The headline here reads oddly. The conclusion from this paper is: "Low-volume alcohol drinking was not associated with protection against death from all causes."
" no significant reductions in risk of all-cause mortality for drinkers who drank less than 25 g of ethanol per day"
"Conclusions and Relevance In this updated systematic review and meta-analysis, daily low or moderate alcohol intake was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality risk, while increased risk was evident at higher consumption levels, starting at lower levels for women than men."
I might be mixing up my jargon here, but I was under the impression that "no safe amount" and similar phrases refer to a standard of categorization that is scientifically meaningful but usually offers little practical guidance relative to common lifestyle patterns (e.g. by this standard there's also no safe amount of wood dust to inhale and no safe amount of cured meat to eat). My understanding is that the risks of alcohol consumption are highly nonlinear, so the upshot is that while the risk of something like 5 standard drinks per week is not zero, it's so small for the average person that the stress of actively worrying about it might very well be worse for their health than the alcohol itself.
Given that yeast leavened bread is around 1.5% alcohol and food can naturally ferment in your gut, it’s nearly certain that there is in fact some safe amount of regular alcohol intake that’s well within the bounds of homeostasis and thus as safe as anything can be.
But that’s not how people drink is it? People use alcohol to intentionally disrupt homeostasis. It’s certainly plausible that there is no safe regularly taken psychoactive dose. And it’s incontrovertible that seeking the psychoactive effects of alcohol can have unfortunate side effects.
All alcohol has carcinogenic properties. That's just a simple fact. Cancer is bad. Anything that increases our chances of cancer is bad. And considering alcohol has no beneficial qualities when consumed, it's technically all downside.
So while bread may have some alcoholic content, it has other beneficial properties. As does the sun, even though it is a huge carcinogen.
However, I do like to remind people, that while nearly everyone with lung cancer is a smoker, most smokers do not get lung cancer.
So, do what you will with your own body, but know the risks and don't try and downplay disappointing information because you don't like it.
If the State of California is to be believed, basically everything I come in contact with in my daily life has carcinogenic properties. That's just a simple fact. Thus the actual target is to limit contact with carcinogens such that the body can maintain homeostasis. Cancer is a particularly unpleasant and potentially permanent failure of maintaining homeostasis, but that doesn't change the general principle.
Also there is a concept called hormesis, which tells us that in some situations being exposed to stressors, which is to say stimuli that temporarily disrupt homeostasis, actually improves the body's overall ability to maintain homeostasis.
None of that is to downplay the well known risks of alcohol abuse. It's an avoidable cause of death and disability.
One thing that gets neglected as well is that normalizing low level drinking encourages high level drinking, and that high level drinking not only has a negative impact on the individual but on society at large. It’s much easier for people who are susceptible to overindulge when going out drinking is considered to be the default social activity, and when events are expected to have alcohol.
One of the reasons why the fight against cigarettes has been so successful is because smoking has mostly disappeared from public and social settings.
I don't consider switching from cigarettes to vapes the disappearance of smoking. I think it has just changed our perception of it to one that people are accepting of.
I've read a lot of studies on alcohol and health. Broadly, I've come to a few conclusions.
* Alcohol raises your risk of cancer, and this effect is exponential. Your risk at a 6 pack a week is minimal. Your risk at a 12 pack a week is moderate. Your risk at a case a week is enough to start seriously increasing your risk of dying.
* Alcohol lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease at low doses (6/12 pack), but this effect is swamped by your risks of cancer and liver disease above that amount
* A lot of recent studies with the most negative outlook on alcohol include negative externalities like drunk driving, domestic violence, etc. While this is accurate on a population level, it tells you nothing about your individual risk.
Overall, the risks have to be balanced against how much you personally enjoy consuming it. At *moderate* levels of drinking, the risks are not a personal concern for me. I would argue most peoples diet, exercise, and sleep habits have a much higher effect on their long term health.
Does these studies mean "12 beers over the course of a week but like no more than one every 14 hours" or "Whatever, just don't start another 12 pack this week"?
