because the food pyramid is owned by the USDA, which represents American farming.

8bitsrule• 5 years ago

the whole fat being bad thing ... bullshit

I bet it played a big part in the growth of the $71B US diet industry.

Five top wine consumers [0] vs. (coronary disease per 100k [1]): US (79.2), France (31), Italy (51), UK (47), China (114), Russia (225), Spain (38.9)

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/858743/global-wine-consu...

[1] https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/coronary-...

moralestapia• 5 years ago

Wait, so grains are bad now?

BobbyJo• 5 years ago

They shouldn't be most of what you eat, since they have a lot of digestible carbohydrates compared to the amount of fiber, fat, and vitamins, but they are certainly not bad for you.

Your calories (unless you're a genetic outlier) should be relatively evenly split between carbs and fat. If whole grains are where most of the carbs are coming from, that's fine. Science says so.

N1H1L6• 5 years ago

Yep. You don't have to go that far. A decade back it was thought that red meat causes cancer, specifically intestinal cancer. Lots of health guidelines reflected that. It has all fallen apart in the last 2-3 years.

ChrisLomont2• 5 years ago

Have some place to read this? Everywhere credible I look seems to still say it. For example,

https://progressreport.cancer.gov/prevention/red_meat

quickthrower22• 5 years ago

“Good for you” doesn’t make sense. As an analogy for a startup “sales people considered good for the organisation”. Or “meetings shown to be bad for the organisation”. Makes as much sense as “avocado is good for you”. Although a holistic diet, exercise, toxin avoidance, danger avoidance but balancing life goals and mental health regime is probably good for you.

2Gkashmiri3• 5 years ago

as someone who grew up i a community that has for many reasons, religious, social, economic that no one really does alcohol. when there is nobody who is drunk, we have 0 drunk driving cases, 0 cases of people ending up in wrong places, 0 cases of alcoholism, 0 cases of "well we will just mix a drink with something more recreational", no need for AA among a host of other things including not having to budget alcohol in your daily budget because people are generally still poor.

why is that not more prevalent?

jdhn• 5 years ago

Because alcohol has been purposely drunk by people for literally thousands of years, and the vast, vast majority of people are able to drink without having a problem?

2Gkashmiri3• 5 years ago

people have purposely been doing a lot of slavery for thousands of years as well. took us some time but we got over the whole "its been fine for millions of years so it must be good or at least fine" to get to the root of the issue. once we found that, slavery was abolished pretty much everywhere.

my point is, why bring "societal pressure of 500 years" into an argument for an inherently bad thing. just thinking out loud

antoniuschan99• 5 years ago

Could it be that it’s the result of prohibition? Because the Temperance Movement advocated a few of the things you mentioned. Ken Burns has a great doc on Prohibition!

2Gkashmiri3• 5 years ago

from my small understanding of "prohibition" it was like thry tried to enforce it by way of brute muscle and people found ingenious ways to fool the system. what would the result have been if they had worked on educating people and building a society wide consensus about its ill effects.

hydrok92• 5 years ago

The answer to your question is in your statement. Most communities don't have "many reasons" to favour prohibition, in fact most communities don't even have one. Yes there's the idea that no alcohol = no alcohol-caused problems, but people don't assume they will have a problem when they start to drink.

In my area, the only dry communities are small towns with strong Mennonite backgrounds. And in every one of those towns, there's a bar right outside city limits, or in the next town over, where people in the dry community go to drink.

tatrajim• 5 years ago

Alcohol use around the world over the centuries is a vast topic, but coming from a US religious community that prohibited all alcohol, I was duly impressed while serving in the peace corps in rural South Korea with the social utility of drinking to moderate the rigid hierarchies of local culture there and to provide a place for blunt truth telling otherwise impossible.

The costs of alcoholism were readily visible as well, but I do believe drinking culture in South Korea is a hidden partner to its vaulting economic and cultural success from the ruins of the Korean War.

DamnYuppie• 5 years ago

Yes but a moderate amount with good friends is great for my soul.

asdf_snar3• 5 years ago

My friend and family groups have been making a consistent effort to stop romanticizing alcohol and have gatherings without it. There's no denying alcohol is a social lubricant that can be very enjoyable.

slfnflctd• 5 years ago

I think it's important to normalize having alcohol-free excursions, especially when younger people are around. Demonstrate that self control is valued. And I say that as someone with a drinking problem who sweats about going more than half a day without one.

jsonne2• 5 years ago

Agreed. I'm not against alcohol but I find I can get 80%-90% of the benefits by following the "ritual" of it with a mocktail and simply setting aside time where I give myself permission to relax and socialize. Alcohol is fine in moderation but its not as necessary as folks think to having those enjoyable experiences.

publicola19902• 5 years ago

But what do you replace Alcohol with, Soda? Thats not good for health either. May be tea is a good substitute for social ocassions.

tcskeptic2• 5 years ago

I was thinking about this recently watching a conversation between Lex Fridman and Bryan Johnson and it struck me that there is a huge difference in optimizing lifestyle choices for human physical and mental performance, and optimizing lifestyle choices for human flourishing, or even say joy and wonder. I feel like there is this growing misunderstanding that the "optimal" human is one that can be the most productive at work.

beepbooptheory• 5 years ago

I think saying its a misunderstanding is not giving people enough credit: we are constantly incentivized if not required to eschew joy and wonder in order to be productive and optimal. I don't think most people even have the chance to reflect on what they really want, they just need to make money to pay their rent.

robbick• 5 years ago

Indeed, it is always good to know the science but we should balance that against the benefits. I like this quote from David Spiegelhalter[0]

"Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking, claiming there is no 'safe' level does not seem an argument for abstention," he said.

"There is no safe level of driving, but the government does not recommend that people avoid driving.

"Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention."

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45283401

politelemon• 5 years ago

I don't see it as a good quote and was puzzled as to its inclusion. It is simply a play on the words 'safe level' and equating it to other things. My best guess is that it's meant to appeal to the "I hear you but wish to continue drinking anyway" thought process, which is fair. This kind of equation is not.

api2• 5 years ago

I've wondered for a long time if the studies showing health benefits from alcohol are being confounded by the health benefits of socialization, which often involves alcohol in many societies. People who drink less might (statistically) socialize less.

LeonM• 5 years ago

This reminds me of something a friend once told me. This was about 10 years ago, he was a commander for the navy at the time.

In the navy, while at sea, you are expected to drink during social events. Alcohol is considered the 'social engine' of the ship.

Now I must disclaim that obviously the crew wasn't forced to drink. Those on guard, or who had any medical, religious or other objections were dismissed. And naturally they have very strict limits, as getting intoxicated on board of a operational warship would be very dangerous.

But, with moderate use, alcohol was (at least back then) viewed as an efficient method to prevent stress and mutiny among the crew. It probably is still today.

tootie• 5 years ago

I usually spend time with friends over coffee which has very much been rehabilitated in the medical world over the past ten years.

mmastrac• 5 years ago

Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent.

While we're at it, let's de-stigmatize the abuse of substances and treat it like a real mental health issue.

wizzwizz44• 5 years ago

if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent.

Please do not decide policy using this kind of reasoning. Maybe we should legalise more stuff, but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

lotsofpulp2• 5 years ago

Consistency in legal matters seems like a good and necessary thing for ensuring fairness. What is the basis for Emerson’s quote to apply here?

cies8• 5 years ago

Everything was legal until a law was passed criminalizing it.

There's a difference between an offense and a crime (in most countries).

Making buying/selling/using some substances a crime is limiting freedom, and hence should only be a measure of last resort. So no "the alc lobby push for laws against weed" kind of story that ended up with the "reefer scare" tactic.

merpnderp2• 5 years ago

This kind of reasoning is perfect. You remember when alcohol was made illegal in the US? Remember the harm that caused from gangs, uneven police crackdowns on illegal bars, and such rampant criminality that alcohol was quickly re-legalized? The drug war is 100x worse.

If we'd been consistent, we'd have dodged 50 years of a brutal drug war that has done so much damage to society, the rule of law, our democratic institutions, the role of police, basically everything, that it's hard to imagine the vacationing on the moon type of future we missed out on.

Treating drug addiction like alcohol addiction and drug dealers like liquor stores, would have been the road less taken and would have made all the difference.

jasonlotito• 5 years ago

Maybe we should legalise more stuff, but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason.

That's not the reasoning to legalize things. That's the reasoning used to filter out what we should consider further.

funklute• 5 years ago

but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason.

It's a very good reason to at least change one of the two. Either make the worse thing legal, or criminalise the "better" thing. Arbitrary rules are never a good thing.

kmonad• 5 years ago

That is one amazing quote. Thanks for making it known to me.

avgcorrection8• 5 years ago

It’s not necessarily meant to be used as an argument as such. It could also be intended as a rhetorical device in order to force the opponent to concede on another point:

Person A: We should legalize weed in order to be consistent [see above argument]

Person B: Nonsense! Weed has harmful effects on society!

Person A: Alcohol objectively harms society more than weed [insert citations here]. So you would agree that we should regulate alcohol more, yes?

scotty79• 5 years ago

It would at least give people some options and some would choose less harmful ones.

diob• 5 years ago

The reasoning used to put the policies in place on those "illegal" substances was hardly reasoning in the first place.

So many countries have had great success with legalization, so what is your reasoning for so much caution? It's only continuing the legacy of pain.

kazinator• 5 years ago

“worse things are legal” is not a good reason.

Seems pretty excellent to me. Things should be arranged on numerically indexed scale from benign to deadly. We should identify a point on that scale where illegality begins, and everything to the left is legal.

kortex2• 5 years ago

I'm fine with alcohol being the high water mark. We can fairly objectively rank the health and societal harms of various drugs. Hard to quantify, but straightforward to build an ordinal list. Caffeine, weed, basically all psychedelics, amphetamine, mdma, and tobacco all make the cut (the latter just barely). Coke, meth, heroin, unsurprisingly worse than alcohol, ought to have some distribution controls at the very least. Prescription opioids actually look surprisingly bad.

At the very least, the US drug schedule system is completely out of whack with actual risks. There's tons of sched 1 drugs which are objectively safer than alcohol.

greenpresident2• 5 years ago

David Nutt did important work in this area. See for example his scale of drug harmfulness here:

(Edit: see archive link below)

And

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067361...

infogulch• 5 years ago

That pdf 403's. Here's an archive.org snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20201112012236/http://dobrochan....

Alcohol is one place behind street meth in Figure 1. Damn.

michaelbuckbee• 5 years ago

That's interesting, I do wish it had a few more items on the "lower" end of the harm spectrum, just to help me gauge this better. Things like Caffeine, or the other "Energy Drink" supplements.

pkulak• 5 years ago

Do you really think it's worse than the current wave of synthetic opioids? I think I could even make a good case for cigarettes being worse than alcohol.

michaelmior• 5 years ago

The comment never claimed that alcohol is worse than synthetic opioids or cigarettes. The comment stated it is one of the worst drugs.

asteroidp• 5 years ago

The two are actually on par with each other

greenpresident2• 5 years ago

Parent is most likely basing their comment on the work of David Nutt, see my other comment on this thread.

shafyy3• 5 years ago

Smoking is for sure worse than alcohol consumption: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-by-risk-...

Global yearly deaths by smoking: 7.1 million

Global yearly deaths by alcohol usage: 2.84 million

echelon• 5 years ago

The paper referenced in sibling comments purports that alcohol is worse than tobacco.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201112012236/http://dobrochan....

I wouldn't be surprised. There are studies that are beginning to link liver health to neurodegeneration, and that's just one set of potential disease states.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210914152531.h...

hbosch• 5 years ago

I don't know, the ways in which they stack up is like apples and oranges. Cigarettes are certainly bad for you, and it's known they cause cancer but cigarettes don't have the same severity when it comes to withdrawl in my understanding. Alcohol withdrawl can cause hallucinations, seizures, even death. Also, I would say the danger is greater with alcohol because it impairs your judgement in a far greater way than cigarettes... have you ever been scared of someone who is driving while smoking?

Extrapolated out over time, I would guess that alcoholism is a cofactor in more deaths annually than cigarettes (edit: that is to say, deaths not caused directly by drinking, including drink driving, but conditions such as diabetes and heart disease which are greatly exacerbated by drinking for example... I wonder if someone who dies of cirrhosis gets chalked up as a death by alcohol?)

kritiko4• 5 years ago

the parent said "one of the worst" not the worst.

also, at least for now, cigarettes are legal, which just bolsters the point above.

trentnix3• 5 years ago

While we're at it, let's de-stigmatize the abuse of substances and treat it like a real mental health issue.

Literally everyone involved in the treatment and support of substance abuse does that, whether it's treatment facilities or social groups like AA and Al-Anon. As they should. Every family I know has been affected in one way or another by drug or alcohol addiction and has firsthand knowledge that substance abuse must be treated like an illness and to forgive (but not forget) the damage it causes. So I'm not exactly sure your statement reflects reality.

hiptobecubic2• 5 years ago

It's not treated that way by society at large.

Treat here not in the "provide medical care for" sense but in the "interpretation" sense, as in, "I know it's a polka, but I'm going to treat it like a waltz."

JshWright• 5 years ago

"Literally everyone involved in the treatment and support of substance abuse" is a small percentage of the population as a whole, and a very, very small percentage of the people who make policy and resourcing decisions related to how substance abuse is handled.

You may be in a particular microcosm that handles this well, but that is definitely not the universal experience (not by a long shot). I'd also dispute the "literally everyone" part of your comment, as I can think of countless examples of attempts at substance abuse treatment and support being actively harmful to the person struggling with addiction.

sokoloff5• 5 years ago

Have 1000 people tell their boss they need a month of paid leave to deal with an acute cancer treatment or recover from a kidney transplant.

Have 1000 people tell their boss they need a month of paid leave to deal with alcohol addiction.

Measure the immediate reactions and future performance review and employment outcomes of the two groups. Do you expect them to be the same as each other? I don’t and I think it comes down to “I or a family member could get cancer or kidney failure” vs “alcohol addiction is a choice” thinking.

fleddr2• 5 years ago

What is the value of "consistency" in this matter?

wizzwizz44• 5 years ago

Legal consistency has many benefits. The two that first come to mind are:

• making it easier for non-experts to reason about the law

• consistency is, in my experience, usually a property of fairness

cies8• 5 years ago

to at least be consistent.

No not be a total joke as a gov't. I love the stories on "refer scare" and the prohibition (which has become some big historical period like the renaissance, merely by retarded gov't policy).

