> the biggest drinkers were in European countries. The average Romanian man drank the equivalent of 8.2 bottles of beer a day in 2016, the most in the world.
Tuberculosis is more common in Eastern Europe. Poor, homeless or incarcerated people often get it. Those segments are more likely to abuse alcohol. Not sure on the direct causation part. It weakens the immune system perhaps.
Let's try Prohibition again, it might not fund organized crime, bolster the paramilitary-police-industrial-political complex, destroy nations, elect Kennedy's or get thousands murdered this time around. :unrealistic utopian fingers crosssed:
I thought the article was about how even small amounts of alcohol were bad for the health but there's just a line about it and no link to the study. The rest is about heavy drinkers, which seems like nothing new.
This is generally true for most of these studies. They rarely look at low alcohol consumption, and then extrapolate to it being true for all levels. They also tend to quite heavily correct for morbidity among those who drink no alcohol. It’s a good idea, but often not made clear to the end reader.
My general perception is that maybe small amounts of alcohol aren’t necessarily good for you (which was previously thought) and may just be neutral. Moderate drinking certainly doesn’t seem as significant for morbidity/mortality as smoking or obesity from the current evidence.
Plus at the end of the day, everything carries risk. It is about deciding what is worth a slight risk. I don’t get the focus on demonising small amounts of alcohol. Even if it increases risk slightly, it provides joy to many people and encourages socialisation- important to improving both quality of life and health. There are much bigger fish to fry than moderate alcohol consumption.
We know that women over 50 may get some small benefit from drinking low amounts of alcohol regularly - about 2 small glasses of wine a week.
We know those advantages don't happen for anyone else.
The evidence is unclear to the general public because a multi-million dollar industry (especially in the UK) keeps pushing inaccurate information to print media who suck at science and health reporting.
> There are much bigger fish to fry than moderate alcohol consumption.
When we ask people how much they drink they all say "not much", and then when we check what they actually drink it's often far more.
Here's a guy who thought he was drinking moderately when he was drinking far more than the recommended maximum.
I call the category of low alcohol consumption into question as being substantial enough of a number to create an argument against the ill-effects of worldwide alcohol consumption. Is it the yearly total, factoring in several days of binge drinking? I am 54, and have lived and traveled the world, and I have rarely met people who only have one drink every few days or so, or if they did, are now mid-to-high alcohol consumers. Like a cancer it grows. I have given up drinking several times in my life, and I currently do not drink. Alcohol culture and marketing seems the same everywhere except when I spent a year living in Indonesia, or traveling to less developed areas in the world. No signs and billboards, no print or TV ads, or conversations with people mentioning how hungover they were, or looking forward to drinking over the weekend, or drinking and driving and making it home somehow, all created a stark and telling context when returning to the US after 8 years overseas. At my current workplace, alcohol is talked about by my young colleagues in a large percentage of their conversation and with passion. The romance and addiction associated with alcohol probably fogs the eyes of those trying to be objective when studying it.
The title directly contradicts an article that appeared recently in the Guardian [1] (although as you say the title hardly seems appropriate given the content of the article)
A slightly better summary can be found at [2] which explains the differences better (i.e. moderate drinking lowers risk of dementia and heard disease, but increases the chance of e.g. accidents)
Sorry but I’m pretty sure drinking 1 glass of beer every day is not going to cause a major increase in road injuries or self harm. That just doesn’t make sense.
This [0] was previously on HN, and it changed my attitude towards alcohol consumption into one much closer to abstinence.
In the past I've used Cysteine and Thiamine supplements for effective hangover prevention [1]. But after learning the same acetaldehyde largely responsible for the hangover effects is carcinogenic. Having had experienced firsthand the effectiveness of Cysteine targeting the acetaldehyde inmyhead, it became very clear consuming this poison, ethanol, should be avoided in general.
When the scientific conclusions are rapidly changing like this, I hope our leaders will have the wisdom to change recommendations and policy slowly while this plays out.
Alcohol also generates billions in tax revenue for government.
Vices are excused when wealthy educated people partake in them and government profits.
It isn't just harm to one's own health...alcohol consumption and addiction imposes a massive cost on society...much worse than firearms...but you rarely hear politicians discuss "sane alcohol control"
While it's true that there is undisputed epidemiological evidence as to positive effects of moderate alcohol use on health for some people, at the molecular level there's no getting away from the toxicity of ethanol and its breakdown product - the unpleasantly reactive acetaldehyde. Ethanol itself denatures proteins. Certainly a conundrum. Maybe part of the answer is in the side effects of the enhanced detoxification mechanisms in the liver in response to alcohol intake. I suspect there are some interesting findings that await discovery.
> While it's true that there is undisputed epidemiological evidence as to positive effects of moderate alcohol use on health for some people
Where "some people" only includes women over 50, and "moderate drinking" means "three or four drinks per week" - far less than most people think of as moderate drinking, especially in the UK where 2 large glasses of wine a day is seen as normal.
For anyone that’s looking to drink less or moderate their consumption I’d recommend a book by Annie grace called this naked mind. I’m about two weeks past finishing the book and although I haven’t stopped drinking, I’ve had the first real mental shift in how I view alcohol consumption. She was a high functioning, heavy drinker and she dives into the unconscious mind and societal norms/pressures around consuming alcohol. I have a hard time picturing a life without ever drinking again (which is sad in and of itself) but I’m on the mental path of reducing considerably without counting drinks or time till I can have my next one.
