I think it's clear that alcohol consumption is a burden on society, but I think the headline exaggerates matters a bit. The relative risk is only 0.5% greater at one standard drink per day, relative to no alcohol consumption (see figure 5 in the paper.)
Articles like this tend to leave it at “your risk of death increases” without providing any sense as to what the magnitude of the increase is - without that its impossible to just the benefit-risk tradeoff.
Population studies seem to be pretty useless unless there is a massive effect ie smoking. .05 increased relative risk was the same for the red meat colon cancer paper.
comparing no drinks with one drink a day the risk of developing one of the 23 alcohol-related health problems was 0.5% higher — meaning 914 in 100,000 15–95 year olds would develop a condition in one year if they did not drink, but 918 people in 100,000 who drank one alcoholic drink a day would develop an alcohol-related health problem in a year.
One drink -- is that one glass of wine? Or is that one alcohol unit?
One glass of wine a day might seem fine to some, and outrageous to others.
With the amount of literature being written about how many units a week is still considered "ok", I wouldn't mind getting a clearer understand of how much is too much.
It's at one 'alcohol unit', defined as 10g of pure ethanol. For comparison a standard 355ml can of 4.2% ABV beer (e.g. Bud Light) contains just under 12g of pure ethanol. A 5% ABV can would be closer to 15g. So the unit of measure they're using is bit smaller than what most people think of as 'one drink'.
A brilliant excerpt from the end of the bbc article[0]:
Yet Prof David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, sounded a note of caution about the findings.
"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."
It's a spiritual generalization of the statement "There is no safe level of driving, but the government does not recommend that people avoid driving." and thus it seems relevant to the context (and does make sense), not as a rational argument, but as a figure of speech to emphasize author's opinion about the subject.
I disagree. It's equivalent to suggesting in a discussion about optimal poker strategies that you shouldn't play poker. In the context of the conversation it's already given that you've decided to play and you want to figure out how to win. Whether discussing driving or drinking it's assumed that you want to live and do so in the way that most optimally achieves your goals. Not playing the game isn't part of the discussion.
No. Because it doesn't change the fact you're hurtling along faster than nature could ever have prepared you for. Even worse, you're putting your faith in getting to where you want safely into some bored programmer's hands.
Fatuous remark by that professor. Drinking doesn't get you to work etc. Its entirely dispensable.
I read (here) that 10% of liquor stores' customers are half the volume. So the lesson probably applies mostly to those 10% who think "one drink a day" is a reasonable thing. The other 90% are risking very little, especially if they do their drinking at home.
The idea is that people balance fun vs. risk. Whereas before, we used to think there was benefit in drinking in moderation, we now know that any amount of drinking is detrimental. That changes the optimal portfolio of fun activities for drinkers.
As he said "given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking" he isn't talking about practical needs such as getting to work. Some people drive for pleasure rather than (or, far more commonly, as well as) to serve practical needs.
The same could be said for any leisure activity: I run, study & practise medieval swordsmanship and other history martial arts (and more modern sports wrestling). Other people play football (UK/Europe/...) or hand-egg (US) or other competitive sports, there is horse riding in various forms (all potentially quite dangerous without adequate experience working with the horses), and dancing (the effects of which may be additive with the risks of alcohol!), and many other activities, all of which have no safe amount if you want to 100% remove risk (unless by some complex statistical analysis you prove that the increase in risk for injury/death due to the activity at the participants current age/health is less than the decrease due to the potential health benefits of the activity).
The argument is that people should do less of these things to preserve their health, where people used to believe that drinking some alcohol was beneficial.
Same with hand egg. People used to believe that the fitness and team-building aspects made playing the game beneficial. Now that we know about the certainty of brain injuries, the recommendation is to reduce playing time and prefer other team fitness activities.
This gave me an interesting idea for a thought experiment (do NOT read this as a recommendation): imagine the (US) government, instead of discouraging drinking, required a mandatory n (4?) drinks/week to healthy adults, and sent out free drink vouchers.
What effects would this policy have on social cohesion (or happiness) among adults? What would the downsides be?
EDIT: yes, obvious downsides are obvious. What I find interesting is the idea of the government providing a small mandate that then creates emergent social change, by virtue of everyone having to do it.
For example, the OP is about "no safe level of alcohol consumption" and recommends a policy change to decrease the recommendation. But what ends does this achieve? What sorts of government policies might encourage people to solve the problems that are making them unhappy? That's the kind of thing I'm trying to figure out.
Have you ever actually done that? Its pretty grim. They get more silly and stupid and you don't, and you're looking at the clock and wishing you were someplace else.
Not so much anymore because I've got kids now, but previously yes, as a designated driver. Grim? I suppose it's all perspective. Some people go to a therapist, some people go to the pub together.