Coze I'm more of a "12 beers at once" guy. By "I'll have a beer" I mean a sixpack.
It's very weird how the conclusion of many of these studies are "Men with 1 drink a day, we see no difference. Women with 1 drink a day die sooner". What makes the effect so different?
That's a very good question that we likely can't answer right now. "Woman" and "man" encompass a very wide range of bodies, with different averages, but whose distribution overlaps immensely on nearly every metric.
These gender categories are standins for some subset of differences that are actually causal, but we don't have the measurements and experiments settings to pull out what is actually causal from this.
But in order to "know" that we need to do the proper causal analysis that shows that weight and alcohol dehydrogenase expression levels completely explain the differences.
Two main things. One is that women are smaller and body mass matters a lot to alcohol metabolism. The second thing is many women lack an enzyme that helps metabolize alcohol, which makes them even slower to metabolize it.
We need to work through the polarization. As a Canadian who enjoys 1-2 drinks a day I'm more likely to ignore all health guidelines from my government now that they seem alarmist.
What does alcohol consumption have to do with technology? Most people here are looking to read about tech, not yet another subjective study about the effects of alcohol.
Ah you mean why is it on HN, not why was the study performed. That's fair.
HN is wider than just technical things of course, and often includes major breaking news as well as some things of general interest. Given how common alcohol consumption is, that's probably how it ends up on the front page.
> There was a significantly increased risk of all-cause mortality among female drinkers who drank 25 or more grams [of ethanol] per day and among male drinkers who drank 45 or more grams per day.
25 g is about 32 mL; 45 g => 57 mL. At 80 proof (40% ABV), that's 80 mL (2.7 US fl oz) or 143 mL (4.8 US fl oz) of liquor. A shot glass is ~1.5 US fl oz. (Or 640-1140mL => 22-39 fl oz of 5% beer, for women and men respectively.) So this is something like 2-3 "standard drink units."
14-21 units of alcohol a week really sounds like that would increase mortality. I'm surprised they didn't find that mortality increases remarkably before then.
Note that that data is unreliable. IIRC, the methodology is to start with a survey, multiply by the population size, find that it doesn't account for nearly half of the drinks sold, and then multiply the survey results by a constant factor to account for the difference. So, for example with population = 2, one reported 35 drinks per week and the other reported 1 drink per week, but we sold 72 drinks per week so we assume that the person who claimed 35 actually drank 70.
d) Schrödinger's malt: the effect of low volume alcohol on all-cause mortality rates cannot be predicted and must be observed upon the death of the subject
> This is true. https://hubermanlab.com/what-alcohol-does-to-your-body-brain... Two drinks a week seems like the upper limit beyond which health issues eventually start to surface. Which is not to say that some people can’t get away with more provided they do a bunch of other things right and perhaps also pick the right parents. People should do what they want provided not harming anyone else. But it’s nice to know what you’re doing.
https://twitter.com/hubermanlab/status/1643692569585676288
I find headlines like this unbelievable. Of course adding poison to your body is unhealthy and will affect mortality. The Canadian and WHO statements make intrinsic sense, it isn't quite smoking, but let's not fool ourselves about what we're doing. I'm still going to consume alcohol, but I'm not going to deceive myself about it negatively impacting my health, regardless of the conclusion of yet another meta-analysis (coffee has had countless, many with conclusions which are polar opposites).
I can see the case for ethanol also having no long-term effects. Though it is in much larger quantities than chlorine and does have short-term effects, so this is some evidence against it having long-term effects.
I actually agree with you that alcohol is probably bad, but I think the reasoning "of course adding poison to your body is unhealthy" is not correct.
>Of course adding poison to your body is unhealthy and will affect mortality
I'm not sure if I agree with this view.
Antibiotics, for example, are a kind of poison and if used under the right circumstances they can reduce the mortality rate.
> "Of course adding poison to your body is unhealthy and will affect mortality."
This is in contradiction with the basic principle of toxicology: "dosis sola facit venenum".
A "systematic review and meta-analysis of 107 cohort studies involving more than 4.8 million participants" cannot simply be shrugged away the way you do.