If you have a problem get help. That said, AA was started by a group that had no idea about physiology of addiction but definitely understood ‘God’... It gets tons of support and money from private and government and its completely unchecked and its validity remains untested next to other methods. AA has a 13% 7 year success rate, which is pretty dismal. There are better ways to treat addiction. To be honest I don’t know of them because AA sucked all the air out of the room.
I also personally don’t like it that, anytime someone demonstrates they have an a very functional understanding of drinking and their intake and can control its many facets through a multitude of different means indicating that they are in no way under some spell of blind addiction, people are still so quick and judgemental to assume they have a problem, a disease, an addition that they aren’t handling and should get help from a group of people who really don’t know what they are doing with regard to the psychology of addiction.
Something no one will ever tell you is, most people go through a period of heavy drinking at some point in their lives and will miraculously let up on consumption all on their own without the help of a 12 step group.
Those are all fair points. I'm sorry if I came across as condescending.
AA worked for me, but only at the point that I wanted to change. Most of the people I see coming in day after day-- they're court ordered--they don't want to be there, they don't think they have a problem, so I would have no trouble believing that 13%.
Remember that, no matter how commonly used it is, alcohol is still a neurotoxic solvent whose purpose is to diminish or impair cognitive function to various ends.
I will not read an article where the first thing happening is the embeded video starting to play. I do not event whant to load that Video on my mobile phone if i do not click on it. If i open a Video site on YouTube, i know that i want to See a Video, but even there the Video doesnt load without my interaction. If i open an article, i definitly dont want to watch a Video.
Considering the power and money at stake in the alcohol industry, the presence of even one study proving that any alcohol level is bad for you, would be worrying. The fact that it's not just one study, but many, is more than enough.
31 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 87.7 ms ] threadTuberculosis? That's interesting.
Tuberculosis is more common in Eastern Europe. Poor, homeless or incarcerated people often get it. Those segments are more likely to abuse alcohol. Not sure on the direct causation part. It weakens the immune system perhaps.
My general perception is that maybe small amounts of alcohol aren’t necessarily good for you (which was previously thought) and may just be neutral. Moderate drinking certainly doesn’t seem as significant for morbidity/mortality as smoking or obesity from the current evidence.
Plus at the end of the day, everything carries risk. It is about deciding what is worth a slight risk. I don’t get the focus on demonising small amounts of alcohol. Even if it increases risk slightly, it provides joy to many people and encourages socialisation- important to improving both quality of life and health. There are much bigger fish to fry than moderate alcohol consumption.
We know those advantages don't happen for anyone else.
The evidence is unclear to the general public because a multi-million dollar industry (especially in the UK) keeps pushing inaccurate information to print media who suck at science and health reporting.
> There are much bigger fish to fry than moderate alcohol consumption.
When we ask people how much they drink they all say "not much", and then when we check what they actually drink it's often far more.
Here's a guy who thought he was drinking moderately when he was drinking far more than the recommended maximum.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45262469
A slightly better summary can be found at [2] which explains the differences better (i.e. moderate drinking lowers risk of dementia and heard disease, but increases the chance of e.g. accidents)
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/03/alcoho...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45283401
Your small glass of beer most days isn't doing much to you, but across the population it means you have thousands of extra accidents.
Even the slight effects start at 2 glasses.
This kind of statement is as useful as the ‘all products are known to the state of California to cause cancer’ stickers.
In the past I've used Cysteine and Thiamine supplements for effective hangover prevention [1]. But after learning the same acetaldehyde largely responsible for the hangover effects is carcinogenic. Having had experienced firsthand the effectiveness of Cysteine targeting the acetaldehyde in my head, it became very clear consuming this poison, ethanol, should be avoided in general.
[0] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/did-drinking-gi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysteine#Reducing_toxic_effect...
The only reason people are unsure about this is the multi-million dollar industry spending huge amounts on bad science and press releases.
https://www.statista.com/topics/1709/alcoholic-beverages/
Vices are excused when wealthy educated people partake in them and government profits.
It isn't just harm to one's own health...alcohol consumption and addiction imposes a massive cost on society...much worse than firearms...but you rarely hear politicians discuss "sane alcohol control"
Where "some people" only includes women over 50, and "moderate drinking" means "three or four drinks per week" - far less than most people think of as moderate drinking, especially in the UK where 2 large glasses of wine a day is seen as normal.
I also personally don’t like it that, anytime someone demonstrates they have an a very functional understanding of drinking and their intake and can control its many facets through a multitude of different means indicating that they are in no way under some spell of blind addiction, people are still so quick and judgemental to assume they have a problem, a disease, an addition that they aren’t handling and should get help from a group of people who really don’t know what they are doing with regard to the psychology of addiction.
Something no one will ever tell you is, most people go through a period of heavy drinking at some point in their lives and will miraculously let up on consumption all on their own without the help of a 12 step group.
AA worked for me, but only at the point that I wanted to change. Most of the people I see coming in day after day-- they're court ordered--they don't want to be there, they don't think they have a problem, so I would have no trouble believing that 13%.
I really think others would probably benefit as well.