When I'm on a strict diet I still enjoy the company of my friends when they're drunk and I'm sober. The only frustrating part is that soda water and diet soda kinda suck.
Come to think of it, when I was younger and worked some Saturday mornings I used to be sober at parties often.
No I never felt that, I LOVE talking to tipsy people, it's usually very fun. It's hard dealing with people drunk-to-the-point-of-black-out because they're unpredictable, rude and too silly to follow a nice conversation. Tipsy people are nowhere near intoxicated enough not to be able to follow a nice conversation, but are intoxicated enough that it adds a bit of spice to the conversation, imho.
Followers of the religions which prohibit alcohol drinking would be pissed and may cause social unrest? and USA would not be a secular country anymore?
Drinking and (often, necessary) driving are not comparable, so the commenter could have chosen a better comparison.
Edit: Based on comments in this thread, there are a lot of different perspectives on how comparable these two activities are. I still think there are many significantly "better" examples that could have been given.
Why do you think it isn’t? People do necessary things because they have to. People do desirable things because they want to. The risk of death can make a difference on whether you choose to do the desirable things, but you don’t have a choice about the necessary things.
Shooting heroin is also an activity that many would like to do. Wouldn't you agree that shooting heroin is more like drinking alcohol than like driving?
Driving to the doctor or hospital, when you need treatment, might on balance be "safe". (You're better off doing so, than not, epidemiologically.)
Perhaps all alcohol consumption is a burden on the body. But having a social life is a positive -- we keep seeing more reporting on the benefits of the latter.
So, where's the balance?
At the same time, I've seen a lot of pretty obviously unbalanced engagement with alcohol. And, it's remained largely segregated from many other drugs -- yes, calling it a drug -- in public perception and policy.
I haven't read the study, but going by the reporting, they are conflating different statistics, those of the direct health impact of alcohol, and those of the 'behavioral' impact (which may then have health effects).
No doubt there is an increased risk of death, due to alcohol, through drunk-driving (either as perp or victim), street violence and so on.
But many of those problems stem from a small percentage of people, or the small percentage of occasions, when it is consumed in excess.
I think what people want to know are the direct health risks of alcohol, in various amounts.
It is an interesting statistic for the whole of society, but most individuals want to know the direct health impact of alcohol separate from the all-cause impact.
The headline is misleading - it should say 'there is no safe level of alcohol for the good of society' or something similar.
And it is even wrong - if it was possible to limit how much anyone could consume in a day, many of the 'behavioral' risks would go away, and we'd be left with the health risks only.
Well, sure, but this is true even of the more direct health risks.
Alcohol increases risks of many different types of cancer. We want to reduce the rates of cancer across a population, so we ask people to drink less.
But what's my particular risk of cancer from alcohol? We have no way of saying. And even if alcohol doubles my risk, if the risk was small to begin with does it matter that it's doubled?
The study does break it down (pages 7-8 of the PDF) into various categories including a lot of individual diseases, transport injuries, self-harm, violence, alcohol-use disorders, and even on the other side, the health benefits. The direct health risks, i.e. diseases, assuming you can insulate yourself from the risk of self-harm, unintentional injuries, and other people, can be read off the graph... Barely. However, this is by age and not by amount of drinking.
One of the good points about alcohol (there aren't many):
It is a strong anxiolytic and is readily available 'over the counter' which means people can self-medicate themselves in times of crisis.
How many lives has that saved?
Most medical studies tell you significantly more about the prejudices of the authors and/or who paid for the study. This one seems no different in that regard.
I have an interest in the matter being an alcoholic myself.
A more interesting study would be on the degree of contempt we're held in by the medical profession at large.
What's the risk of anxiety if not medicated in a time of crisis? Tetsubo cardiomyopathy? A lost night of sleep? Personally I haven't drank in years and have managed my anxiety just fine through other means.
It's also a depressant and can make you feel worse. Some of the worst anxiety I've had is after a night of drinking. There's nothing like waking up in a pool of your own vomit after drinking alone and having every regrettable action before you blacked out come back to you from the night before. Thankfully I sleep on my side, but how many lives has that taken?
> people can self-medicate themselves in times of crisis.
I cringe reading that as a child of parents who spent their lives self-medicating through drugs and alcohol rather than seeking outside help...
> How many lives has that saved?
I don’t know how many it’s saved, but I can tell you that it’s severely damaged and nearly ruined the lives of at least a handful of innocent bystanders.
There's a big difference between having a beer after a hard day at work and actual alcohol dependency. One is harmless (and possible harm-reducing), the other destroys lives and relationships.
We need to be able to differentiate between the two without conflating them.
If we shouldn’t conflate having a single drink with alcohol-dependency then we also shouldn’t conflate the occasional drinker with those who are struggling with alcohol-dependency.