And not like we're done with it. New Zealand is considering to ban tobacco sales to the next generation. What could probably go wrong with that? Is age discrimination now all of a sudden okay? (this is not about prohibiting sales to kids -- which im cool with obviously -- but also to adults of the next generations, when they are of age).

cies8• 5 years ago

We need a constitutional law prohibiting all victimless crime or this insanity will never end.

matheusmoreira2• 5 years ago

The only reason tobacco isn't banned straight up is it would cause untold disruption in the older addicted population. By banning sales to younger people, they are trying to prevent the next generation from becoming addicted, reducing the impact a future complete ban would cause. It's a temporary solution that will eventually lead to total ban.

josephcsible6• 5 years ago

Is age discrimination now all of a sudden okay?

Hasn't society already decided a while ago that, for some reason, age discrimination is okay as long as it's only against younger people?

Spivak• 5 years ago

Is age discrimination now all of a sudden okay?

This line of reasoning doesn't capture any nuance. These kinds of things operate on an allowlist. Unless there is a law enacted specifically as an exception then no, in general age discrimination is not okay.

Voting, alcohol, weed, driving, truancy, parental control, marriage, consent for sex, contract law, criminal law, social security, retirement accounts, and military service all discriminate based on age despite it being the guiding principle that you should avoid using age for restrictions when possible. The law has plenty of examples of min and max ages.

If there was any other way to ban cigarettes without making life miserable for people who are currently addicted? Because we should absolutely ban cigarettes. The victim is the cigarette smoker and the crime is the manufacture and sale of a an addictive substance that it not safe to use in any amount.

I agree with you that a law making it illegal for people to smoke is silly, the law should apply to manufacturers and distributors.

BirAdam2• 5 years ago

All drugs should be decriminalized. Shooting people in drug raids is far worse for those people than are the drugs. Likewise, locking people in cages with other misfits, criminals, malcontents, and addicts isn’t smart (especially considering that drugs are in the prisons too). If the goal is truly harm reduction, people need to simply work to convince drug users to not use drugs (whether those are opioids, alcohol, tobacco, meth, whatever).

RobertRoberts11• 5 years ago

Slippery slope.

What happens when a drug addict looking his next fix attacks someone? This is why we have drug laws to start with, was to protect people.

There are no simple answers here.

lancesells3• 5 years ago

I'm not refuting and generally agree with your sentiment here in harm reduction but I tried to see the collateral damage of drug raids vs drugs.

In the US the CDC reported 100,000 overdoses from drugs in the 12 months preceding April 2021[1]. I can't find how many people die from drug raids specifically but this Al-Jazeera article shows 1,068 people being killed by the police a year after George Floyd died[2].

And for a little more context Statista[3] shows 21,750 people being murdered in 2020.

Police kill at ~1% the rate of drug deaths. Citizens kill at ~20% the rate of drug deaths.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/... 2. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/25/how-many-people-hav... 3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported-murder-a...

wonderwonder4• 5 years ago

I am not sure where I fall on the all drugs should be legal argument but I do know that because I spent ~$400 to get a medical marijuana card I can legally buy pot at the local dispensary in my state and smoke it with zero repercussions. In the mean time the jails are absolutely full of people who are there because they did not spend the $400. It is morally insane for that to continue. People are getting rich off selling marijuana in a dispensary while others are serving life sentences for selling it out of their home.

cjbgkagh• 5 years ago

I take a lot of Non-FDA approved gray market and black market medicine. If all drugs are legal then such medical drugs should be legal as well. At least the ones I take are health promoting, non-addictive and non-habit forming.

I think a big part of the resistance to legalization is the medical establishment maintaining their monopoly supplier status on medicine.

jbirer• 5 years ago

Legalize medicinal meth.

qwytw3• 5 years ago

Isn't it already legal if you have prescription? (In pill form ofcourse)

mythrwy• 5 years ago

Please no.

Back in the 90's I worked on a concrete crew for a summer. Building big box store type buildings. They pour the floor, then pour the walls on top of the floor, then tip the walls up and weld them together with metal flanges embedded in the concrete.

Nearly everyone on the crew did meth (except like 2 guys, I was one). Often work would start like 3:00 AM to prevent rapid drying. No lunch to speak of. Expected to literally run on the job site from one task to another. I suppose there may have been potential labor complaints but they never happened or weren't investigated.

It wasn't unusual for people to burn out and just not show up. That was part of the calculus I think by management. One guy fell asleep in his truck and could not be woken up (after presumably being up for a few days).

I quit after a few months but later saw my (low level) supervisor at a restaurant. He was alone and didn't look good. He told me how his life had gotten increasingly out of control and he had tried to kill himself (before finding Jesus per his words).

Company didn't care. They were making money. They turned a blind eye to what was going on. The human wreckage generated was awful however.

You think if meth is legal over the counter this won't be more prevalent? I'm pretty sure it will. Meth kills, and not just the body.

bastardoperator3• 5 years ago

I would consider it the worst or most powerful drug in terms of access, addiction and intoxication. It's literally poison, and what it can do to an individual I feel is unlike most other illicit substances.

RobertRoberts11• 5 years ago

What about meth, fentanyl or oxycotin? (to name just a few)

I would consider these more literal poison by comparison to alcohol by any objective manner. If they are all legal, then access/addiction/intoxication are not even close to compare to alcohol, they are all far worse.

hungryforcodes• 5 years ago

Or glue sniffing?

Alcohol is only a problem because some people do it so much. Alot of people I know drink all the time-- like several times a week. They could look a little younger but generally have passable bills of health.

Also we have to question who's behind this statement. For all we know it's the PRC starting a new teetotalling campaign in their land.

kingkawn• 5 years ago

Alcohol is legal because the population would tear the society down if it weren’t. That’s it. None of the other drugs have that kind of following.

mnw21cam2• 5 years ago

Agreed. Banning it has been tried at least once, in the USA, and apparently it didn't work very well. There were too many people that wanted alcohol and were willing to defy government to have it. Government is at least partially (more in some countries than others) by consent of the governed.

But also on the contrary to your "none of the other drugs" point, I can't think of any possible reason why cigarettes weren't outright banned 40 years ago, except that they have exactly the same mechanism keeping them legal.

caeril• 5 years ago

Counterpoint: alcohol is one of the best drugs on the planet for anyone on the spectrum of introversion to crippling social anxiety.

In all my (many) years, I have found no better path to becoming socially acceptable (even likable) to neurotypicals/extroverts than 3-4 shots of vodka. This is an unfortunate, but very real fact for many of us. I've heard good things about Phenibut, but (1) it's very difficult to obtain, and (2) it is also apparently habit-forming.

the_only_law5• 5 years ago

I’ve recently taken to trying Kava, which seems to be relatively popular among people trying to quit alcohol/benzos/etc.

Supposedly it also helps with disinhibition and socialization, but admittedly I haven’t tried it in a social setting so I’m not sure myself. It certainly does relax me and chill me out though without the dumbing down of alcohol.

Of course, by the things I’ve seen in those “pop-medical” sites that fill Google search results, you’d think it’s much more dangerous than alcohol.

Tenoke2• 5 years ago

GHB is probably an even better replacement than Phenibut as it's safer, has less of a hangover/rebound and can be used more often to no detriment but it has a worse reputation, needs to be dosed correctly (taking twice the dose accidentally means you pass out for 4 hours), and if you for some reason end up using it 24/7 the addiction is as bad to kick as with benzos or alcohol.

perardi2• 5 years ago

Oh-ho, no, not in my experience.

I used to be devastatingly introverted. Alcohol helped, but it’s nothing compared to GHB or MDMA. Ecstasy will give you the gift of gab like you can’t believe.

minor edit: I should say I am ignoring the context of where it’s acceptable to do such things. You probably shouldn’t do G at Christmas with the in-laws. (Though our quarantine Christmas this year with friends…) I’m just making a bit of a pedantic bit that there are club drugs out there that are pretty wild in how they can open you up socially.

nradov7• 5 years ago

There are also many people who self medicate with opioids to treat chronic depression. I certainly wouldn't recommend that depressed people try opioids, but empirically it seems to be effective in reducing symptoms for some patients at least temporarily.

hnuser847• 5 years ago

Counterpoint: alcohol is one of the best drugs on the planet for anyone on the spectrum of introversion to crippling social anxiety.

I completely disagree and I think you should consider the possibility that alcohol is creating your anxiety in the first place. My years-long struggle with social anxiety disappeared after I decided to quit drinking for good.

clsec• 5 years ago

Speaking from experience, as an older guy with crippling social anxiety and 30+ yrs of alcohol use/abuse, I can say that it superficially helps with social anxiety. However, it does not get to the root cause(s) of said anxiety. Professional help is needed to find and work on fixing those. The side effects, physical and psychological, of regular alcohol consumption are far worse than living with social anxiety. I also think it's unhealthy to try to fix one's psychological issues with drugs/medications without also looking at and trying to fix the reasons for their use in the first place.

Also, I now have to undergo quite a few yearly medical tests to keep an eye on my body after years of self medicating for my extreme social anxiety.

FWIW, I don't say these things as a teetotaler. I believe in harm reduction.

InitialLastName• 5 years ago

it is also apparently habit-forming.

I hear that vodka shots also have this property.

ravenstine4• 5 years ago

I agree with the point on consistency, but must substances be viewed through the lens of "abuse" and "mental health"? It's not clear if you are implying that use of alcohol is generally a form of drug abuse related to mental health. In fact I'm not sure we can adequately define what is "abuse" in this case.

Take for instance Lemmy from Motorhead, who used alcohol and drugs heavily throughout his life and probably died an early death as a result; can that really be considered abuse when he, pardon my French, didn't give a shit?

For some people, things like alcohol are a serious issue and overuse can stem from both physical and psychological addiction. Then you've got people who use it sparingly. And yet there are people who drink heavily, know exactly what they're doing, and can't easily be classified as addicts without projecting one's own life choices unto them.

reaperducer• 5 years ago

I've never understood the arguments like yours, which I used to hear a half-century ago in high school, and now see presented online. They distill down to "We allow this one bad thing, so we should allow all of the other bad things, too." As if having more bad things is better than having fewer bad things.

I don't drink, so I don't care if alcohol gets banned or restricted or whatever. But these type of arguments always strike me as little more than "Billy jumped off the bridge, so I can, too!"

I really don't see the logic here.

jcadam3• 5 years ago

Banning alcohol didn't work out so well the last time we tried it and I seriously doubt it would go any better if we tried it again now.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 years ago

If alcohol in moderation is so bad then why is it taking so long to prove it?

matthewfcarlson• 5 years ago

I would much rather legalize pot over alcohol being illegal. If alcohol had the same usage as pot we would have far fewer deaths. My only complaint is that pot smells awful (though alcohol isn’t much better).

mc322• 5 years ago

There is such thing as a slippery slope and a dam that overruneth.

We’ve inherited use of alcohol over millennia —it’d be an uphill battle to rid ourselves of it short of fundamentalist dogmatism.

Some places in Central Asia have socialized opiate usage —but they too have unwritten rules about usage, or at least traditionally had them observed (it was a ‘luxury’ of old age).

If you allow an anything goes policy, you’ll end up with a decaying society. While I don’t propose prosecuting consumption because it’s the wrong focus, we should prosecute production and distribution of hard drugs.

Else you may end up with the likes of XIX century in China, or huffers in metro Manila.

mountainriver• 5 years ago

Two bad things is worse than one bad thing unfortunately, but yes I agree that alcohol is one of the worst

jancsika• 5 years ago

Just to show how facile this reasoning is, let's flip the bit:

"Alcohol is one of the worst 'drugs' on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should make sure we keep other drugs illegal by default unless shown individually, through decades of research, to be safe. Otherwise we will burden our healthcare system and create a national catastrophe. As evidence of this danger, I submit the history of alcohol abuse, drunk driving, and liver disease, and their effects on our healthcare system."

I offer that you can only do one of two things now:

1. Argue against my advocacy for inconsistency using personal incredulity

2. Provide a deeper argument that relies on something more than an appeal to consistency

Edit: added a clause to sweeten my argument for inconsistency

blfr2• 5 years ago

we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent

This argument is brought up fairly regularly but I don't think it's very good. We cannot go back on alcohol, Americans tried pretty hard.

Our choice is limited to alcohol or alcohol plus whatever we legalize. Harm from alcohol is the hard lower bound on harm from substance use.

SubiculumCode2• 5 years ago

I hate the term "legalize" because all things are legal (in the U.S.A.) until they are made illegal. "Legalize" verbiage constantly tells people that they have to be selectively given rights, not selectively taken away.

lenkite• 5 years ago

Yep! We should legalize 'political' drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin too.

drinchev• 5 years ago

Well I think there are far more dangerous substances than alcohol which are considered legal and advertised.

Eating sugar for example in excessive amounts leads to way worse diseases - https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/features/how-sugar-affects-yo....

jeffbee• 5 years ago

The worst thing about alcohol today is how America is letting alcoholics dictate pandemic responses, as if we believe that bars are more important than schools.

golemotron• 5 years ago

This comes from the point of view that harm is a scalar quantity. There are many different dimensions of harm and they vary wildly for each activity/drug. Reality is more nuanced than any single measure we select.

bumby2• 5 years ago

to at least be consistent.

Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an impractical solution. So I don't think "we allow one bad thing and we can't get rid of it, so let's allow all bad things" makes a particularly compelling argument.

(FWIW, I'm generally not against legalization nor do I think all drugs are net-negative. I just find the argument as laid out to be unconvincing.)

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an impractical solution.

It was recognized as impractical fairly quickly, despite having fairly similar concrete outcomes to the drug war, for which a similar recognition has been much slower and less complete. But, again, that's just another layer of inconsistency in the same direction, not a mitigation of it.

lm28469• 5 years ago

Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale

Addiction is, not alcohol in itself. I haven't been anywhere close to drunk in a decade. I still enjoy a glass of whisky or a cold beer here and there.

People who have problem with alcohol would have problems with "less harmful" (weed I assume?) drugs too, it's a personality trait. I've seen the damage of weed in my friends, it's just as bad as alcohol tbh. I never understood the "it's bad so let's legalise other bad things"

helloworld113• 5 years ago

People who have problem with alcohol would have problems with "less harmful" (weed I assume?) drugs too, it's a personality trait.

You're blatantly assuming here and making it a categorical statement. They usually don't, neither statistically or at least in my experience, anecdotally. I and many friends of mine regularly drink, but most of us barely touch other drugs. Weed occasionally for some of my friends (I personally dislike it intensely) but things like coke and so forth, pretty much nothing, in a wide group of people who are regular consumers of alcohol.

jppope• 5 years ago

The evidence is clear: any level of alcohol consumption can lead to loss of healthy life.