The human body can metabolize around 1AU (alcoholic unit) every 24h, which roughly corresponds to a can of light beer or a cup of light wine, without damage. This is why (very) moderate drinkers don't seem to have increased mortality
Ethanol has been part of human culture for...ever...so would it hard for us so greatly if we did a massive study like:
"Province Alphaville" in the High French Speaking part of Canada, has a vote and decides to go "alcohol free" for the next 30 years. Province consents to cross-sectionally divide itself for controls into sub-cohorts, where: Cohort A - has legal access to psychedelics, B - to marijuana, C - to something else TBA, D - to no intoxicants not even tobacco. And we just observe over time. Surely some place in the world / large enough group of people would be willing to sort themselves like this. Then with a large and diverse enough population I think we can clearly get some good data and mostly lay the question to rest as to the "health effects" of chronic use of various intoxicants/inebrients/entheogens/empathogens/whatevers :) ;P xx ;p
You can't be serious lol. We have a word for moon doesn't mean I eat the rocks. Islam is practiced in dozens of countries speaking hundreds of languages.
Anyway I'm not asserting that no muslim has ever had alcohol or that there's no disagreement within islam about its use. But the idea that the majority of muslims are routinely violating one of the main proscriptions of their religion is an astounding claim you must be ready to back up right?
Ha yeah this is all pointless speculation... I can't help but point out though that in my observations of religious people, it's not hard to believe that a majority or even a large majority might (temporarily, occasionally, whatever) eschew some of the central tenets of their "belief" system.
Kind of like how lots of citizens can (temporarily, occasionally, whatever) eschew some of the laws. I'd hardly consider Americans <21 a solid no-alcohol control group even if it were valid to compare adolescents to adults as control and treatment in any study.
Doing a bit more research, according to the high school handbook, students don't run in the halls, nor do they chew gum in class.
I got the "Why do they have a word for beer?" from a Palestinian instructor I had, who was well versed in wining and dining. He was fairly cynical about the claims of "no alcohol".
That's a good point. And am I wrong that hashish / marijuana is widely consumed in at least some parts of the Muslim world? (if anyone knows which parts specifically, please share!) :) x ;p x;p
There are studies showing that moderate drinking is fine, and there are studies showing moderate drinking is detrimental, but the trillion-dollar alcohol industry is only funding one of those sets of studies.
But low and moderate alcohol consumption is associated with high alcohol consumption (some people become alcoholics after they start drik in low amounts).
Consider treatment. There are at least 6 treatment options.
I heard good comments about Nalmefene or Naltrexone "as needed" (aka Sinclair Method). Even here on HN if you search for it in comments. Basically, you take a pill an hour before drinking. They suppose it works by blocking formation of conditioned reflex caused by endorphin reinforcement. In absence of reinforcement patient unlearns the habit.
Psychotherapy. In particular, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). I think one can provably even study this method himself and apply it.
Group therapy. May be useful IMHO, because people with the same problem can share experience.
Medications to help maintaining abstinence:
acamprosate, disulfiram, nalmefene / naltrexone (taken constantly, unlike the Sinclair Method, where they are only taken when drinking).
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. Just curious about this topic.
"A term that refers to death from any cause. In statistics, all-cause mortality is usually a measure of the total number of deaths from any cause in a specific group of people over a specific period of time. For example, all-cause mortality may be reported for people who live in one area of the country or who are of a specific gender, age, race, or ethnic group."
As I understand it, this means that light to moderate alcohol leads to no additional deaths of any kind for __a specific group in a specific time__. This being a meta-analysis of 4.8m people how did were they able to reduce variation enough to qualify so many to such a study. Meta-analyses are known to be fraught with problems: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7950571/.
Who funded this study ? I do not mean the direct fund provider, but who the top-level funder is. I am willing to bet it was funded by some alcohol company(s) or a trade Group funded by some alcohol related group.
"Funding/Support: This study was partly funded by the CCSA as a subcontract for a Health Canada grant to develop guidance for Canadians on alcohol and health."