When I started smoking I used to smoke other people's cigarettes. Then I started buying my own out of embarrassment. I wasn't a tobacco addict in my own mind at that stage, I just like smoking. It was only when I wanted to quit I found it really hard to stay off for long periods. Eventually I managed it. The level I smoked at was about 10-15 a day. I know a man who smokes 60 a day. He is probably more addicted than I was but it's a matter of degree rather than me being able to look down on him as an addict as compared to my moderate level of smoking.
Someone can be doing harm to themself well before they reach dependent-drinking levels.
> Harmful drinking is defined as a pattern of alcohol consumption causing health problems directly related to alcohol. This could include psychological problems such as depression, alcohol-related accidents or physical illness such as acute pancreatitis. In the longer term, harmful drinkers may go on to develop high blood pressure, cirrhosis, heart disease and some types of cancer, such as mouth, liver, bowel or breast cancer.
Alcohol-dependency is marked by
> craving, tolerance, a preoccupation with alcohol and continued drinking in spite of harmful consequences (for example, liver disease or depression caused by drinking).
Alcohol dependence is also associated with increased criminal activity and domestic violence, and an increased rate of significant mental and physical disorders. Although alcohol dependence is defined in ICD-10 and DSM-IV in categorical terms for diagnostic and statistical purposes as being either present or absent, in reality dependence exists on a continuum of severity. However, it is helpful from a clinical perspective to subdivide dependence into categories of mild, moderate and severe. People with mild dependence (those scoring 15 or less on the Severity of Alcohol Dependence Questionnaire; SADQ) usually do not need assisted alcohol withdrawal. People with moderate dependence (with a SADQ score of between 15 and 30) usually need assisted alcohol withdrawal, which can typically be managed in a community setting unless there are other risks. People who are severely alcohol dependent (with a SADQ score of more than 30) will need assisted alcohol withdrawal, typically in an inpatient or residential setting. In this guideline these definitions of severity are used to guide selection of appropriate interventions.
> There's a big difference between having a beer after a hard day at work and actual alcohol dependency.
I’m not saying they’re the same thing and that having a beer ruins lives. I certainly have a glass of wine from time to time and don’t feel it’s having an impact on anyone around me. But, at least to me, “self-medicating” implies far more consumption than just one drink.
A beer a day is definitely not harm-reducing. One beer a day could be one 330 ml bottle of beer at 5%. That's 11 uk units a week, which is at the upper end of the maximum recommended level.
>I cringe reading that as a child of parents who spent their lives self-medicating through drugs and alcohol rather than seeking outside help...
I declared myself as an alcoholic in an effort to get outside help. It was a big mistake. I went from being the equivalent of a Jew in a ghetto to a Jew in a ghetto who had ever so helpfully just pinned a gold star on their chest in order to identify themselves more clearly to their persecutors.
One of the problems your parents had, is that in you they had a child who clearly chose to 'admonish' and just feel self-pity.
I don't blame you. My sister hated our alcoholic father and she still hates alcoholics. She's a Nurse Practitioner BTW.
If you cared about your parents, you would have looked into the why's and wherefore's of drug addiction and if you cared about anybody else you would have moved heaven and earth to make sure nobody else should have to go through what you did as a child.
To just say: Drugs are bad, mmmkay?
That's a stuck record and about as bad as it gets and just ensures drug abuse persists and the broken lives with it.
Which is basically what you and this study are promulgating.
If you recognise you are an alcoholic you ultimately have 3 choices:
1) Carry on as you are with the inevitable consequences of a slow unpleasant & painful death but also significant damage to those who love you: family & friends.
2) Own up to your addiction. See comments above. BTW, the medical profession will like you no more than the rest of society ie. Not at all. If you recover, it's going to be largely due to your own efforts & if you're lucky enough, supportive loved one(s).
3) Suicide. ASAP.
I think that's known as a classic Hobson's choice.
Exercise is only useful for people who are self conscious about their bodies. Exercising won't solve stage fright or anxiety due to stammering or have scar on your face. It won't solve anxiety in a person who is generally risk averse and requires a leap of faith to do something.
> Exercise is only useful for people who are self conscious about their bodies.
This is conjecture.
I have anxiety surrounding public speaking. Exercise helped with baseline anxiety, now I rarely feel like anxiety is a roadblock when I anticipate speaking.
> Exercise is only useful for people who are self conscious about their bodies.
Not true according to some studies. Exercise has been shown to have physiological benefits beyond addressing issues about how things look.
I'm no less self conscious about my body in terms of looks now I'm not fat compared to when I was nearly (perhaps actually) obese - I didn't care then and I don't care now, and where I have problems with people I've never thought it was my looks that put them off.
While I don't suffer from social anxiety specifically (I have it, but in "normal" amounts except where cause by the issue I'm about to mention) but I find the symptoms of bi-polar disorder less apparent (or more apparent less often) since improving my physical health and sometimes when they do rear their ugly heads "going for a run" or similar can help.