No it isn't. The studies change on this constantly. Literally, it is why they are making their policy- because its confusing to people.

They also need to conduct a longitudinal study (or more than 1) to prove this... and guess what? They won't do it.

BurningFrog2• 5 years ago

Note the weasel word: "can".

kevinmchugh3• 5 years ago

If you see a study that purports to show health benefits of drinking check to see if it distinguishes lifelong teetotalers vs recovering alcoholics. Lifelong teetotalers are much healthier than an alcoholic who's quit drinking, on average. The studies, at least in the US, should also control for wealth.

starwind3• 5 years ago

Bingo. A lot of studies that purport health benefits from drinking are comparing "sick quitters" who drank themselves into health problems to normal people who have the occasional drink and don't bother to control for socioeconomic status

f38zf5vdt2• 5 years ago

They've been consistent on the positive cardiovascular effects from mild consumption of red wine forever.

48 animal and 37 human studies were included in data extraction following screening. Significant improvements in measures of blood pressure and vascular function following RWP were seen in 84% and 100% of animal studies, respectively. Human studies indicated significant improvements in systolic blood pressure overall (− 2.6 mmHg, 95% CI: [− 4.8, − 0.4]), with a greater improvement in pure-resveratrol studies alone (− 3.7 mmHg, 95% CI: [− 7.3, − 0.0]). No significant effects of RWP were seen in diastolic blood pressure or flow-mediated dilation (FMD) of the brachial artery.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-020-02247-8

rkk3• 5 years ago

It's pretty hard to build a study... You have to get a group of participants who are willing to drink alcohol everyday or never drink it again depending on which group they are assigned to.

not_good_coder• 5 years ago

They want to keep all the alcohol to themselves.

jdlyga• 5 years ago

Interesting how there's a major shift in the knowledge about risks of things like sugar, cigarettes, alcohol, etc. And it usually turns out there was an industry group involved in sort of a coverup. The lesson here is to take any health claims or dismissal or risks with a grain of salt when there's a big industry behind it.

cies8• 5 years ago

The lesson here is

Do not allow victimless crime to exist. And big biz lobby efforts should be illegal.

newaccount742• 5 years ago

One of my favorite examples of this is how coconut oil is advertised all over youtube by thousands of influencers as a superfood that must be a part of a healthy diet.

(Especially since it's hardly an oil in my opinion -- it's partially solid at room temperature)

There's absolutely no reliable evidence that coconut oil has any beneficial effects on the human body, and I really don't see why anybody would believe that an oil high in saturated fats is good for you.

halflings• 5 years ago

Same goes for agave syrup and other health fads.

yuuu4• 5 years ago

Just more horseshit from Big Coconut, that's what I think.

parasubvert• 5 years ago

Because there is ample evidence that saturated fats are not bad for you, or at least no where near as bad as previous science led us to believe.

SubiculumCode2• 5 years ago

I suspect that high fats are fine and high carbs are fine, but having both high fats + high carbs leads to health problems. Fat heavy leads to keto metabolic state, heavy carbs lead to the other metabolic state. Having both at the same time is the issue, my opinion.

gniv• 5 years ago

I really don't see why anybody would believe that an oil high in saturated fats is good for you.

A lot of people do if you look around. Serious people I mean. They usually sing the praises of butter (and ghee), but the same reasoning is applied now to coconut oil.

yuuu4• 5 years ago

I always scoffed at people who believed "a glass of wine every night is good for you." It seems pretty obvious that ingesting literal poison every day is not good for you.

qwytw3• 5 years ago

Protein is a literal poison as well if you consume excessive amounts (above 35-40% of all caloric intake).

kreeben• 5 years ago

Calming your nerves lowers your heart rate. Lower heart rate leads to less heart problems. Less heart problems leads to longer life.

A glass of wine calms your nerves.

sollewitt• 5 years ago

Indeed, an NIH funded longitudinal study on alcohol kicked off in 2014 and it was shut down for being tainted by industry money: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/health/alcohol-nih-drinki... - you can't necessarily even trust publicly funded science when it impacts large industries.

garaetjjte• 5 years ago

CSSer2• 5 years ago

It's at least encouraging that it was caught and shut down.

CSSer2• 5 years ago

Of course you'd say that. You clearly work for the salt lobby! In all seriousness though, who stands to benefit from this? In the case of sugar, doctors wanted to suggest limiting it, but lobbyists pushed for the advocation of limiting fat intake instead (which was thought to be just as unhealthy at the time). Sugar was a clear substitute because removing fat makes things taste like, well, cardboard. Off the top of my head, I'm not aware of any substitutes for tobacco products or alcohol. Recreational services, maybe? Even Bowling alleys typically have bars.

lonecom• 5 years ago

major shift in the knowledge about risks of things like sugar, cigarettes, alcohol...

In each of these case, the medical and scientific community didn't have a vested interests in these entities. I mean, the medical community didn't come up with smoking or alcohol consumption...

Now imagine some entity or procedure that the medical/scientific community came up with and the big business found way to make huge money off of, such that there is a natural alignment of incentives for the scientific community and big business to keep this thing propped up. Such a thing, even if doing great harm, is sure to go on for a vastly longer period of time, if not perpetually....

ct0• 5 years ago

Funny that they're saying this now because fermented drinks used to protect people from health issues when the water supply was not clean enough to drink.

mywittyname4• 5 years ago

With beer, this was because the brewer needed to boil the water used in order to kill off any microbes which would compete with the yeast, or it would go "off". It's a very important step for brewing beer. Then the beer would be stored in barrels/casks to help reduce the chance of introducing further microbes, plus the use of preservatives like hops to help keep it longer.

With wine, people generally mashed the grapes immediately after picking to ensure that the yeast took hold before any harmful bacteria did. Then followed the same process of barrelling it to prevent other microbes from getting in. People also learned that added sugar served to further preserve wines that would be stored for longer periods of time.

If people would have boiled their drinking water, it would have been safe to drink.

Mikeb85• 5 years ago

If people would have boiled their drinking water, it would have been safe to drink.

For a limited time. The live cultures and then alcohol in fermented drinks keep the bad bacteria at bay.

Keep in mind in the past, not everyone had a convenient source of heat in their homes.

zabzonk3• 5 years ago

With beer, this was because the brewer needed to boil the water

No, they didn't - you do not need (or should) boil the water. If you did boil it, you would then need to let it cool down before adding the yeast. Home-brew kits suggest using a fairly small amount of hot water to disolve the malt extract, and to get it up to fermentation temperature.

Beer is safer to drink because the yeast out-competes pathogens, and because it causes a pH change that inhibits and/or kills them.

Speaking as an ex microbiologist.

qwytw3• 5 years ago

This is myth which was debunked countless times already, people always drank water (even in the middle ages).

tsol7• 5 years ago

Yes. There's a reason every early human civilization was located near a body of water. Water is necessary for humans. Clean water. Alcohol also doesn't have a significant disinfecting property until at least 30% ABV. And it wasn't until the middle ages that distilled alcohols became common

WithinReason3• 5 years ago

It's not good for the heart, but is it good for the soul?

maskil2• 5 years ago

I know of a man who had a shot of 96 percent alcohol (192 proof) every single day and died at the age of 96.

JohnJamesRambo3• 5 years ago

Yes that is an anecdote. We get better info by looking at large groups of people and that is what the recommendation is based on.

notch656a2• 5 years ago

Agreed, although a single shot of moonshine is a equivalent to a little over a pint of beer. You can drink that and be well within alcohol consumption guidelines in US. Even most alcohol-naïve people would only be minimally intoxicated from a single shot of moonshine.

jeromegv2• 5 years ago

From Wikipedia: Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to some false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

HNDen21• 5 years ago

should have gone for 98 percent alcohol, would have lived till 98 :-)

mellavora• 5 years ago

Damn! Good thing he wasn't drinking 40 proof spirits, otherwise he would have died much sooner.

scrapcode2• 5 years ago

My great grandfather sat in a chair and drank from his handle of whiskey every day until his death also at 96. I had heard stories of workers on his farm not realize he was drinking during the work day until the tractor plowed through a neighboring fence causing them to look up in concern to see him passed out on the seat.

I unfortunately saw many in my family use his fortunate long life span, regardless of drink consumption, as an enabler to drink like that. Including myself, up until about 90 days ago.

selimthegrim4• 5 years ago

What happened 90 days ago?

tasha06633• 5 years ago

These studies have clearly run into some local maximum... the trick is to blow past it!

RankingMember• 5 years ago

Yep, and there's always that one person who trots out that their grandmother smoked 2 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day and lived to be 100. Anecdata is not data.

maskil2• 5 years ago

He was known to have said that it's the 4 percent water that's going to kill him.

gatorvh• 5 years ago

The statement is only interesting when you consider a sizeable population who regularly drank the % alcohol and lived to 96. It’s a classic case of selection bias

JohnJamesRambo3• 5 years ago

I wish this info was more well known. My family still labors under the old info of thinking a little of that poison is healthy. And I have watched that be incorrect.

Leary• 5 years ago

When they say the evidence is clear, you have to ask, where's the evidence? Did they have a randomized control trial I don't know of?

actually_a_dog• 5 years ago

Click through to the download and chase the citations, if you want to see what they're referring to as "evidence."

tasha06633• 5 years ago

Evidence? Didn't you see those dirty MGD bottles next to the broken window on page 2?

IvanK_net• 5 years ago

That is strange. But I am sure a small amount of cigarettes is good for lungs.

colechristensen5• 5 years ago

Smoking cigarettes actually has a protective effect for contracting covid. You’re less likely to get it but if you do the outcome is worse.

JetAlone2• 5 years ago

That's interesting. I decided to look up to see if there were any theories on why that might be the case. It looks like results on this are inconclusive across the board and conflict of interest rears its ugly head yet again, but I found this:

https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga...

"One study suggests this could be because nicotine interferes with ACE2 receptors, which may prevent the virus from entering cells."

BunsanSpace• 5 years ago

Alcohol is a carcinogen, it's bad for the liver, and while I didn't know, I'm not surprised it's bad for the heart.

Keep drinking to a minimum, and if possible keep it social. Life's short, enjoy a beer or glass of whiskey, but try to minimize it's harms, or just take mushrooms.

Also keep an eye out if you're a binge drinker, it's the second type of alcoholic, you don't drink everyday, but when you do drink you drink until you pass out.

endisneigh4• 5 years ago

Of course it isn’t. Drink water. Unfortunately some people believe they can’t enjoy themselves without alcohol.

It’s curious:

- babies have fun without drinking

- kids have fun without drinking

- some teens have fun without drinking

Then at some point some people, as adults, feel like they have to drink to enjoy themselves? I wonder what happened.

Edit: explicitly clarifying that I’m only talking about some people here

hiptobecubic2• 5 years ago

As we age, we feel more pressure to conform socially, I think. Alcohol lets people feel uninhibited like kids temporarily.

gambiting• 5 years ago

>I wonder what happened.

I think you start working and the only "fun" situations you are in are meetings at a pub after work with drink involved. After few years you naturally start to associate fun off-work time with drinking.

WithinReason3• 5 years ago

We run out of fun

jedimastert• 5 years ago

You forgot many to most adults that can have fun can do so without alcohol

endisneigh4• 5 years ago

Not at all, I’m referring mainly to those who feel like they have to drink to enjoy themselves. Of course there are adults who don’t have to drink to enjoy themselves (there are many who have never had a drink)

marcodiego• 5 years ago

I saw some drunken adults. Looks like they are having more fun than babies, kids and teenagers. And they get some form of "support" by other adults, unlike babies, kids and teenagers would get if they behaved the same. Until it starts ruining your life, being a drunken adult seems fun and acceptable.

eljimmy• 5 years ago

My take on it is that as adults you mature and begin to abide by all the rules of society. Alcohol lowers your inhibitions and "allows" you to act like you were as a child.

lazyjones• 5 years ago

Babies and kids have a lot of fun with sugar, does that mean it's OK to consume it recklessly?

shane_b• 5 years ago

Ignorance is bliss

misiti37802• 5 years ago

Yes, but wine makes food taste infinitely better. I don't want to eat my rare filet with a glass of water, I want to eat it with and chilled bottle of natural Syrah from the North Rhone (preferably Dard et Ribo)

WithinReason3• 5 years ago

You chill red vine? Savage.

dfinninger• 5 years ago

I have tremendous enjoyment in my life without drinking. Running, hiking, biking, cooking, movies, road trips, museums, concerts, new restaurants, etc…

There are also enjoyable things that involve drinking too, but _needing_ a drink to enjoy oneself seems a bit hyperbolic for the average adult, no?

kstrauser10• 5 years ago

I hike and camp a lot with my kid’s Scout troop, and agree: there’s so much fun you can have without alcohol. That said, there’s also a time factor. When we’re up in the mountains, we have a couple of days dedicated to the activity, and we can all relax into it. When a bunch of coworkers go out after work, they’ve got a couple of hours to go from work-mode to play-mode before going home for the night, and alcohol can greatly facilitate how quickly a person can switch from one to the other.

I enjoy the same things you’re talking about sober (except maybe concerts — is that even legal?), but understand why a group of friends would start their evening together with a round of drinks.

peanut_worm• 5 years ago

Sure but if you are stuck at home because its 8pm on a tuesday because you work all day you can’t exactly go hiking. If you have money and time its easy to entertain yourself.

asdf_snar3• 5 years ago

Then at some point people, as adults, feel like they have to drink to enjoy themselves? I wonder what happened.

It feels like this question is disingenuous. You don't need fire starter to start a fire either, but wouldn't it be silly to conclude fire starter doesn't make starting a fire easier? Moderate alcohol consumption in an intimate environment is a lot of fun.

Put differently, if alcohol didn't present such serious health risks, I wouldn't be making an effort to cut it out of my social circles. As it stands, though, my friends, family and I have started referring to it as "poison", just to be totally transparent about what we're doing when we meet for drinks.

endisneigh4• 5 years ago

I don’t understand your comparison with a fire.

Your claim that moderate alcohol consumption makes things more fun is part of the point of my post. Is this actually true, or just a rationalization of people who already drink?

No judgement for those who do drink, by the way.

mint22• 5 years ago

More apt analogy than one would think. lighter fluid and any product specifically labeled a fire starter do not really help if one has a basic understanding of fire except in extreme cases like for some reason the wood is soaking wet. And they have significant downsides in cost. lighter fluid is just gross. With even a modest understanding of how fire works all one needs is wood. Newspaper is good for charcoal.

“Fire starter” products are mostly only useful to people who don’t know what they’re doing or aren’t actually using it to start the fire but want to squirt in lighter fluid just to see big flames.

kubb• 5 years ago

I wonder what happened.