BUT
"Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Stockwell reported receiving personal fees from Ontario Public Servants Employees Union for expert witness testimony and personal fees from Alko outside the submitted work. Dr Sherk reported receiving grants from Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported."
Where "Alko Inc is the national alcoholic beverage retailing monopoly in Finland."
Is the consumption measured in studies like this a long-term average? I am not a heavy drinker, but there are plenty of days where I am over 2, or even 4, drinks in a day. Recently I have been averaging less than 1 a day, since I only drink 1 or 2 nights in the week.
These studies always seems to categorize people into X per day buckets, but I don't know many people who drink every day, and I worry about those people, even if their overall consumption is low. I would view someone who drinks 2 drinks on Wednesday, 6 drinks on Friday, and 6 on Saturday as having much healthier consumption than someone who drinks 2 drinks every single day, despite that being the same amount of alcohol.
More than 5 drinks is considered binge drinking which is considered especially harmful.
My view would be the opposite of yours. Someone who drinks 2 glasses of wine with dinner every night is not a problem* but people who drink to the point where they should be drunk 2 nights in a row every week are probably doing more harm to their body.
E: * = Probably also a problem, but less of a problem than getting drunk twice a week.
An author of this paper was directly paid by an alcohol distributor outside of this study.
From the Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Stockwell reported receiving personal fees from Ontario Public Servants Employees Union (OPSEU) for expert witness testimony and personal fees from Alko outside the submitted work. Dr Sherk reported receiving grants from Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported.
Alko Inc is the national alcoholic beverage retailing monopoly in Finland
Just because they claim the conflict doesn't mean it's not influencing the study.
In fact using the same philosophical criteria they use for this study attempting to eliminate "systematic biases that affect many studies" we should throw this one out, as having a commercial interest tied to anyone of the group should cause us to question the systemic bias within the study group.
edit: Thanks to CoolGuySteve for also pointing out that OPSEU is the union for Ontario's government run liquor store, LCBO
OPSEU is the union for Ontario's government run liquor store, LCBO.
IMO, the LCBO does a terrible job at limiting the social and health impact of alcohol anyways and this stunt is yet another argument for disbanding it altogether.
The title of this HN post is misleading and the conclusion of this study is actually bad for alcohol sales. They found low and moderate alcohol intake was not protective, confirming other similar studies, and at higher levels it increased the risk of death (no surprise). So the conflict of interest does not seem relevant. It's hard to see how getting paid to consult for a company in the business of selling alcohol is a conflict when you're publishing a paper confirming alcohol consumption isn't good for you.
"In this updated systematic review and meta-analysis, daily low or moderate alcohol intake was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality risk, while increased risk was evident at higher consumption levels, starting at lower levels for women than men."
While they found low alcohol consumption did not reduce all-cause mortality relative to abstention, other studies have shown a shift with reduced cardiovascular mortality balanced out by increased cancer mortality.
For me the primary reason to stop drinking was preservation of brain cells. Recent studies have shown a simple dose response relationship between neuronal death and alcohol consumption, with no minimum threshold. Even one drink will kill a few. They don’t grow back.
Since quitting in 2021, I have become noticeably sharper, my code quality has improved, and I feel better. I do not miss it at all.
You seem to be misunderstanding the points made in my original comment. The statement "They don't grow back" refers to the fact that alcohol can kill neurons, and these neurons do not regenerate. The subsequent statement, "Since quitting in 2021, I have become noticeably sharper," does not conflict with the previous statement, as it implies that cognitive abilities can recover after alcohol cessation through mechanisms other than neurogenesis.
Firstly, it's important to consider neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between neurons. Even though the number of neurons may not increase, the brain can adapt and compensate for the loss by strengthening existing connections or forming new ones, leading to an overall improvement in cognitive function.
Secondly, alcohol impairs cognitive function through various mechanisms other than neuronal death. For instance, alcohol disrupts sleep quality, which in turn impairs cognitive function. When someone stops consuming alcohol, their sleep quality is likely to improve, leading to better cognitive performance.