> Exercising won't solve ... anxiety due to stammering or have scar on your face.
I don't think the last poster was referring to anxiety resulting from such causes (though they were not clear on the matter).
> Exercising won't solve stage fright
If you specifically mean stage fright due to normally stressful situations (work presentations, actually being on a stage, ...) then no, though generally feeling better about yourself can help more generalised social anxiety.
I think you underestimate the link between physical and mental health. A fit body gives you a different baseline confidence. People react more positive to you. All social things considered, deep down we're all apes, so risk averse behavior might have something to do with a subliminal knowledge that you won't be able to defend yourself physically.
Also exercise promotes neurogenesis which is basically the foundation to change your mind and overcome anxiety, depression, addiction...
>I think you underestimate the link between physical and mental health.
He's not alone. Most medics do too.
The only way I managed to get off alcohol was by vigorous exercise: cycling many miles and hours in the Yorkshire Dales. That was in '98.
Before that, I found that any stress or anxiety would quickly result in me going back on the bottle.
My uncle was a general practitioner for many decades and he reflected later that at least 50% of his patients presenting with primarily a physical complaint, he'd find the actual pathology, if you did enough digging, was actually primarily psychological in nature.
Part of the problem with drinking alcohol is that the more you start to drink, you can start to realise you are getting into a spiral of decline.
You start to wake up in the mornings needing a drink in order to not feel ghastly and actually function at all. This starts to become a regular occurrence. You feel deeply ashamed that you can no longer control your drinking: it's controlling you. Because you feel ashamed, you then drink more so you no longer feel ashamed.
Welcome to the death spiral of alcohol addiction.
The only way of getting off that spiral is by admitting that you are an alcoholic. Not just to yourself but to your friends and family who may not even be aware that you are struggling.
You need to make it known to them because of the simple fact that you go to some family get together or other social occasion and it usually means alcohol is present (in the UK at least) and it's awkward when you're expected to be drinking and joining in with the festivities. If the folks around you know that you have an alcohol problem, then they wont try and encourage you to drink. If they don't know, then they can think you're some sort of killjoy etc.
Also, I declare myself an alcoholic on a forum like this as a form of public service. Anybody who suffers with an alcohol addiction is pretty much an expert on the matter. Even more so those few of us who are able to talk about it and possibly help others. You also find that you end up helping yourself by talking to others with similar experiences as it can occasionally cast a light on your own problems. It's essentially group therapy in action.
Most alcoholics can't do that, because they're pissed and many simply for the fact that they are lying in an early grave.
Thank you for your reply Frank. I am lucky to never have had that degree of dependency on alcohol though there have been times in the past where I've felt myself getting a bit too fond of it. It's always been easy enough for me to cut back though. The only proper dependency I have experience of is to tobacco. It took me a lot of attempts over several years to finally kick that habit. What helped me finally was taking up running. Feeling my lungs improve and my increasing fitness (and probably self-esteem) was a huge incentive to stay off. I think alcohol is probably a far harder proposition though. Also it being put in front of your face everywhere can't help. I wish you well and I hope you find a way.
> The three leading causes of attributable deaths in this age group were tuberculosis (1·4% [95% UI 1·0–1·7] of total deaths), road injuries (1·2% [0·7–1·9]), and self-harm (1·1% [0·6–1·5]).
TBC is still an infectious disease and road injuries are preventable by simply not driving after having had a drink and self-harm is rather unlikely after a bottle of beer.
> and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero.
That is a triviality. Alcohol has no health benefits.
---
Seems to me that it is okay to have a drink a day.
It's not a triviality. The background is that there have been quite a few studied published which claimed that drinking moderately had health benefits over not drinking at all (you see those headlines every now and then, "a glass of wine/week reduces risk of heart attack", or whatever).
The statistics behind those studies are a bit dodgy, because they investigate just one disease (heart attacks, say) instead of total health effect, and because they are confounded by people who are tee-totalers because they were alcoholics (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/did-drinking-gi...). But many people say that they have a big negative impact on public health, because they allow people to rationalize their drinking---instead of thinking it's unhealthy they can go "oh, but it's good for my heart".
As far as I know those studies have been falsified by at least one large meta-study (f.x. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26997174) which revealed that those studies (showing benefits of moderate alcohol consumption) are based on a sampling bias. Those studies compare a group N of people who never drink with a group O of people who occasionally drink. Group N usually shows slightly more health issues than group O - hence the conclusion. But the problem is simply that there are reasons why people decide to abstain completely from alcohol. And those reasons are often health issues or problems with alcohol in the past.
From that angle it is a triviality. Alcohol is mildly toxic to almost all organs - of course maximizing health will be achieved by avoiding it entirely.