What's the difference between the life of a child and that of an adult? You seem to be very close to figuring it out. (Tip: adults have little to no leisure time).

TrackerFF• 5 years ago

A bit of alcohol makes you feel good, there's no two ways about it. And, for many, it soothes their anxieties - or just loosens them up.

I can have fun without alcohol, no problem. But I can't deny that I like the taste of alcoholic drinks / beverages, and I enjoy the effect.

Same with sugar - I can enjoy a life without candy, but once in a while, I enjoy eating candy.

It's all about moderation.

haroldp6• 5 years ago

"People with as yet undeveloped pre-frontal cortexes to limit their inhibitions, and analyze, second-guess and evaluate their actions before they take them, don't need a drug that specifically suppresses the executive functions of their PFC, so why do you?"

roughly• 5 years ago

I wonder what happened.

Among other things, alcohol became legal to drink. Adults take more road trips than babies and teenagers too, I wonder why they can’t have fun at home anymore.

tshaddox3• 5 years ago

I don’t really get this jump from “I enjoy drinking alcohol with friends” to someone accusing me of “being unable to enjoy myself without alcohol.” You could throw the same accusations at anyone for literally everything they enjoy doing. You can’t enjoy yourself without going out to see a movie! You can’t enjoy yourself without camping! You can’t enjoy yourself without listening to music!

srg0• 5 years ago

- babies have fun without money

- kids have fun without money

- some teens have fun without money

Then at some point /some/ people, as adults, feel like they need money to enjoy themselves?

tsol7• 5 years ago

I believe it's really just cultural. If you spend time with people who don't drink, they often have just as fun a time as drinkers. Humans have been around for a while and if we couldn't have fun once in a while we'd be long extinct. I think people overestimate the necessity of social lubricants. This probably goes hand in hand with the greater culture as well-- at least in America I think it's seen as more necessary because socially its seen as weird to behave really friendly with strangers unless you're imbibed.

charcircuit• 5 years ago

Studies have shown that even small amounts of alcohol can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease

I've never drunk alcohol before. Is it worth never having it? Does one drink really ruin your body that much.

the_only_law5• 5 years ago

If you mean literally having one drink once in your life I highly doubt there is any meaningful impact.

If I had to guess, the air I breathe and other environmental factors would be more harmful over a long term period than having a single drink.

malfist• 5 years ago

Disclaimer, not a scientist, just a (3 year) sober alcoholic

One drink once in your life is not going to harm you. I think this is talking more about the "moderate" drinking of 1-2 servings per week.

That said, I've been down the whole alcohol path before and it ain't good for me. I don't know of any time since I've gotten sober that I thought back and said "Man, I wish I had been drunk for that"

It's an unnecessary risk. Maybe you'll do fine trying alcohol, maybe you'll become an addict and ruin your life. I don't think you're going to enhance your life by trying alcohol.

freedom20993• 5 years ago

My parents and grandparents drinks wine daily… every single meal (no water at their table)… have done their entire life… grandpa died at 94 due to an accident… grandma 98 and going strong… both my parents are 75 healthy and a active (always around travelling). But for them alcohol is not a drug… is a beverage that goes very well with food! They never drink for the sake of it! As long as a person sees alcohol as a recreational drug he has a problem but it must not always be the case!

P.S. we are from Southern Europe

runnerup• 5 years ago

It's fine to never drink alcohol. One drink won't change anything measurable. Even this press release doesn't claim that one drink per day is harmful -- it merely claims that one drink per day has never been definitively shown to cause benefit.

mywittyname4• 5 years ago

A fitbit helped me discover how terrible alcohol is for your heart. I could clearly see which days I would have a drink because my average resting heart rate would go from 63-65 to 77-80!

tasha06633• 5 years ago

You easily could have done that just worrying about it.

mywittyname4• 5 years ago

Unlikely. A) I never worried about it, B) The effects last into my sleep.

The effect is also most pronounced in my sleep since my heart rate is usually quite consistent, it varies like 2 bpm most nights. But if I look at the last night I drank, my average heart rate is +10 from baseline and varied by 20 bpm during my sleep.

The data is crystal clear.

tsol7• 5 years ago

That high an effect? I don't think so. I also monitor my heart rate and anxiety doesn't cause nearly as big a heart rate increase as alcohol.

steelstraw• 5 years ago

Everything is a balance though, isn't it?

If a little alcohol reduces one's stress and increases socialization, then they may be better off with the alcohol on net.

kevinmchugh3• 5 years ago

It's not obvious that alcohol reduces stress.

bt1a• 5 years ago

Alcohol consumption increases cortisol production, so I'd say the opposite is true.

recursive• 5 years ago

It's obvious to me that it reduces my stress. No study could convince me otherwise.

txsoftwaredev2• 5 years ago

Alcohol removes my anxiety/stress nearly every time I consume some. Depending on how much I consume the next day my anxiety could be worse though.

droopyEyelids• 5 years ago

awareness of stress?

jrs235• 5 years ago

Does alcohol reduce stress or just delay it?

tomtheelder7• 5 years ago

Yes, and the takeaway from this brief should not be "reduce your alcohol consumption to zero." It is instead, "know when you consume alcohol that there is no quantity that will produce no harm." That's a big departure from the previously accepted, and now thoroughly debunked, conventional wisdom that a small quantity is harmless or even beneficial.

azth6• 5 years ago

Increases socialization only because the culture is required to socialize over alcohol. In other societies, we socialize over tea and coffee.

zbentley• 4 years ago

That common claim has a lot of asterisks/caveats, however: stress has many bad health effects and alcohol can reduce stress, but it does so while inducing many of the same phenomena that make stress dangerous (e.g. cardiac issues).

luispa• 5 years ago

cheers!

flippyhead3• 5 years ago

I've heard this more lately and can't square it with what I had understood about those super long-lived cultures; like in Italy or Japan, where supposedly they drink moderate amounts of alcohol approximately daily.

acomjean• 5 years ago

There are so many factors that effect health its really hard to isolate one. I think moderation is key to preventing one of these things from having an undue large effect. grandmother (Irish/English) drank and smoked a lot, she lived to her mid-nineties. She had a relatively stress free existence though. But she's one person and without an identical twin control, its hard to tell how much better she might have been had she abstained.

flippyhead3• 5 years ago

But that's why I thought these studies of long-lived _cultrures_ were significant. These things, including moderate alcohol consumption, which are common to multiple very different large groups that live longer than average.

Swenrekcah3• 5 years ago

Generally, doing things in moderation is way better than going to extremes. Drinking moderately as a culture may be correlated with eating moderately, exercising moderately, etc.

In any case it has always seemed clear to me that studies showing beneficial effects of moderate alcohol consumption are heavily influenced by some combination of paying interest-groups and the researchers really wanting to justify a daily beer/wine glass.

The clearest evidence for me that a glass a day can not possibly be healthy is the effect just a single glass has on athletic performance the next day.

For the record I do drink and have for a long time, but have no illusions about the negative effects.

flippyhead3• 5 years ago

I definitely see why you'd be suspicious. But on the other hand, the Okinawa Japanese are definitely one of those groups that DOES live really long and DOES drink moderately. I've traveled extremely widely, used to live in Japan, and (sure, anecdotally) it feels reasonable.

burke• 5 years ago

There's no doubt that alcohol in excess is very bad for a person.

There's enough doubt about whether light-moderate alcohol consumption (i.e. a small glass of red wine with dinner and two or three once in a while with friends) is harmful or protective that it seems pretty clear that, whether the net effect is positive or negative, it's not terribly strong.

We get really hung up on whether something is "good for you" or "bad for you", without focusing as much as we should on exactly how bad it is: we just want to sort things into either the "good" bucket or the "bad" bucket and feel the corresponding dose of pride or guilt.

tsol7• 5 years ago

I've heard of having a glass of wine in meals in Italy, but does Japan really have a culture of daily drinking? Either way, that brings up use patterns. Here we tend to binge drink, with the purpose of getting drunk. That's not the same in such cultures. They have a much more moderate view of alcohol. A glass of wine and shots are two very different things

asow923• 5 years ago

But the tannins in red wine (consumed in moderation) are good for your heart?

siva7• 5 years ago

Who thought that Alcohol is actually good for the heart? Here is the good news: It won't either kill your healthy heart if you don't abuse it

starwind3• 5 years ago

Who thought that Alcohol is actually good for the heart?

I remember studies in the 90s (the ones I can find specifically were done by Eric Rimm) that touted health benefits from a glass of red wine. These weren't randomized control studies, they rarely controlled for anything that might impact someone's drinking or what they drink, and they've been torn apart in the years since.

revax• 5 years ago

The high consumption of red wine in France is thought by some people to be the explanation of the French paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox

asow923• 5 years ago

No amount of walking outside can guarantee not being hit by a car.

alex_young• 5 years ago

Seems like 0 could? Not at all recommended of course.

asow923• 5 years ago

What if the car goes through your window? :)

thomaspaine• 5 years ago

For everyone complaining about evidence citation, this is just a press release. The actual brief which includes 41 citations is here: https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF-Po...

dang2• 5 years ago

(the parent comment was originally in reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30009882, which we merged hither)

chainwax• 5 years ago

I saw this from this link: https://world-heart-federation.org/news/no-amount-of-alcohol...

In that article, it states:

"Alcohol has a greater impact on people from low socio-economic backgrounds, who are more likely to experience its adverse effects compared to people from higher socio-economic backgrounds, even when consuming similar or lower amounts."

Can someone provide some insight here? What does your wage have to do with how you body handles booze?

exdsq• 5 years ago

I'm not 100% certain about this, but my initial thoughts are that low socio-economic backgrounds will have less medical treatment (especially preventative) so issues aren't caught as quickly meaning you'll have more health issues at the same consumption rates. Other stats such as higher socio-economic backgrounds tending to eat more healthy foods, exercise more, have a greater ability to have a fruitful social life etc, will all be additional factors.

omgitsabird• 5 years ago

My first thought would be compounding any of the comorbidities that are already correlated with low socioeconomic status.

belorn• 5 years ago

The two major negative effects of low social-economic status on health that I commonly see mentioned is increased stress and reduced amount of cooping mechanics that provide protection.

The human body is pretty able to withstand most injuries, viruses, bacteria and so on. The more stressed a person is the less the body is able to do that recovery. In addition, if and individual is low on the socio-economic scale they might not have available cooping mechanics like resting, taking a day of, or access to social support. A lack of cooping mechanics is also a source for stress, making the body prioritizing other things than recovery.

justinpombrio• 5 years ago

It cites this paper:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32504585/

which says in its abstract: " Individuals with low socioeconomic status (SES) experience disproportionately greater alcohol-attributable health harm than individuals with high SES from similar or lower amounts of alcohol consumption." and "Alcohol use explained up to 27% of the socioeconomic inequalities in mortality. The proportion of socioeconomic inequalities explained systematically differed by drinking pattern, with heavy episodic drinking having a potentially significant explanatory value."

magicroot75• 4 years ago

This is a statistical claim. Not a causal claim. But we could make some assumptions about it. For instance low income people may be less likely to afford childcare or driver services like Uber which result in them being more likely to drive or child-care under the influence. Furthermore they may be more likely to have diabetes and heart issues, which may make them more susceptible to comorbities from alcohol toxicity.

aww_dang• 5 years ago

The psychological benefits of drinking may not be quantifiable, and may impact long term heart health.

“Who can’t stop drinking may get drunken three times a month. If he does it more often, he is guilty. To get drunken twice a month is better; once, still more praiseworthy. But not to drink at all - what could be better than this? But where could such a being be found? But if one would find it, it would be worthy of all honour.”

― Genghis Khan

muongold• 5 years ago

I saved this article from a similar discussion a few years ago, which argues that moderate drinking (but not binge drinking) is healthy in various ways. Does anyone know if it, or the underlying data it refers to, has been refuted?

https://psmag.com/social-justice/truth-wont-admit-drinking-h...

bena2• 5 years ago

This is a correlation fallacy.

The group of moderate drinkers is also the group of the most healthy. That doesn't necessarily mean that moderate drinking is healthy.

Because guess what else correlates with moderate drinking? Affluence.

Guess where poor people fall more in either the "never or hardly" category or the "binge drinking" category. Either you feel like you're too poor to afford to drink and thus do so only rarely. Or you've just completely given up and all your money goes to drinking.

What else correlates with affluence? Overall health outcomes. If you're poor, you also can't really afford to go to the doctor regularly.

So what the study really tells us is what we already know: having a reasonable amount of money is good for you.

starwind3• 5 years ago

Don't forget that studies looking at drinking often fail to seperate out former alcoholics who usually have long-term health problems from drinking from teetotalers

kstrauser10• 5 years ago

Although I live in a place where weed is legal, I don’t use it. I enjoy the occasional glass of a nice scotch, though, and I love a good stout or porter beer. This is where it gets a little strange for me: by every metric I can think of, I’d be better off replacing alcohol with weed. There seem to be fewer negative effects, it’s not a source of empty calories, and looks like a better recreational drug in every way.

And still, growing up with “Just Say No”, I can’t quite bring myself to. In the back of my mind, a little voice asks if that’s the example I want to set for my kids, which is silly when they’ve seen me (responsibly) using alcohol for years. I just can’t imagine using a vape or popping an edible in the same way I might pour a little glass of whisky before settling down for the evening.

dokem• 5 years ago

Personal anecdote but I disagree. I started smoking pot regularly after college and moving to a state where it was legal. It mostly displaced alcohol in my social circle. I thought it was harmless and 'superior' to drinking. I cannot have pot around anymore and was somewhat difficult to finally quit. While the consequences of pot addiction and difficulty in quitting are much lower than that of alcohol; the barrier to forming an addiction is also much lower. Pot undermined my life, mental health, social life, and motivation while using it. It's just too easy to get high, and too easy to tell yourself 'it's only pot, and it's not harmful.' Now I'll drink a couple beers after work some days, or some days I wont. But I don't think about how I want to go home and drink while I'm at work and it doesn't leave me in a groggy anti-social haze for 24 hours after using it. For me, alcohol is a much healthier drug.

kstrauser10• 5 years ago

I appreciate that. And again, I have little experience with pot so I can’t counter that with a personal story. I’m a little surprised, though, as it’s so easy to stumble across alcohol with it being sold in every store and restaurant. I’d have to go out of my way to acquire pot, but I could pick up a 6-pack of beer on my way to the cheese section of the grocery store.

I wonder what the relative numbers are of people who occasionally use pot vs weed and become addicted to it.

kbrannigan2• 5 years ago

Exactly, with alcohol I know play that's my 2 drinks of the night on weekends, call it a day.