Lastly, regular repeated brain insult from alcohol consumption leads to chronic cognitive deficits, as the brain is consistently affected by alcohol's neurotoxic effects. When alcohol consumption ceases, the continuous damage stops, allowing the brain to recover to a certain extent, even without replacing the lost neurons.
In conclusion, the statements in my original comment are not conflicting. Improved cognitive abilities after quitting alcohol can be attributed to factors such as neuroplasticity, improved sleep quality, and the cessation of ongoing damage to the brain.
They conflict if the increase in sharpness is interpreted as a follow-up to the claim that neurons don't grow back. How can there be an increase of function without an "increase" in neurons (they don't grow back)?
I am not aware of any such studies but I would be curious if you have references. There are only a few isolated parts of the brain that show neurogenesis (the birth of new neurons) in adulthood - the hippocampus and the olfactory bulb are the primary two examples. Alcohol kills neurons across the entire brain, with volume reductions and microstructure damage in the white and grey matter, and the damage is not limited to any specific areas.
There is some functional recovery after abstention from alcohol consumption due to regrowth of synapses and neuroplasticity, much in the same way our brains can partially recover from a stroke even though the neurons in the part of the brain that was deprived of oxygen are permanently lost. However the recovery is not complete and some of the loss of brain volume is in fact permanent.
Nah I don't have any studies just something I had heard but upon some investigation didn't find much in the ways of studies, so probably me just being wrong. thanks for the info!
There is reason to think red wine, with its unique combination of resveratrol, phenolic acids, and flavonoids, might be an exception to that. For example, the conclusion of a meta-analysis of 12 studies on the subject says: "This study may show a protective effect of wine consumption against cognitive decline. However, it would be important for future research to differentiate the types of wine within consumption." The paper contains a conflict of interest statement declaring no conflicts of interest.
Yes, this is interesting research. If I was going to drink again, it would be limited to red wine and beer (which contains other beneficial compounds). Personally I just take pterostilbene, which is structurally similar to resveratrol and has similar health benefits but is much more bioavailable.
Cognitive decline and dementia are multifactorial, and with alcohol consumption there are trade-offs between neuronal death, potential improvements in vascular function, and other things known and as yet unknown.
Here's an interesting recent finding from a study of 20K BioBank participants: "Alcohol consumption above 7 units weekly associated with higher brain iron. Iron accumulation represents a potential mechanism for alcohol-related cognitive decline."
May I suggest that, if you have't already, you get a 23andme. "While light alcohol consumption has been associated with a decreased risk of AD in general [127], this relationship does not appear to hold in ApoE4 carriers. Consumption of any amount of alcohol may increase the risk of AD[Alzheimer's disease] for ApoE4 carriers [128,129,130]. In one study, both light and moderate alcohol consumption were associated with improvement in learning and memory for non-carriers, but with a decline in learning and memory for carriers [129]. Other studies found that ApoE4 carriers who consumed alcohol one or more times per month had a higher risk of AD than those who never consumed alcohol [128] and the risk of AD for carriers increased with increasing amounts of alcohol consumption [130] These data suggest that alcohol consumption should be limited, especially in ApoE4 carriers." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8073598/
Thank you, that's super interesting information I wasn't aware of. I did get 23andMe back in 2009 and was able to locate the ApoE4 SNP. For anyone with 23andMe or WGS etc. and wants to do the same, look up rs7412 - the C/C combination is "normal", while one T increases your AD risk by 3x and two Ts by 10x.
As it turns out, I do have one T, so I have another really good reason to avoid alcohol entirely - and also to take krill oil, quercetin, resveratrol/pterostilbene, D3, K2, the Bs, and lithium (the recommendations from the study you linked).
"While light alcohol consumption has been associated with a decreased risk of AD in general [127], this relationship does not appear to hold in ApoE4 carriers. Consumption of any amount of alcohol may increase the risk of AD for ApoE4 carriers [128,129,130]." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8073598/
Unless you prove it, a substance is not toxic. So the bias is always on the side of "it's not bad" until we prove it actually is.