"road injuries are preventable by simply not driving after having had a drink" Alcohol impairment is a factor in 31% of auto crashes. That’s a pretty big number, but most crashes are caused by aggressive or inattentive drivers.
I thought your line initially read "road injuries are preventable by simply not driving" full stop, I was on board with that.
> Seems to me that it is okay to have a drink a day
What's one drink?
One 125 ml glass of wine at 8% ABV would be 1 UK unit.
One 175 ml glass of wine at 12% ABV would be 2 UK units, nearly double the alcohol. One of those a day and you're drinking at the UK safe limit levels of 14 units a week.
"Despite the health benefits of moderate drinking, Holahan emphasizes the need for common sense. One or two drinks a day may be beneficial for some, but drinking a lot more can be dangerous, he said." - https://news.utexas.edu/2010/08/27/psychology_drinking
So there is still people believing that alcohol may be healthy. It is good to understand that it is not. And that to decide to drink will have consequences.
I have seen an increase of availability of alcohol-free drinks for the past decade that allow you to hang out with your friends, keeping that very needed human contact, but allowing you to not suffer the adverse effects of alcohol and to drive safe home.
> So there is still people believing that alcohol may be healthy. It is good to understand that it is not. And that to decide to drink will have consequences.
From the article:
What's more, any protective health effects of alcohol were offset by the drink's risk, including strong links between alcohol consumption and the risk of cancer and injuries such as those resulting from car accidents.
It depends, though. If your family has a high risk of cancer, but a low risk of diabetes or heart problems (or if you drink and drive), then alcohol will probably increase your risk.
However, if your family has a low risk of cancer, and a higher risk of heart disease, maybe you'd be better off drinking a little.
Having stopped drinking a bit over a year ago I'm curious if I'll actually recover from some of the damaging health effects or just not get any worse. I recall reading that for smoking your chance of dying returns to normal about 10 years after quitting but I'm not sure if there is similar research for drinking
This article is focused on average alcohol consumption. It only proves that if more alcohol is consumed there are more people who drink enough to have problems, not that everyone has problems.
The problem with this study is that all nutritional studies are unreliable, and the problem is getting worse.
> These implausible estimates of benefits or risks associated with diet probably reflect almost exclusively the magnitude of the cumulative biases in this type of research, with extensive residual confounding and selective reporting.3 Almost all nutritional variables are correlated with one another; thus, if one variable is causally related to health outcomes, many other variables will also yield significant associations in large enough data sets. With more research involving big data, almost all nutritional variables will be associated with almost all outcomes. Moreover, given the complicated associations of eating behaviors and patterns with many time-varying social and behavioral factors that also affect health, no currently available cohort includes sufficient information to address confounding in nutritional associations.
The 'findings' of this study are so convoluted it's obvious they have an agenda. Yes, alcohol can cause dangerous behaviour and social problems. This doesn't mean there isn't a safe level of consumption, safe meaning such that the alcoholic drink itself doesn't harm your body. Also funny that they mention alcohol can decrease the occurrence of certain heart diseases (one of the largest killers) but that doesn't mean it's safe because it increases the rate of certain cancers (which kill less people than heart disease) so the conclusion is that it's not safe.
Personally, I'll go with the fact that alcohol has been consumed for all of human history, the fact that many alcohol consuming cultures have longer life expectancy than some abstinent cultures (not proof in itself, but a 'good enough' observation for my own personal peace of mind), and the fact that I'd rather eat and drink well than gain what, an extra year or two of life? I'm healthy, not overweight, active, most of my ancestors in recent history lived to 90+ years old with sub-par diets and drinking habits, I'm not convinced ultra-healthy eating and abstinence is going to be worth the boredom.
Coincidentally, I'm hoping to release a (simple) iOS app next week that will help keep your drinking under a preset weekly limit. Will automatically add your drinks as calories to HealthKit and pull recent check-ins from Untappd:
As an avid craft beer fan, I've been trying to keep my drinking under 120g of pure alcohol a week (which is about 9 standard drinks) by way of a Calca spreadsheet over the past two years. It's been very effective, but a bit annoying to wrangle manually. Figured I'd finally turn it into an actual product.
100 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadA major pet peeve of mine.
comparing no drinks with one drink a day the risk of developing one of the 23 alcohol-related health problems was 0.5% higher — meaning 914 in 100,000 15–95 year olds would develop a condition in one year if they did not drink, but 918 people in 100,000 who drank one alcoholic drink a day would develop an alcohol-related health problem in a year.
There's a good analysis at https://medium.com/wintoncentre/the-risks-of-alcohol-again-2...
One glass of wine a day might seem fine to some, and outrageous to others.
With the amount of literature being written about how many units a week is still considered "ok", I wouldn't mind getting a clearer understand of how much is too much.
Yet Prof David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, sounded a note of caution about the findings.