Weed : the effects can last for days, paranoia, delusion, short term memory loss, not wanting to socialize, depression.

Sample size of one, I know! Your mileage may vary .

darod• 5 years ago

"it’s not a source of empty calories"

Until you get the munchies...

kstrauser10• 5 years ago

Hah, fair point. The Jack in the Box around the corner advertises:

- Late night “munchie meals” (https://jackinthebox.fandom.com/wiki/Jack%27s_Munchie_Meal)

- Delivery until 3 AM.

That can’t be a healthy combination.

redisman4• 5 years ago

Healthy food tastes better too. Honestly I’ve grown sick of simple snack foods by now. I’d much rather eat a nice meal

bagacrap• 5 years ago

tbf the munchy satisfying foods aren't necessarily empty calories. Alcohol is the worst of all macros and devoid of nutrition.

paraph1n• 5 years ago

Sounds like you already realize the error of your reasoning.

Don't be so set in your ways. As we get older, it's harder and harder to convince ourselves to try new things. You should actively fight that to keep life fresh and full of excitement. Don't let the words that were burned into you as a kid influence your rational adult decisions.

kstrauser10• 5 years ago

Specific subject aside, I totally agree with you. Life’s too short and the world is too amazing to get stuck in a rut, and I’m ready to give it all a try. You’ve got a vacation planned to live with shepherds in the Alps for a couple of weeks? Save me a space in your yurt. Let’s do this.

But truthfully, the third alternative in alcohol vs weed is “none of the above”. I’m not obligated to choose a vice, and if I had to give up alcohol today, say for health reasons, it’d be a small bummer but I don’t know that I’d rush to replace it.

leonidasv• 5 years ago

Well, media has been recently overwhelmed by studies showcasing the benefits of weed so that the disadvantages of using it appear to be lower or none at all, but that's not really the case.

If smoked, you're smoking tar and volatile compounds that can harm the lungs, much like a regular cigarette - although you're probably not going to smoke a pack of 20 joints in a single day like the moderate-to-heavy smoker next door do.

There's also an association between weed and schizophrenia (and depression) in adults. I'm not going to say "weed causes schizophrenia" (or depression), but the correlation exists and some will argue it implies causation here. Weed is also associated with some memory problems in adults too, although they seem to wean off if you stop using it.

There are cardiovascular risks associated with THC too, since it can cause abnormal heart rhythms and elevated heart rate. And, again, it's even worse if smoked since carbon dioxide and smoke compounds are known for affecting the heart.

So, yeah, weed has benefits, plenty of them, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily "safer". Don't get me wrong, alcohol is toxic, it's broken down in the liver into Acetaldehyde, a known carcinogenic. This stuff can't be healthy. But, for weed, we have less data on how it impacts the body - see how much time did it take to scientists finally admit alcohol is toxic? -. Similar studies on cannabis are still ongoing and we don't know yet all the risks it poses, but we already can see they do exist.

Maybe the real healthy thing is not switching from one drug to another, but cutting back on the overall consumption.

Cthulhu_2• 5 years ago

See, I'm of the opinion that problem drinking and/or weed is escapism or a form of self-harm, and unless the underlying issues are solved you'd just find an alternative.

Anecdotal, but I drink less now that I'm in a comitted relationship / living together. I still drink, but it's social. I've only been sort of hung over once in the past year.

kstrauser10• 5 years ago

Those are all good points. I still think evidence shows that weed is likely the less harmful option of the two. In the spirit of harm reduction, if I had to choose one of them to start with, weed appears to be the rational choice. But there’s no one telling me I have to use either of them.

Coffee is still my favorite drug, and I’ll fight for that one.

pydry2• 5 years ago

The schizophrenia and memory loss part seems to be for very heavy usage.

AFAIK infrequent use of edibles has no down sides.

appletrotter• 5 years ago

I think that the relationship between marijuana smoking and lung damange isn't so cut and dry bad as smoking nicotine is. Here's a blurb:

Regular smoking of marijuana by itself causes visible and microscopic injury to the large airways that is consistently associated with an increased likelihood of symptoms of chronic bronchitis that subside after cessation of use. On the other hand, habitual use of marijuana alone does not appear to lead to significant abnormalities in lung function when assessed either cross-sectionally or longitudinally, except for possible increases in lung volumes and modest increases in airway resistance of unclear clinical significance. Therefore, no clear link to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has been established. Although marijuana smoke contains a number of carcinogens and cocarcinogens, findings from a limited number of well-designed epidemiological studies do not suggest an increased risk for the development of either lung or upper airway cancer from light or moderate use, although evidence is mixed concerning possible carcinogenic risks of heavy, long-term use.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23802821/

allturtles7• 5 years ago

Setting aside tradition/ritual, which I don't think should count for nothing, I can think of many objective metrics on which alcohol is superior:

- Flavor

- Fills the stomach (can be a disadvantage too, but is advantageous in some situations, e.g. while waiting for dinner to be served at a party)

- Doesn't consume itself (i.e you can set down a drink and come back to it 30 minutes later)

- Easy to consume a small amount without substantially altering your mental state.

- No fire/burn risk

- Doesn't generate smoke/odor, which is unpleasant for other people and gets in your clothes/furniture

thebean114• 5 years ago

How can flavor possibly considered an objective metric?

kstrauser10• 5 years ago

There are lots of ways to consume weed that don’t have those drawbacks. There’s a dispensary around the block from me, and even though I don’t use it, I went in to look around to see what our new neighborhood shop looked like. They had a wide selection of edible candies, vape pens, and even drinks. It looks like it’d be very easy to get a consistent dose without burning anything. I know how much alcohol I can drink to get a pleasant effect without getting drunk, and I’m supposing I could do the same for weed if I wanted. (Or maybe not: it looks like the effects greatly vary based on strain, or how much CBD you take with it, etc. The “how much should I take to relax?” formula looks quite a bit more complicated.)

railsgirls112• 5 years ago

- Flavor

This is obviously not an objective metric of superiority.

- Fills the stomach (can be a disadvantage too, but is advantageous in some situations, e.g. while waiting for dinner to be served at a party)

Also subjective, as you realize its inconveniences and give one positive use case. In my experience this bloat is largely uncomfortable and inconvenient.

- Doesn't consume itself (i.e you can set down a drink and come back to it 30 minutes later)

This is only true if you leave something lit that is burning, something I doubt most would do on purpose

- Easy to consume a small amount without substantially altering your mental state.

Sister comment addresses this well

- No fire/burn risk

Valid concern, but there are many common ways to consume weed that don't carry that risk

- Doesn't generate smoke/odor, which is unpleasant for other people and gets in your clothes/furniture

Same as above

Ironically I think the traditions and rituals around alcohol is the best thing it has going for it, on most "objective" measures weed is regarded superior.

josefresco• 5 years ago

Flavor

I vape flower cannabis, flavor is a key component of this process.

Fills the stomach

Cannabis stimulates my appetite. This is welcome and paired with a glass of wine (on an empty stomach) before dinner makes the experience amazing!

Doesn't consume itself

My vape shuts off with inactivity - it doesn't "consume itself. Neither would a "bowl" of cannabis. Even a "joint" would stop burning if you put it down.

Easy to consume a small amount without substantially altering your mental state.

This is one of the major advantages of consuming cannabis via the vaping/smoking vs. edibles (also alcohol). The effects are felt in seconds which allows you to eaasily regulate dosage. Edibles and alcohol can easily be overconsumed because of the delay involved in stomach/liver process.

No fire/burn risk

My vape is electric, the risk of fire would be similar to using any of my other electronic devices with heat, such as a wax melt device etc.

Doesn't generate smoke/odor, which is unpleasant for other people and gets in your clothes/furniture

While the vape does create an odor, it's short lived and doesn't smell like smoked cannabis.

redisman4• 5 years ago

Just get a vape pen. It’s even more convenient than a beer. Fits in your pocket. You can take a tiny puff and put it back if you wish. Barely any smell

Broken_Hippo2• 5 years ago

Each of of these can be solved with a either edibles, vaping (or a number of non-fire options), or a pipe with small bowl.

weedontwee2• 5 years ago

Weed isn't legal where I live however its easy enough to access. A thing i really dislike about weed is in my (and most of my friends) experience its possible to just accidentally get to high and have a panic attack or freak out.

While this is possible with drinking, I find its much more difficult especially when drinking beer as I do. It has to be a much more conscious decision for me to get wasted drunk than for me to accidentally get so stoned I hide in my room.

redisman4• 5 years ago

Weed these days is so strong, smoking a full sized joint is much like drinking a glass of vodka. If you do it more often you learn your limits and dosage to get that two beers vibe consistently

txsoftwaredev2• 5 years ago

A good alternative with similar results is Delta 8. Lower potency and less likely to cause any freak out moments.

jokethrowaway• 5 years ago

You're already giving a bad example to your kids by drinking alcohol.

That's fine. They'll grow up and decide what to do. If they'll drink themselves senseless there must be a bigger problem than seeing you drink alcohol in small quantities.

I certainly am not doing all the mistakes I saw my father's doing and I hope my kids will grow up to be responsible adults which will make their own decisions.

I never lived in a place where weed was legal but for a couple of years I used it as an antidepressant and as a way to unwind. I bought a vaporiser (the healthiest, quickest and hassle-free way to absorb weed - very little smell lingering and you're not smoking paper) and vaped nearly every evening (after kids bedtime) and it was great to survive a hard period of my life. After 2 years I didn't feel the need anymore and I stopped. I can't be bothered to go to onion to buy weed anymore and just drink a beer every once and then when I want to unwind - but if weed was easy to buy I'd definitely buy it and treat it like I treat beers. I'm glad I didn't use alcohol in the same way, merely for the extra calories and for the liver damage.

Still, there is a good reason you're fine drinking a beer in front of your kids but you should avoid vaping in front of your kids - and that's merely to avoid exposing them to passive vapour.

kstrauser10• 5 years ago

I’m torn on the setting an example bit. My parents never drank at all, that I know of. Growing up I was led to believe that you drank either never or always, like there was no middle ground. I wish someone had told me or demonstrated that it’s OK and normal to have the occasional drink and then stop.

We’re fortunate to live in a house with a yard. If I were going to smoke or vape, it’d be on the back deck. I wouldn’t use it inside any more than I’d use tobacco smoke or vape in my living room. More likely, I’d use an edible.

The downside to doing it secretly is that I’m pretty sure my kids in high school know what a stoned person looks like. The last thing I’d want is to have them notice I was under the influence, then come to their own (and wrong) conclusions like “huh, does Dad do this every night? Has he always?”

ilaksh• 5 years ago

Best example is to do neither and find something that actually is interesting or sort of fun to do at night.

avgcorrection8• 5 years ago

Imagine being haunted by Nancy Reagan in 2022.

kstrauser10• 5 years ago

"You had to be there, man."

It wasn't just her, but that the US went all-out stigmatizing weed. According to the DARE program, after 2 marijuanas you might as well be shooting up heroin. (Note: this spectacularly backfired, as plenty of kids tried weed and didn't die, figured the whole thing was a lie, and then tried harder drugs that are much less forgiving.)

I don't think a thing about other people using weed. I'm sure plenty of my friends and coworkers in the Bay Area do, and they're all awesome and productive people. It still feels weird for me, though, after a lifetime of being told it was bad.

JetAlone2• 5 years ago

It's not just Nancy Reagan, man... Every former president and first lady since JFK, they're all out to get us. They got that Annunaki blood, long flouride fangs, and woobly mind control waves.

thefz• 5 years ago

I just can’t imagine using a vape or popping an edible in the same way I might pour a little glass of whisky before settling down for the evening.

Every drug has its uses, I guess. Different effects for different situations. I can't imagine a social setting smoking weed to, it has to be alcohol for me.

m463• 5 years ago

My parents were responsible cigarette smokers. They were not chain smokers or even pack-a-day smokers. My father quit cold turkey when the surgeon general warning came out for tobacco.

I wonder how accurate or fair a comparison my statement makes?

notatoad• 5 years ago

i'd recommend trying weed before putting too much more thought into this.

they're really not interchangeable as recreational intoxicants. i find marijuana a very different experience to alcohol, and personally i much prefer the alcohol. i had had the same thought as you, that maybe marijuana would be better for me, but ultimately i don't think it matters if it's better if i don't like it.

also, beer and whiskey are delicious and it's more about the enjoyment of consuming them for me than the effects of the alcohol. weed isn't very enjoyable - smoking is terrible, and edibles are just worse version of sugary treats.

kbrannigan2• 5 years ago

I once fell into the trap of thinking that, this sticky green leaf was just a fun harmless substance.

It's a silent killer,compared to alcohol it's so easily abusable because you can never have too much.

What was half a roll after a long day of work became 2 or 3 rolls a day.

It makes you okay with being mediocre, and comes with a lot of sneaky short and long term mental side effects that are yet to be studied.

Lately I would rather have a scotch and 24 hour later have it out of my system, than live with a thin daily mental fog.

Yeah I stay clear of it these days

lolsal• 5 years ago

Lately I would rather have a scotch and 24 hour later have it out of my system, than live with a thin daily mental fog.

This was absolutely my experience and resulting opinion as well. Ultimately weed is not as harsh in the short term for me, but the cumulative effects over even a week of usage start to become apparent in my cognitive ability. It's a little insidious the way it creeps up on me. For that reason I don't partake nearly as often and have fallen back to enjoying alcohol in moderation myself.

Havoc• 5 years ago

I seem to recall studies around weed and schizophrenia being correlated so not convinced it wins by all metrics. Probably just most

boringg• 5 years ago

Is anyone surprised by this? Alcohol being good for the body was pushed by the Alcohol lobby a long time ago and made its way into the mainstream consciousness. It has lingered because people enjoy drinking and because of powerful incentives not to change.

How large is the alcohol industry and how many people are directly tied to it?

Am I saying we shouldn't drink? No the amount of stimulating conversations I have had with people is somewhat a function of alcohol and being more comfortable to talk about ideas in a less formal setting.

LesZedCB• 5 years ago

I guess you could say the alcohol lobby was "cooking with gas"

devoutsalsa2• 5 years ago

"I knew a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex and rich food. He was healthy right up to the time he killed himself." - Johnny Carson

weedontwee2• 5 years ago

"You're gonna feel like a damn fool, laying out at that hospital, dying from nothing!" - Redd Foxx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grI16niGXA

mritchie712• 5 years ago

One of those things is not like the others.

I don't think sex is linked to many bad health outcomes.

alar44• 5 years ago

The point is that they are considered vices. Sex, drugs, rock and roll etc. It's a joke, lighten up.

jcadam3• 5 years ago

I don't think sex is linked to many bad health outcomes.