"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
I think I have found my new motto :-)
Only mentioning it as it is being sold to the masses.
I read (here) that 10% of liquor stores' customers are half the volume. So the lesson probably applies mostly to those 10% who think "one drink a day" is a reasonable thing. The other 90% are risking very little, especially if they do their drinking at home.
Speak for yourself.
WTF? Work exists to support a fun life, not the other way around.
The same could be said for any leisure activity: I run, study & practise medieval swordsmanship and other history martial arts (and more modern sports wrestling). Other people play football (UK/Europe/...) or hand-egg (US) or other competitive sports, there is horse riding in various forms (all potentially quite dangerous without adequate experience working with the horses), and dancing (the effects of which may be additive with the risks of alcohol!), and many other activities, all of which have no safe amount if you want to 100% remove risk (unless by some complex statistical analysis you prove that the increase in risk for injury/death due to the activity at the participants current age/health is less than the decrease due to the potential health benefits of the activity).
Same with hand egg. People used to believe that the fitness and team-building aspects made playing the game beneficial. Now that we know about the certainty of brain injuries, the recommendation is to reduce playing time and prefer other team fitness activities.
Restaurants buy from liquor stores...
That 10% are drinking hugely more than one drink a day.
What effects would this policy have on social cohesion (or happiness) among adults? What would the downsides be?
EDIT: yes, obvious downsides are obvious. What I find interesting is the idea of the government providing a small mandate that then creates emergent social change, by virtue of everyone having to do it.
For example, the OP is about "no safe level of alcohol consumption" and recommends a policy change to decrease the recommendation. But what ends does this achieve? What sorts of government policies might encourage people to solve the problems that are making them unhappy? That's the kind of thing I'm trying to figure out.
When I'm on a strict diet I still enjoy the company of my friends when they're drunk and I'm sober. The only frustrating part is that soda water and diet soda kinda suck.
Come to think of it, when I was younger and worked some Saturday mornings I used to be sober at parties often.
Edit: typos
Edit: Based on comments in this thread, there are a lot of different perspectives on how comparable these two activities are. I still think there are many significantly "better" examples that could have been given.
Although that statement is true, until we find the Philosopher's Stone. If you do anything, you're going to die... eventually.
Perhaps all alcohol consumption is a burden on the body. But having a social life is a positive -- we keep seeing more reporting on the benefits of the latter.
So, where's the balance?
At the same time, I've seen a lot of pretty obviously unbalanced engagement with alcohol. And, it's remained largely segregated from many other drugs -- yes, calling it a drug -- in public perception and policy.
Maybe that will change, for the better.
No doubt there is an increased risk of death, due to alcohol, through drunk-driving (either as perp or victim), street violence and so on.
But many of those problems stem from a small percentage of people, or the small percentage of occasions, when it is consumed in excess.
I think what people want to know are the direct health risks of alcohol, in various amounts.
The headline is misleading - it should say 'there is no safe level of alcohol for the good of society' or something similar.
And it is even wrong - if it was possible to limit how much anyone could consume in a day, many of the 'behavioral' risks would go away, and we'd be left with the health risks only.
Alcohol increases risks of many different types of cancer. We want to reduce the rates of cancer across a population, so we ask people to drink less.
But what's my particular risk of cancer from alcohol? We have no way of saying. And even if alcohol doubles my risk, if the risk was small to begin with does it matter that it's doubled?
It is a strong anxiolytic and is readily available 'over the counter' which means people can self-medicate themselves in times of crisis.
How many lives has that saved?
Most medical studies tell you significantly more about the prejudices of the authors and/or who paid for the study. This one seems no different in that regard.
I have an interest in the matter being an alcoholic myself.
A more interesting study would be on the degree of contempt we're held in by the medical profession at large.
RIP. Ian Murdock.
It's also a depressant and can make you feel worse. Some of the worst anxiety I've had is after a night of drinking. There's nothing like waking up in a pool of your own vomit after drinking alone and having every regrettable action before you blacked out come back to you from the night before. Thankfully I sleep on my side, but how many lives has that taken?
I cringe reading that as a child of parents who spent their lives self-medicating through drugs and alcohol rather than seeking outside help...
> How many lives has that saved?
I don’t know how many it’s saved, but I can tell you that it’s severely damaged and nearly ruined the lives of at least a handful of innocent bystanders.
We need to be able to differentiate between the two without conflating them.
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg115
Someone can be doing harm to themself well before they reach dependent-drinking levels.
> Harmful drinking is defined as a pattern of alcohol consumption causing health problems directly related to alcohol. This could include psychological problems such as depression, alcohol-related accidents or physical illness such as acute pancreatitis. In the longer term, harmful drinkers may go on to develop high blood pressure, cirrhosis, heart disease and some types of cancer, such as mouth, liver, bowel or breast cancer.
Alcohol-dependency is marked by
> craving, tolerance, a preoccupation with alcohol and continued drinking in spite of harmful consequences (for example, liver disease or depression caused by drinking). Alcohol dependence is also associated with increased criminal activity and domestic violence, and an increased rate of significant mental and physical disorders. Although alcohol dependence is defined in ICD-10 and DSM-IV in categorical terms for diagnostic and statistical purposes as being either present or absent, in reality dependence exists on a continuum of severity. However, it is helpful from a clinical perspective to subdivide dependence into categories of mild, moderate and severe. People with mild dependence (those scoring 15 or less on the Severity of Alcohol Dependence Questionnaire; SADQ) usually do not need assisted alcohol withdrawal. People with moderate dependence (with a SADQ score of between 15 and 30) usually need assisted alcohol withdrawal, which can typically be managed in a community setting unless there are other risks. People who are severely alcohol dependent (with a SADQ score of more than 30) will need assisted alcohol withdrawal, typically in an inpatient or residential setting. In this guideline these definitions of severity are used to guide selection of appropriate interventions.
I’m not saying they’re the same thing and that having a beer ruins lives. I certainly have a glass of wine from time to time and don’t feel it’s having an impact on anyone around me. But, at least to me, “self-medicating” implies far more consumption than just one drink.
(This is rhetorical)
I declared myself as an alcoholic in an effort to get outside help. It was a big mistake. I went from being the equivalent of a Jew in a ghetto to a Jew in a ghetto who had ever so helpfully just pinned a gold star on their chest in order to identify themselves more clearly to their persecutors.
One of the problems your parents had, is that in you they had a child who clearly chose to 'admonish' and just feel self-pity.
I don't blame you. My sister hated our alcoholic father and she still hates alcoholics. She's a Nurse Practitioner BTW.
If you cared about your parents, you would have looked into the why's and wherefore's of drug addiction and if you cared about anybody else you would have moved heaven and earth to make sure nobody else should have to go through what you did as a child.
To just say: Drugs are bad, mmmkay?
That's a stuck record and about as bad as it gets and just ensures drug abuse persists and the broken lives with it.
Which is basically what you and this study are promulgating.
If you recognise you are an alcoholic you ultimately have 3 choices:
1) Carry on as you are with the inevitable consequences of a slow unpleasant & painful death but also significant damage to those who love you: family & friends.
2) Own up to your addiction. See comments above. BTW, the medical profession will like you no more than the rest of society ie. Not at all. If you recover, it's going to be largely due to your own efforts & if you're lucky enough, supportive loved one(s).
3) Suicide. ASAP.
I think that's known as a classic Hobson's choice.
This is conjecture.
I have anxiety surrounding public speaking. Exercise helped with baseline anxiety, now I rarely feel like anxiety is a roadblock when I anticipate speaking.
Not true according to some studies. Exercise has been shown to have physiological benefits beyond addressing issues about how things look.
I'm no less self conscious about my body in terms of looks now I'm not fat compared to when I was nearly (perhaps actually) obese - I didn't care then and I don't care now, and where I have problems with people I've never thought it was my looks that put them off.
While I don't suffer from social anxiety specifically (I have it, but in "normal" amounts except where cause by the issue I'm about to mention) but I find the symptoms of bi-polar disorder less apparent (or more apparent less often) since improving my physical health and sometimes when they do rear their ugly heads "going for a run" or similar can help.
> Exercising won't solve ... anxiety due to stammering or have scar on your face.
I don't think the last poster was referring to anxiety resulting from such causes (though they were not clear on the matter).
> Exercising won't solve stage fright
If you specifically mean stage fright due to normally stressful situations (work presentations, actually being on a stage, ...) then no, though generally feeling better about yourself can help more generalised social anxiety.
He's not alone. Most medics do too.
The only way I managed to get off alcohol was by vigorous exercise: cycling many miles and hours in the Yorkshire Dales. That was in '98.
Before that, I found that any stress or anxiety would quickly result in me going back on the bottle.
My uncle was a general practitioner for many decades and he reflected later that at least 50% of his patients presenting with primarily a physical complaint, he'd find the actual pathology, if you did enough digging, was actually primarily psychological in nature.
Part of the problem with drinking alcohol is that the more you start to drink, you can start to realise you are getting into a spiral of decline.
You start to wake up in the mornings needing a drink in order to not feel ghastly and actually function at all. This starts to become a regular occurrence. You feel deeply ashamed that you can no longer control your drinking: it's controlling you. Because you feel ashamed, you then drink more so you no longer feel ashamed.
Welcome to the death spiral of alcohol addiction.
The only way of getting off that spiral is by admitting that you are an alcoholic. Not just to yourself but to your friends and family who may not even be aware that you are struggling.