Sure it is. STDs, risk of injury, etc.

guilhas• 5 years ago

Life is so complicated now a days that stress will probably kill you first

yalogin• 5 years ago

I think most people know this on some level. Alcohol cannot be good for the body. However, society encourages and even shames people that don't drink to an extreme degree that people go with the herd on this. Its going to be impossible to beat and turn around that societal pressure and acceptance.

solox3• 5 years 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.

slothtrop4• 5 years ago

As 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/articl...

allturtles7• 5 years ago

Exactly. 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.

zelphirkalt4• 5 years ago

[…] So what? That doesn't mean it's significant.

It is the question, how significant it is. Then there is the question, what level of significance will make a person reconsider their consumption.

However, the statement that no amount is truly safe, if it is correct, means, that in general alcohol is an unnecessary risk. There is no need to drink it and no good for ones heart comes of it in terms of biology. What society does with this info is up to all of us.

nuclearnice12• 5 years ago

To 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-Po...

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

f38zf5vdt2• 5 years ago

Another 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...

mam4• 5 years ago

Yes but "The Lancet"

vanusa3• 5 years ago

“Based on recent evidence, it has been concluded that there is “no safe level of alcohol consumption”(5)

Which definitely takes artistic license with what the cited article actually said, which was:

   Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none.

Which is exactly like saying "The safest level of poppy seed consumption is none". Which of course completely dodges the question you'd really want to ask which is: "How many poppy seeds can you eat per day with either no or negligible negative health effects?" And in any case nowhere near equivalent to saying:

   It has been concluded that "there is no save level of poppy seed consumption".

Moral of the story being -- the byline quote at the top of the article:

"The evidence is clear: any level of alcohol consumption can lead to loss of healthy life"

Is not only supported by the research it cites -- but irresponsibly alarmist.

JumpCrisscross• 5 years ago

Would any non-trivial substance be deemed "safe" under these criteria?

jcadam3• 5 years ago

There's a very small chance you'll choke to death every time you eat something.

BurningFrog2• 5 years ago

A lot is riding on the unspecific usage of "safe" here.

some_random• 5 years ago

I'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.

ethanbond2• 5 years ago

That’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-Po...

jillianschuller• 5 years ago

Having 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.

dionidium9• 5 years ago

If 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/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

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.

mattmaroon2• 5 years ago

The 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.

hn_throwaway_99• 5 years ago

While I somewhat agree with your overall point, level of control is important here. I can choose whether to get on a plane or take a drink. I can't control if someone farts standing next to me, or if they exhale smoke in my face.

ABeeSea• 5 years ago

Did you look at any of the references at the bottom of the page? There are many, many dozens of studies in the report by the surgeon general. On page 421 when they analyze lung cancer risk, they have studies with volume and frequency of second hand smoke based on the volume and frequency of the smoking habits of the one spouse being a smoker and the other being a non smoker.

ethanbond2• 5 years ago

This 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.

temporalparts• 5 years ago

Have you actually done research differentiating between the risks of tobacco exposure and radiation exposure?

There's no scientific evidence to suggest that small doses of radiation (< 0.1 mSv) is harmful to you, at all. In fact, there's even scientific evidence to suggest the opposite, it's called radiation hormesis.

kaba03• 5 years ago

I can choose to take a flight or consume alcohol, but I can’t choose to not breathe while you smoke next to me. There is no need to look for conspiracy theories as homework.

spacemark• 5 years ago

Good points. If I can take a crack at the exercise for the reader, I think the inconsistency has fairly straight forward reasons, even if they're frustrating: humans are terrible at reasoned risk analysis (if they even see the value); people prefer absolutes and easy heuristics to "it depends"; most people have first-hand experience with the extremes of smoking and drinking and it's thus easy to vilify; the best defense of vice is pleasure, which isn't much of a defense in the eyes of many, whereas exposure to pollution and cosmic rays is impossible to prevent without giving up near-universally valued things (transportation, energy).

We see similar patterns with nuclear power, climate change, and pandemics...

babypuncher3• 5 years ago

I think the difference is that there is something to be gained in exchange for the risk posed by cosmic rays during air travel, so people are more interested in taking a nuanced approach to it. Meanwhile second hand smoke is a nuisance at best and a legitimate health concern at worse. Most people (myself included) are happy to ban smoking on airplanes or in restaurants even if the health benefits are negligible at best.

I do agree though, studies like this should always include useful context rather than just making absolutist statements. Perhaps alcohol and tobacco smoke need something similar to the banana equivalent dose used when talking about radiation exposure.

scoofy3• 5 years ago

If you want to feel some dissonance about this dissonance, you might note that a meta-analysis was done on the evidence that using a parachute is effective at saving your life when jumping from an aircraft. It's a real, but satirical approach to worshiping randomized controlled trials for things that should effectively be obvious. There are obvious limits to empiricism, and we shouldn't proudly flaunt lack of evidence ≠ evidence of absence in cases where it's perfectly reasonable to expect results. I mean, we could be wrong about theses things, but it would be a shift in thinking akin to newtonian -> einsteinian physics.

Paper: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial

Conclusions: Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention. However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps. When beliefs regarding the effectiveness of an intervention exist in the community, randomized trials might selectively enroll individuals with a lower perceived likelihood of benefit, thus diminishing the applicability of the results to clinical practice.

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

ineedasername• 5 years ago

I think the reason one bothers us and another doesn't (in the case off smoking) relates to the level of non-contradiction evidence. It's been decades since the pseudo-research propaganda from the tobacco industry was taken seriously, and lots of legitimate research to go along with that.

Alcohol on the other hand seems to produce a fair number of contradictory studies on a regular basis. There are pretty clear negative effects of excessive use, but at the low-to-moderate levels it's a lot murkier. It's especially hard to know from some studies whether or not the proposed negative impact was caused by alcohol or whether alcohol use was a type of proxy variable for general health and lifestyle.

dahart15• 5 years ago

There is no dissonance here, this is FUD. The language is wildly different because the actual risks are wildly different. One kills a lot of people and the other doesn’t.

How many people are actually dying from air travel radiation? The numbers are low enough that they’re hard to find evidence for. Here’s a study, for example, that attempted to answer the question for pilots, who obviously fly frequently. They weren’t even able to detect higher death rates at all. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14648170/ “Neither external and internal comparisons nor nested case-control analyses showed any substantially increased risks for cancer mortality due to ionizing radiation.” (Edit: of course there are some studies that demonstrate small amounts of increased cancer risk, and increased risk of pregnancy complications for airline crews. The numbers are small.)

On the other hand, “Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States” https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...

Even if you are skeptical of the CDC’s estimates for mortality rates by things like second hand smoke, there are pretty clear reasons to take smoking a lot more seriously as a risk than radiation exposure from air travel, the direct risk to smokers is orders of magnitude higher than the risk of air travel radiation.

The fact that the CDC’s language reflects the actual risks is a good reason to put more trust in what they say, not less. They’re not trying to hide something from you, they’re trying to help you understand the actual relative differences in risk, which are much, much higher for smoking.

Edit2: BTW, the WHO agrees with the CDC about there being no safe levels of smoke, and is backed by significant amounts of research and outcome statistics worldwide. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...

Xixi• 5 years ago

Just speculating here, but doesn't it have something to do with accumulation in the body? Your body obviously can't accumulate radiations. It also does process and eliminate the like of ethanol and many other substances. That's not the case, I believe, for heavy metals like mercury, lead or arsenic, that are eliminated much more slowly (if at all?).

That's why you can enjoy lychees by eating a few everyday if you fancy it, and will only poison yourself if you eat a lot at once. But you can poison someone by exposing them to a little bit of arsenic everyday (at least in the movies, not sure how true it is...)

I think tar from smoke accumulates, and there is a lot of it in second-hand smoke.

Obviously not a doctor, so I'm probably completely wrong...

justatdotin2• 5 years ago

yes but these three (radiation, smoke, alcohol) are very different hazards with quite different modes of harm

ausername42027• 5 years ago

There is robust data that the risk of first-hand smoke is not a linear relationship between cancer (and other bad stuff) and dose--no amount of smoking is safe.

To be frank you are uninformed on basic statistics as well as medicine.

You are doing the standard thing that many educated people do when they think they are smarter and more informed than they are. You dress up a bad take as if you found some secret (CDC's hypocritical language) and assume that a mathematical relationship exists ("obviously exposure to bad stuff carries linear risk"), when it is actually more complex than that (if we can call a binary relationship more complex than linear lol).

quantgenius2• 5 years ago

Smoking by a person may or may not create benefits for the person smoking. However, secondhand smoke creates no positives and significant net negatives (the smell, the accumulation of black deposits on clothes of things around you) for anyone who encounters it even if you ignore the health effects.

It can also create pretty serious immediate issues beyond just the long term problems for people with breathing issues like asthma or certain allergies. If smoking and second hand smoke were everywhere, like it was in 80s and early 90s in the US, and you were one of the fairly large percentage of the population with these issues, you basically couldn't go anywhere without risking your health.

If the second hand inhaler were a child, it's an even more serious problem. Nicotine is highly addictive and does a real number on your brain. It makes addicted smokers justify things to themselves due to the sheer physical need and you end up with parents smoking around young kids etc.

Even if you are a libertarian, you should support restrictions on smoking consistent with the principle that each of us has freedom but your freedom to swing your fist only extends as far as my nose.

Alcohol is a bit different. Unless the drinker starts behaving badly after drinking, or there are long term issues like alcoholism that affect the whole family, they are really only hurting themselves.

shadowofneptune2• 5 years ago

What 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-e...

Personally unsure whether a reduced year or two of life is really that significant.

ummonk2• 5 years ago

That 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)

thinkling• 5 years ago

Here'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

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• 5 years ago

Chris 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-alc...

kirso• 5 years ago

This 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.

cleansingfire4• 5 years ago

What'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• 5 years ago

The "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)

bena2• 5 years ago

I love studies like this. Because it shows exactly where our lines are.

If this is true, we should stop drinking. That's what the data says.

But if you won't, I really don't want to hear you opining on anyone else's choice of unhealthy vice.

tsol7• 5 years ago

It's interesting how much opposition these articles get. I notice a lot of people are annoyed just at the declaration that alcohol is bad for you. People almost seem to take it personally. I know people like their alcohol, but I'm surprised how defensive people get just at the idea it's unhealthy.

coding123• 5 years ago

I've been waiting for something like this. Now we need to get the AMA to reverse its stance too. I've seen too many people start with the one drink excuse, and multiply by the number of days they HAVEN'T had a drink. It's totally irresponsible messaging.

colechristensen5• 5 years ago

Question one: what is the world heart federation? I have never heard of it before today.

Two:

The evidence is clear: any level of alcohol consumption can lead to loss of healthy life.

The evidence is not clear. There are plenty of studies showing benefits. “Any level” “can” makes the statement technically true but meaningless, you could replace alcohol with anything and that would also be true. If you want to back up the statement, do a meta analysis study and publish that instead of pretending you’re the authority and giving vague statements.

This reads like somebody with a prejudged conclusion announcing that instead of actual scientific openmindedness. Plenty of people in the comments who already agreed are eating it up.

How could anybody who didn’t already agree with this be convinced, their argument boils down to “we say the studies conclude this” which is trivial to refute.

nabla94• 5 years ago

There are plenty of studies showing benefits.

Yes. And these studies are being exposed as the product of alcohol lobby.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/21/17139036/he...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055701/

colechristensen5• 5 years ago

I am perfectly aware of p-hackng. I still don’t believe it without actual evidence, I get strong vibes of people wanting this to be true which would take more than a little evidence to overcome.

Swenrekcah3• 5 years ago

Let me offer some food for thought:

How many athletes report drinking a bit before competing?

The answer is none because it negatively affects all physical ability.

So would you say it’s likely that in aggregate drinking would be healthy?

Edit: Wow, I guess people really don't like to think about this. To respond to both comments below, yes sure, sometimes it helps to relax just a bit and alcohol can help with that, but obviously you could also just drink some tea or actually train yourself to command better control over your state of relaxation. Alcohol is a shortcut that comes with some penalties, but personal ability might overcome those penalties. That doesn't mean that person couldn't have performed even better without drinking.

And regarding lists of athletes that have been known to drink, well of course a counterexample to any absolute statement can be found, I'll grant that. But in the overwhelming majority you won't find top level athletes at the bar the night before the big event and there's a reason for that.

colechristensen5• 5 years ago

Refuting your “none”

https://whyy.org/segments/when-a-bit-of-booze-is-just-the-bo...

penjelly3• 5 years ago

The answer is none because it negatively affects all physical ability.

Wrong. I can think of a few off the top of my mind who still have alcohol in their system while competing/training.

- Arnold Schwartzenegger - Jon Jones and various other ufc fighters - olympic athletes in the olympic village according to news sources

more here.. https://firstwefeast.com/drink/2015/08/athletes-drinking-hab...

Also note, physical ability isnt the only thing involved in high level performance. Ive had a couple beers before doing gymnastics before, and while it made me more disoriented i was less inhibited and actually performed better that day.

GuB-42• 5 years ago

At some point, alcohol was listed as a performance enhancing drug in archery because a moderate amount is supposed to steady the aim. It is still banned in many competitions for that reason, and not just because drunk shooting is a bad idea.

stronglikedan2• 5 years ago

I used to have a beer before the gym, so I could get my heart rate up faster (thinner blood), and lift more (less pain response). If I were competing with an otherwise equally matched opponent at the gym, a beer would give me an edge.

PaulDavisThe1st3• 5 years ago

Depends on the type of athlete. I know many ultraendurance and endurance athletes who are quite happy to drink the night before an event. This includes nationally and internationally ranked people, not just back-of-the-pack participants.

pknight• 5 years ago

Alcohol consumption was pretty common in the NBA, with some even drinking during halftime. Some of the biggest stars of the league in the past decades drank a lot of alcohol, though much less now with more stringent policies in place. There are players that led the league in scoring despite drinking well into the night all the time. Lebron James is a famous wine drinker. He drinks every day and his longetivity and conditioning is unmatched, but he may be from a different planet.

These were some random facts from an NBA fan who doesn't drink.

yakshaving_jgt• 5 years ago

I used to work with one of the best athletes in the world (double Ultraman world champion), and I think he would disagree with you.

https://www.slowtwitch.com/Features/Island_To_Island_-_The_t...

dionidium9• 5 years ago

"Mickey Mantle knew two things: 1. Drinking 2. Playing drunk baseball" -- Norm MacDonald (RIP)

tomtheelder7• 5 years ago

I think you've got the politics of this backwards. There is overwhelming cultural pressure to support some level of alcohol consumption. A host of shoddy (and largely alcohol industry funded) studies tried to demonstrate that it was beneficial.