You need to make it known to them because of the simple fact that you go to some family get together or other social occasion and it usually means alcohol is present (in the UK at least) and it's awkward when you're expected to be drinking and joining in with the festivities. If the folks around you know that you have an alcohol problem, then they wont try and encourage you to drink. If they don't know, then they can think you're some sort of killjoy etc.
Also, I declare myself an alcoholic on a forum like this as a form of public service. Anybody who suffers with an alcohol addiction is pretty much an expert on the matter. Even more so those few of us who are able to talk about it and possibly help others. You also find that you end up helping yourself by talking to others with similar experiences as it can occasionally cast a light on your own problems. It's essentially group therapy in action.
Most alcoholics can't do that, because they're pissed and many simply for the fact that they are lying in an early grave.
> How many lives has that saved?
Alcohol is strongly linked to death by suicide and to self-harm, so no, it's probably killed even more people.
https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=37560
TBC is still an infectious disease and road injuries are preventable by simply not driving after having had a drink and self-harm is rather unlikely after a bottle of beer.
> and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero.
That is a triviality. Alcohol has no health benefits.
---
Seems to me that it is okay to have a drink a day.
The statistics behind those studies are a bit dodgy, because they investigate just one disease (heart attacks, say) instead of total health effect, and because they are confounded by people who are tee-totalers because they were alcoholics (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/did-drinking-gi...). But many people say that they have a big negative impact on public health, because they allow people to rationalize their drinking---instead of thinking it's unhealthy they can go "oh, but it's good for my heart".
From that angle it is a triviality. Alcohol is mildly toxic to almost all organs - of course maximizing health will be achieved by avoiding it entirely.
I thought your line initially read "road injuries are preventable by simply not driving" full stop, I was on board with that.
What's one drink?
One 125 ml glass of wine at 8% ABV would be 1 UK unit.
One 175 ml glass of wine at 12% ABV would be 2 UK units, nearly double the alcohol. One of those a day and you're drinking at the UK safe limit levels of 14 units a week.
"Sometimes, beer loves us back too: Studies have suggested that, when consumed in moderation, beer has many health benefits." - http://www.foxnews.com/story/2010/01/15/healthy-beer-drinkin...
"Despite the health benefits of moderate drinking, Holahan emphasizes the need for common sense. One or two drinks a day may be beneficial for some, but drinking a lot more can be dangerous, he said." - https://news.utexas.edu/2010/08/27/psychology_drinking
One in Five Americans Say Moderate Drinking Is Healthy - https://news.gallup.com/poll/184382/one-five-americans-say-m...
So there is still people believing that alcohol may be healthy. It is good to understand that it is not. And that to decide to drink will have consequences.
I have seen an increase of availability of alcohol-free drinks for the past decade that allow you to hang out with your friends, keeping that very needed human contact, but allowing you to not suffer the adverse effects of alcohol and to drive safe home.
From the article:
What's more, any protective health effects of alcohol were offset by the drink's risk, including strong links between alcohol consumption and the risk of cancer and injuries such as those resulting from car accidents.
It depends, though. If your family has a high risk of cancer, but a low risk of diabetes or heart problems (or if you drink and drive), then alcohol will probably increase your risk.
However, if your family has a low risk of cancer, and a higher risk of heart disease, maybe you'd be better off drinking a little.
> These implausible estimates of benefits or risks associated with diet probably reflect almost exclusively the magnitude of the cumulative biases in this type of research, with extensive residual confounding and selective reporting.3 Almost all nutritional variables are correlated with one another; thus, if one variable is causally related to health outcomes, many other variables will also yield significant associations in large enough data sets. With more research involving big data, almost all nutritional variables will be associated with almost all outcomes. Moreover, given the complicated associations of eating behaviors and patterns with many time-varying social and behavioral factors that also affect health, no currently available cohort includes sufficient information to address confounding in nutritional associations.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2698337?ut...
Someone will come out two weeks from now and say booze makes you immortal.
Personally, I'll go with the fact that alcohol has been consumed for all of human history, the fact that many alcohol consuming cultures have longer life expectancy than some abstinent cultures (not proof in itself, but a 'good enough' observation for my own personal peace of mind), and the fact that I'd rather eat and drink well than gain what, an extra year or two of life? I'm healthy, not overweight, active, most of my ancestors in recent history lived to 90+ years old with sub-par diets and drinking habits, I'm not convinced ultra-healthy eating and abstinence is going to be worth the boredom.
https://i.imgur.com/MhJm6Si.png
As an avid craft beer fan, I've been trying to keep my drinking under 120g of pure alcohol a week (which is about 9 standard drinks) by way of a Calca spreadsheet over the past two years. It's been very effective, but a bit annoying to wrangle manually. Figured I'd finally turn it into an actual product.
I think I'll probably release the code under GPL.