It's not. It's harmful no matter the quantity. Study after study demonstrates this now. I say this as someone who drinks regularly, by the way. I have no desire for it to be demonstrated that alcohol is harmful; it's a part of my life and has been for decades.

If you want evidence, go open the actual brief and check out the dozens of references, including multiple meta analyses.

throwaway889900• 5 years ago

One more of these huh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7l2hUp0CkQ

anoplus• 5 years ago

Before talking about what amounts are good or bad, the cultural phenomenon of drinking has always been mysterious to me. Alcohol feels overrated. It seems like no more than symbolic association with social life, or celebration. I love socializing and celebrating, but when I want to seize the moment, I want sharp senses - not the opposite. Also, I find it not tasty honestly.

I trust people to like having me as their company even when not participating in drinking.

helsinkiandrew• 5 years ago

Can anyone find any research in the citations that my glass of red wine in the evening - although it may increase atherosclerosis and have other health implications - doesn't have benefits that offset the drawbacks.

https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF-Po...

How much do the social, relaxation, and stress relief benefit my health. In the same way that taking a walk in a polluted city has pros and cons or the enjoyment someone might get from sky diving or taking up motorcycling.

cma• 5 years ago

although it may increase atherosclerosis and have other health implications - doesn't have benefits that offset the drawbacks.

You can get all the theoretical benefits by eating grapes or raisins.

criddell2• 5 years ago

How often do you get together with friends after work for a few raisins before heading home?

drapermache• 5 years ago

I feel like alcohol consumption isn't taken as seriously since its been legalized, but its incredibly destructive. The only thing I've really seen get talked about is driving while drinking.

This hits very close to home to me because I am currently taking care of our kids while my wife had to fly across the USA to help with her Uncle's funeral. He was a high functioning alcoholic for many years until he joined AA and cleaned up. He was a very active member of AA and lead his local chapter. He had just come to visit for the holidays and passed a week and half later from a heart attack.

My mother's side of the family came from a long line of abusive alcoholics, and she was the first to break the cycle. So I made the personal choice to not even try it to keep it going. Sometime I do wonder if I'm missing out, but I don't want to take the risk of getting addicted.

penjelly3• 5 years ago

I feel like alcohol consumption isn't taken as seriously since its been legalized

alcohol was being consumed before first evidence of laws in human society. Ancient mesopotamians drank a lot of beer because it was more resistant to bacteria then other beverages.

Unless you meant legalized after prohibition?

N1H1L6• 5 years ago

We have been consuming alcohol long before we even became Homo - even 10 million years back we were seeking out rotting fruits on the forest floor.

freedom20993• 5 years ago

I think the problem is the culture of alcohol in some countries… in Southern Europe has a culture of wine as part of a dining experience rather then as a recreational drugs and the effects are that has a lower alcoholism rates than countries where it is more seen as recreational (like Northern Europe or the US).

I live in France, we have wine served at the company’s cantine… no one is ever drunk!

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholis...

chasebank2• 5 years ago

You know what's worse than drinking alcohol? Sitting in a chair all day staring at a screen.

Why do we need studies for things we've known for centuries? Drink, eat, exercise, all in moderation. Get outside and move often as possible. It's not rocket science.

nozzlegear• 5 years ago

I think we need studies because there are people who believe the opposite. Growing up, a close friend of mine had a die-hard belief that everyone should have a glass of wine with every meal because it was good for your heart.

Elizer0x03093• 5 years ago

Alcohol changes your state of mind which leads to car accidents, abuse and so much more.

To compare that to sitting is stupid.

chasebank2• 5 years ago

Why?

The article in question is about what's good for the heart and ultimately, living. Prolonged sitting kills far, far more people than alcohol. Anecdotally speaking, alcohol happens to be a lot more fun than sitting. Pick your poison, I suppose.

forgotmyoldacc• 5 years ago

Why do we need studies for things we've known for centuries?

Because folk wisdom is not science. For example, many people enjoy a cozy fireplace, but increases chances of heart/lung disease a significant amount due to small (PM10) particles: https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/how-smoke-fires-can-affect-... https://www.lung.org/clean-air/at-home/indoor-air-pollutants...

pharmakom• 5 years ago

So “any amount of alcohol is bad for the heart”?

gojomo• 5 years ago

Lots of scholarship disagrees, but: before this press release, I'd never heard of the "World Heart Federation". Now I have.

That was the real purpose of it issuing this provocative, but not quite scientifically-settled, statement.

it_does_follow• 5 years ago

I don't drink to live a long time, I drink to make the time I'm hear a bit more bearable.

nabla94• 5 years ago

Heineken and Carlsberg paid NIH $100 million to "to show that moderate alcohol consumption is safe and lowers risk of common diseases". This and other ethical research violations created the whole "moderate amount of alcohol may be healthy" meme.

The alcohol industry gave the government money to prove moderate drinking is safe https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/21/17139036/he...

Alcohol industry involvement in science: A systematic review of the perspectives of the alcohol research community https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055701/

asdfsd234234444• 5 years ago

This has been obvious for a long time.

llamajams• 5 years ago

Yeah but it's good for the mind .

entropicgravity• 5 years ago

A room full of cardiologists will raise a glass to that.

Cupertino95014• 5 years ago

I agree with solox3 about the need to cite the evidence, not just say "studies show."

That said, my doctor asked how much I drank, and I said about four drinks a week. She said "that's too much." So now I have a pretty strict limit of two per week, and "a glass of wine with dinner" does count towards that. I think she was more in tune with ALL the evidence, not just the articles that tell everyone what they want to hear.

People really don't like to hear that two-per-week thing. The beer or glass of wine with friends is a pretty important part of society. In fact, I really think you only live once, and what's the point if you never have the things you really love? But don't delude yourself that it's healthy; it's not.

That said: I lost a brother to alcohol & cigarettes, so it's a little more personal with me.

oversocialized• 5 years ago

reminds me of when the WHO said fertile aged women should not drink any alcohol and the wine aunts had a meltdown while also citing WHO as a source for anything covid related. hypocrisy at its finest.

easton• 5 years ago

I was unfamiliar with the term, so from the Urban Dictionary:

wine aunt: An aunt with little to no interest in having children. Has much more interest in having a free and carefree life than the responsibilities of a family.

hbarka• 5 years ago

What do the French have to say about that? France is one of the countries in the world with the highest life expectancy.

dghughes• 5 years ago

This is as bad as the disastrous Wakefield Autism "study". People will deny alcohol is bad for them for the next 100 years even with multiple studies showing the results.

1970-01-013• 5 years ago

Counter-point: Alcohol was key in the creation of the United States.

"In the drink, a dream; and in the dream, a spark."[1]

"...the Founding Fathers despised each other. Like, these bros couldn’t stand the sight of one another and it’s a goddamn miracle our country ever came to be, that’s how much they hated one another."[2]

In 1787, two days before they signed off on the Constitution, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention partied at a tavern. According to the bill preserved from the evening, they drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.[2]

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=s3SqDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT9&ots=R...

[2] https://brobible.com/life/article/america-founding-fathers-b...

Clubber• 5 years ago

Counter-point: Alcohol was key in the creation of the United States.

Some people theorize it was one of the main driving forces for agriculture and civilization itself.

https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2018/09/12/crafting...

iKlsR• 5 years ago

A bit related, I can't remember the exact details but I read or watched somewhere recently that it was key in taking over some regions. They would gift village chiefs alcohol and have them sign away rights to their land under the influence.

tsol7• 5 years ago

How is that a counter to to claims about its health effects? They're not saying alcohol has no positives and it's for terrible people, just that it has negative effects on health.

1970-01-013• 5 years ago

I've taken liberty on the word "heart" to mean the overall character of a person. I.e. alcohol is beneficial in many other ways, and it must not be dismissed as "just a bad drug" in discussions.

selimthegrim4• 5 years ago

Sit down, John.

pmdulaney• 5 years ago

They're focused on heart health so they don't address the fact that alcohol is also a carcinogen. This is sort of a "The sky is falling!" kind of article, but it comes down to, as always: Be aware of the risks in some intuitive way and decide what you want to do.

thehappypm• 5 years ago

Tangent but I started a “sober January” and the benefits to my life are so striking I don’t intend to ever drink again.

Ensorceled2• 5 years ago

I drink in moderation. I eat good, dark chocolate in moderation. I have a dessert occasionally. I over indulge in rich foods sometimes.

MANY things are in the category of "No Amount is Good for ...".

This is NOT a useful categorization.

tombert2• 5 years ago

I've completely cut my drinking down to "only on holidays where I'm expected to", and even then I don't get "drunk".

While I never got to a point of drinking where anyone would call it a "problem", I realized that any amount of alcohol probably isn't great for my depression, and I also realized that I actually didn't enjoy being drunk all that much.

I don't really miss it much, though it was a little difficult to quit cold turkey a few years ago when I did it.

globular-toast2• 5 years ago

You're expected to drink? For religious reasons? I've found it incredibly easy to stop drinking entirely. Nobody has ever questioned why I don't drink alcohol let alone expect me to drink. I figure there are enough people who don't do for religious/cultural reasons that it would be silly to ask and offensive to expect. Even though I probably don't look like someone who abstains for religious/cultural reasons and only do so for personal reasons.

tombert2• 5 years ago

You're expected to drink? For religious reasons?

Nah, I won't even say "peer pressure" either, but more of a "fuck it it's New Years" attitude. Not uncommon (at least amongst my friend group) to have a shot of whisky or something at midnight on NYE.

Again though, it's on the order of 1-2 shots, and I'm a pretty tall guy, so it's certainly not enough to get me intoxicated or anything like that.

AlwaysRock3• 5 years ago

Everyone knows this. Some choose to believe the 1 or 2 debunked and unrepeatable studies that show small amounts of alcohol is good for you rather than the mountain of evidence that says it isnt.

If you want to drink alcohol, that is fine. But pretending its healthy in some way is lying to yourself.

oicu812• 5 years ago

"No amount of alcohol is safe, however it's the dose that makes the poison." [1]

"for every 100,000 people who consume one drink per day, 918 will have an alcohol-related problem per year. But if the same 100,000 people drank nothing at all, 914 would still have one of those same problems. That’s only 4 more people per year (per 100,000) who will have a problem that’s attributable to alcohol—that’s tiny. But it’s also not zero." [2]

[1] https://peterattiamd.com/qualy-1-what-are-peters-thoughts-on...

[2] https://www.popsci.com/moderate-drinking-benefits-risks/#pag...

sharno• 5 years ago

"They ask you about wine and gambling. Say, In both there is great sin, and some benefits for people. And their sin is greater than their benefit ...”

Quran (2:219)

greenyoda• 5 years ago

Big discussion of original source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30009882

dang2• 5 years ago

Comments moved thither. Thanks!

Edit: actually, this submission was posted first, plus the Bloomberg article seems a bit more informative than the press release, so I think we'll merge hither instead.

kwhitefoot• 5 years ago

The Eurasian Economic Union’s technical regulation mandates provision of an ingredients list, health information, and an additional message of “recommendatory nature” to be put on all types of alcoholic beverages intended for human use.

Eurasian Economic Union?

Have I slipped down the wrong trousers of time?

iooi• 5 years ago

Anyone else interested by the wording here?

"No amount of alcohol is good for the heart" is not exactly the same as saying "Any amount of alcohol is bad for the heart".

The former statement is hardly a surprise, but I think it will be harder to prove the latter statement.

tomtheelder7• 5 years ago

They mostly do make the stronger version of the claim:

The evidence is clear: any level of alcohol consumption can lead to loss of healthy life. Studies have shown that even small amounts of alcohol can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease, including coronary disease, stroke, heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation, and aneurysm.

It's honestly pretty clear that this is true if you dig into the research a bit. I say this as a regular drinker, by the way. I don't think the takeaway should be to drink zero, just that we (and doctors particularly!) should not be fooled into believing that there is a quantity of alcohol consumption that is entirely risk free, or even beneficial.

helloworld113• 5 years ago

Aside from the still dubious "certainty" of this clinical conclusion, there are far too man y puritans on this comment threat hoping to optimize every last possible, squeezable ounce of supposed health from life by railing against alcohol as well. Quite simply, some things have social, personal and emotional benefits that might just be worth a bit more in the long run than being an absolutist who weighs the most minimal uncertainties of pleasurable acts at all times. To each their own, but what a terrible way to live a life, and especially with the full knowledge that many previous health studies by many large organizations have frequently fucked up in their claims that X or Y is bad or good, only to later change their tunes with new evidence.

helloworld113• 5 years ago

Instead of downvoting, why not someone justify with a decent counterargument that goes beyond simply "alcohol is unsafe!"? Life comes with risk, many pleasurable activities come with risk. It's possible to balance between enjoying oneself and moderating one's behavior without sinking into a morass of absolutist, puritanical and medically ambiguous health "optimization".

softwarebeware• 5 years ago

Many of the comments focus on the individual. There should also be consideration for societal concerns and overall public health.

darthrupert• 5 years ago

I don't consume alcohol because I think it's healthy, I consume it because it tastes sometimes good and because it feels good.

So the real question is: is some amount of alcohol neutral or not health-wise?

jjice• 5 years ago

It's a good question. Without any research, I'm going to continue to have a few drinks every week since it's been done for centuries just fine.

nitwit005• 5 years ago

I doubt advice about moderate drinking influences behavior, outside perhaps where pregnancy is concerned.

Pretty much everyone at least occasionally eats food they know isn't good for them.

azth6• 5 years ago

They ask you about wine (khamr) and gambling. Say, "In them is great sin and [yet, some] benefit for people. But their sin is greater than their benefit."

https://quran.com/2/219

O you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants (khamr), gambling, [sacrificing on] stone altars [to other than God], and divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid it that you may be successful.

https://quran.com/5/90

redisman4• 5 years ago

I guess I need to try that sacrificing at a stone altar thing next

selimthegrim4• 5 years ago

This might lead one to the reading that intoxication rather than alcohol is prohibited.

azth6• 5 years ago

That's correct, all intoxicants are prohibited in Islam. The word (khamr) refers to any substance that masks a person's thinking ability (the word "khimaar" is a face veil, and both khimaar and khamr derive from the same root). And it's not a reading as much as an explicit text:

"Every intoxicant is Khamr and every intoxicant is unlawful."

https://sunnah.com/nasai:5699

tyronehed• 5 years ago

This should have been obvious to anyone who has ever gotten drunk.

Alcohol is a poison. To think otherwise is wishful thinking.

quantumloophole• 5 years ago

great, now they will want to ban alcohol

xyzzy21• 5 years ago

There's generally "No Safe Level of Living in the World" either.

tedmiston• 5 years ago

For anyone curious to collect, explore, and becoming mindful of their own personal data more, there's a nice free alcohol tracker app called Less (iOS only) [1][2] from the same company that created the fasting app Zero.

[1] https://lessdrinks.com/

[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/less-alcohol-tracker/id1484828...

Damogran6• 5 years ago

Can we have the heart people and the liver people duke it out, because the liver people seem to think a little low grade abuse was good for the liver.

neonate• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/0vqdW

Elizer0x03093• 5 years ago

Islam is always right about everything Hamdou'Allah

Bud• 5 years ago

Side note: in a related story, the Don't Go Stark Raving Mad During A Pandemic Foundation issued a statement saying that large amounts of alcohol are definitely sometimes good for not completely losing your shit during accursed times such as these.

jasonhansel2• 5 years ago

In this thread: a lot of people trying to justify their preexisting choice to drink or remain sober.

tapas732• 5 years ago

Sane people find arguments for stuff they do. If they don't have reasoning (scientific or emotional) for their behaviour, they either change or they aren't sane.

pcrh4• 5 years ago

Also many pointing out that the notion that avoiding any consumption of alcohol is a ridiculous notion, as implied by the article, given that it's a common component of many foods.

quickthrower22• 5 years ago

Are you talking about trace amounts though. Or something that might add up to say a unit per week?

dmz73• 5 years ago

The article seems to cherry pick official statements to support the title. "Studies have shown that even small amounts of alcohol can increase a person's risk of cardiovascular disease, including coronary disease, stroke, heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, cardiomyopathy (heart muscle disease), atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat), and aneurysm. "To date, no reliable correlation has been found between moderate alcohol consumption and a lower risk of heart disease." "Studies that claim otherwise are based on purely observational research, which fails to account for other factors, such as pre-existing conditions and a history of alcoholism in those considered to be 'abstinent'.

So they claim their research shows increased risk, not stating by how much - there is difference between 0.5% and 15% and 50%, across a broad range of conditions. The only counterpoint mentioned is that there is no reliable correlation between moderate (no mention of what that is) consumption and lower risk of heart disease - what about all the other conditions? Finally there is a quote dismissing other research because it fails to account for other factor but there is hardly any mention on what factors have been accounted for in the current research.

The whole thing seems poorly written and seems to preach instead of document and explain.

Consumption of any substance in sufficient quantities will cause harm - you can drown by drinking too much water in too short of a period of time but no one is going to suggest that because of that there isn't any quantity of water is safe to consume.

IshKebab• 5 years ago

Yeah, maybe there's no evidence that a small amount of alcohol helps in any way, but "any level of alcohol consumption can lead to loss of healthy life" is pure alarmism. Along the same lines as "any level of fat consumption can make you fatter". Technically true but also irrelevant.

It is important not to exaggerate the risk of moderate drinking and unduly alarm responsible consumers

Ha, yeah maybe you should have thought about more before talking to the press.

univalent• 5 years ago

Meh, we are going to keep drinking anyway

atarian• 5 years ago

Glad to see them calling it out but let’s be honest.. we all knew it was BS.

jaimex2• 5 years ago

Isn't the oldest person in the world an old lady who is a daily vodka drinker?

area51org2• 5 years ago

I can't wait until they announce that DHMO (dihydrogen monoxide) is unsafe because it can so easily lead to death in children and adults. Perhaps no amount of DHMO is safe.

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

zarzavat• 5 years ago

My favourite quote on the matter:

But claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention. There is no safe level of driving, but government do not recommend that people avoid driving.

Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.

https://medium.com/wintoncentre/the-risks-of-alcohol-again-2...

I understand why they want to dispel the persistent myth that alcohol can be good for you, but do they have to do it by employing their own vacuous statements? Tell people what the extra risk of drinking a daily glass of wine is, then they can make their own mind up on whether to take that risk or not.

Such empty discourse absent of falsifiable statements is more damaging to our society than a glass of wine ever could be.

nanis• 5 years ago

Such empty discourse absent of falsifiable statements is more damaging to our society than a glass of wine ever could be.

Hear, hear.

    Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
    Before we too into the Dust Descend;
    Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
    Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer and—sans End!

The textbook I used when I was teaching "Economics of Regulation"[1] emphasizes the fact that trying to drive individual risks to zero (acting, in the process, as if there is never a cost to trying to reduce risk) is a fool's errand.

Viscusi's "Pricing Lives"[2] is a great work. "VSL (value of a statistical life) is the risk-reward trade-off that people make about their health when considering risky job choices." Once you understand that, you understand how one ought to reason about whether one policy is better than another. Once you understand that, you come to the realization that the actual policies implemented bear no resemblance to the policies that ought to have been implemented in light of a rational cost-benefit calculation.

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/economics-regulation-and-anti...

[2] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691208596/pr...

azth6• 5 years ago

But claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention. There is no safe level of driving, but government do not recommend that people avoid driving.

False equivalence. Drinking is not necessary for life (and it's harmful as we see here), but driving is required for many people's livelihood.

andbberger2• 5 years ago

It's not unreasonable to equate the two. The necessity of driving in western cities is very much a design choice that could reasonably be considered to be a public health crisis. It's not an inherent property of the world.

klabb32• 5 years ago

Yet, the government does not recommend against non-essential driving. So yes, you're technically right it's a false equivalence, but one can easily modify the scenario to make it a fair comparison.

machinelearning3• 5 years ago

This quote is too simplistic to be useful.

There are certain activities that are not harmful but risky (0 harm most of the time and high level of harm rarely) e.g. driving and others that are harmful but not risky e.g. drinking or being exposed to radiation in an X-ray machine.

It is important to draw this distinction in order to not weaken the point you are trying to make.

The main point here is not that drinking is harmful but rather that the individual should decide their own tolerance for harm. The dose and length of exposure matters here since the damage is likely to be cumulative.

With an X-ray machine or flying at high altitudes, we know that the small amount of intermittent radiation that one is exposed to doesn’t outweigh the benefits.

It is up to the individual to decide if they are in a position to make that tradeoff.

With drinking, the difference between thinking low amounts are beneficial and low amounts are harmful could make a huge cumulative difference over time. It seems like a lot of commenters here are missing that essential fact.

karaterobot• 5 years ago

We often say "trust the science" when we agree with the conclusions of a study, and "question authority" when we don't. The phrase "trust, but verify" is an appealing middle ground, but isn't it really a euphemism for "I don't believe you yet"?

stjohnswarts• 5 years ago

And in 10 years they'll find out they're wrong, but that's the way this stuff goes.

drewcon• 5 years ago

Honestly. So what. Human beings have lived with alcohol during all of civilization. If it’s bad for me…so be it. Not rationalizing or endorsing just saying maybe a little recklessness is bad for the individual and good for the species.

tacoluv• 5 years ago

People like you are why the rest of us drink

Ice_cream_suit• 5 years ago

"Alcohol consumption increases the risk of CVD(20). In the Global Action Plan for Prevention and Control of NCDs, the World Health Organization (WHO) calls for a 10% relative reduction in the per capita use of alcohol between 2013- 2030 (21). Based on recent evidence, it has been concluded that there is “no safe level of alcohol consumption”(5). Risks attributable to alcohol use increase for all the major categories of CVD(20). Thus, alcohol increases the risk for hypertensive heart disease, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation and flutter, and strokes. In moderate drinkers, the risk of stroke is 1.14 times greater (95% CI, 1.10-1.17); coronary disease (excluding myocardial infarction) is 1.06 (95% CI, 1.00 – 1.11); heart failure is 1.09 (95% CI, 1.03- 1.15); fatal hypertensive disease 1.24 (95% CI, 1.15-1.33) and fatal aortic aneurysm is 1.15 times greater (95% CI, 1.03-1.28)(20) than for non-drinkers. It has been argued that people with moderate consumption and no binge episodes may appear to have a slightly lower risk of ischaemic heart disease (IHD), but the protective effect of moderate alcohol consumption for IHD has been challenged as the evidence is based entirely upon non-randomized studies(22)"

An increase in high-density lipo-protein (HDL) cholesterol has been the most compelling potential source of biologic plausibility for how alcohol might help prevent CVD. However, the cardioprotective effect of HDL is under challenge: many studies find no effect from increased HDL levels on reducing the risk for myocardial infarction(23)(24)(25). Other proposed cardioprotective biological mechanisms have also been shown to be inconsistent with sound epidemiologic studies. These include coronary calcification and carotid intima-media thickness, where alcohol consumption is associated with worse vascular health(26)(27). Contrary to popular opinion, alcohol is not good for the heart. This directly contradicts the common message over the past three decades from some researchers, the alcohol industry, and the media that alcohol prolongs life, chiefly by reducing the risk of CVD. For example, the use of red wine has been promoted through various diets as a “heart-healthy” beverage for the longest time. The presence of resveratrol in wine has been known for its cardioprotective characteristics in light to moderate drinkers. However, there are multiple reasons that the belief that alcohol is good for cardiovascular health is no longer acceptable:

• Such evidence has been based on observational studies • No randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have confirmed health benefits of alcohol • The presence of unaccounted confounding factors further weakens the quality of evidence • Studies misclassify unhealthy ex-drinkers as abstainers • Most evidence is observed only in the Caucasian population • Studies that show positive effects are funded by the alcohol industry.* Research in the latest decade has led to major reversals in the perception of alcohol in relation to health in general and CVD in particular. These developments have prompted health authorities in a number of countries, e.g. the Netherlands(28), England(29) and Australia(30), to lower their recommended amount of alcohol for low-risk drinking. The alcohol industry has also perpetuated misleading information about the benefits of drinking alcohol. This interference by the alcohol industry closely reflects the universally vilified activities of tobacco companies. Alcohol industries deceptively promote their products under the labels of “healthy” and “safe”. Portrayal of alcohol in print and electronic media as necessary for a vibrant social life has diverted attention from the harms of alcohol use. Youth-targeted advertisement and encouraging alcohol as “heart-healthy” have created a conducive environment for young adults to relate alcohol with ‘having a good time’. Contrary to this belief, evidence from all around the world exists to link alcohol with a range of noncommunicable and infectious diseases."

https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF-Po...

vladcodes2• 5 years ago

Cheers

vladcodes2• 5 years ago

Cheers. Also, don’t eat the yellow snow.

jrm4• 5 years ago

No amount of World Heart Federation is necessary for human survival, so there's that...

GekkePrutser4• 5 years ago

So what. I have to die of something. Let me have my glass of wine or beer.

kmstout• 5 years ago

A poet once said, “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth’s rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe’s age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts—physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on—remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

--Richard Feynman

piyushpr134• 5 years ago

And yet they won't say anything about how they have been wrong about fat for so long. How about sugar ? Anything against that ?

fortran77• 5 years ago

As is no amount of obesity. But it’s easier to demonize alcohol.

bjoyx• 5 years ago

Unscientific propaganda.

The best scientific evidence we have suggests moderate consumption of alcohol protects the heart.

From the Harvard School of Public Health:

More than 100 prospective studies show an inverse association between light to moderate drinking and risk of heart attack, ischemic (clot-caused) stroke, peripheral vascular disease, sudden cardiac death, and death from all cardiovascular causes. [20] The effect is fairly consistent, corresponding to a 25-40% reduction in risk.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/...

maxbond• 5 years ago

Pardon, I'm perplexed here. When you say this is propaganda, what I take that to mean is that it's framed to serve a certain agenda at the expense of the truth, that is, that it isn't merely erroneous but that it is manipulative to serve a certain interest. Do you mean something different than that? If not, what agenda do you propose is served by this? Cui bono?

I don't know what the truth is here, and the article you cited doesn't have a date on it, but the sources it cites are pretty old - flipping through them, the most recent seems to be 2017. The source that's cited in that quote you posted is 20 years old. Nutrition is a notoriously difficult field to study. It's easier for me to believe that the consensus has shifted, and is perhaps not yet stable, than that there is an organization which stands to benefit from people believing alcohol is a modicum more harmful than it is.

mise_en_place2• 5 years ago

I don't think the article is stating anything controversial here. The position that any amount of alcohol is harmful is not contradictory with the position that alcohol is beneficial in reducing cardiovascular risk. In other words, the framing effect is leading to a cognitive bias. One position is framed in terms of negative outcomes, while the other is framed in terms of positive outcomes. Hence the visceral reaction to the article.

machinelearning3• 5 years ago

Actually the headline implies that there is no cardiovascular benefit.

“Studies have shown that even small amounts of alcohol can increase a person's risk of cardiovascular disease”

“To date, no reliable correlation has been found between moderate alcohol consumption and a lower risk of heart disease”

mise_en_place2• 5 years ago

Yes, relative to abstaining. If there's a 40% risk reduction in cardiovascular mortality in moderate drinkers, then there will be a 60% increase in risk for the moderate drinking, relative to someone who abstains.

acosmism• 5 years ago

this might be just me - i find people that alebriate every once in a while more normal than those who claim otherwise

_robbywashere• 5 years ago

Loneliness is also detrimental to the heart.

estaseuropano2• 5 years ago

Somewhat related: what have you found to be a good replacement for alcohol as a habit/relaxation device?

I enjoy my evening wine, but I slowly realised I mainly crave flavour (sorry hydrohomies). I don't want to do the sugary drink/juice route so am attempting to replace wine with roiboos tea or similar infusions, but I haven't found the right spot yet. Maybe it just takes more habituation or there is some element that simply doesn't bring me the same enjoyment/pleasure as unwinding with a glass of merlot or primitivo.

dusted• 5 years ago

Studying the effects of alcohol and pornography consumption is difficult because they're so widespread within some cultures, that you can't have a representative control group.

greggman3• 5 years ago

I forgot which podcast but someone mentioned it was their opinion that alcohol is a social lubricant and that without it we'd be waring and fight more. IIRC the podcast was talking about research in Asia, China in particular, where people gather after work at the drinking place (bar, tavern, whatever) and via alcohol they open up, negotiate, apologize, learn details and reasons that weren't spoken at work.

The point being, if true, maybe the without alcohol the world will go to shit (unless we find substitutes).

PraetorianGourd• 5 years ago

God I can’t fucking wait until we’ve moved on from this world where maximizing health outcomes overrides all other considerations.

Living in a bubble where I eat a perfectly balanced diet of Soylent and refuse to interact with anyone will probably add to a miserable existence where I’d rather fucking kill myself.

No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

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