So what I do to start with is as long as it doesnt smell safe (you gota judgement call on this), then it isnt. Our body is crafted to defend itself it's as simple as that.
My rule of thumb is: if you have a bunch of conflicting studies on the risks of a certain activity like this, the risk is probably pretty low if it exists at all. If it was a large risk it would be easy to see, and in the case of moderate alcohol drinking it isn’t.
On the other hand, all cause mortality might not be the only end point we care about here. If I live just as long, but my health is poorer during the last decade, that’s a loss also. I don’t know how you would quantify that.
In the United States, one "standard" drink (or one alcoholic drink equivalent) contains roughly 14 grams of pure alcohol, which is found in:
12 ounces of regular beer, which is usually about 5% alcohol
5 ounces of wine, which is typically about 12% alcohol
1.5 ounces of distilled spirits, which is about 40% alcohol
Every centenarian in Bulgaria is a moderate Rakia (a type of brandy/schnapps) drinker! Of course, I am fully aware of the survivorship bias, and I'm not saying we should drink Rakia, but these studies are trying to push a narrative, they do not accept the richness of human metabolism!
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] thread"Conclusions and Relevance In this updated systematic review and meta-analysis, daily low or moderate alcohol intake was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality risk, while increased risk was evident at higher consumption levels, starting at lower levels for women than men."
Basically, having 2/4 drinks per day isn't going to kill you. Drinking more than that definitely increases your risk of premature death, though.
Also, this is a meta-study that reiterates the findings of previous meta-studies on the topic.
Canada is going the opposite direction[0], taking the position that "no amount of alcohol is safe to consume".
[0] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/what-you-should-know-about-can...
Not like that's new...
But that’s not how people drink is it? People use alcohol to intentionally disrupt homeostasis. It’s certainly plausible that there is no safe regularly taken psychoactive dose. And it’s incontrovertible that seeking the psychoactive effects of alcohol can have unfortunate side effects.
So while bread may have some alcoholic content, it has other beneficial properties. As does the sun, even though it is a huge carcinogen.
However, I do like to remind people, that while nearly everyone with lung cancer is a smoker, most smokers do not get lung cancer.
So, do what you will with your own body, but know the risks and don't try and downplay disappointing information because you don't like it.
Also there is a concept called hormesis, which tells us that in some situations being exposed to stressors, which is to say stimuli that temporarily disrupt homeostasis, actually improves the body's overall ability to maintain homeostasis.
None of that is to downplay the well known risks of alcohol abuse. It's an avoidable cause of death and disability.
One of the reasons why the fight against cigarettes has been so successful is because smoking has mostly disappeared from public and social settings.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/harry-rakowski-how-much-alc...
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-where-theres-smo...
* Alcohol raises your risk of cancer, and this effect is exponential. Your risk at a 6 pack a week is minimal. Your risk at a 12 pack a week is moderate. Your risk at a case a week is enough to start seriously increasing your risk of dying.
* Alcohol lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease at low doses (6/12 pack), but this effect is swamped by your risks of cancer and liver disease above that amount
* A lot of recent studies with the most negative outlook on alcohol include negative externalities like drunk driving, domestic violence, etc. While this is accurate on a population level, it tells you nothing about your individual risk.
Overall, the risks have to be balanced against how much you personally enjoy consuming it. At *moderate* levels of drinking, the risks are not a personal concern for me. I would argue most peoples diet, exercise, and sleep habits have a much higher effect on their long term health.
Coze I'm more of a "12 beers at once" guy. By "I'll have a beer" I mean a sixpack.
These gender categories are standins for some subset of differences that are actually causal, but we don't have the measurements and experiments settings to pull out what is actually causal from this.
I’m honestly baffled by your comment.
HN is wider than just technical things of course, and often includes major breaking news as well as some things of general interest. Given how common alcohol consumption is, that's probably how it ends up on the front page.
25 g is about 32 mL; 45 g => 57 mL. At 80 proof (40% ABV), that's 80 mL (2.7 US fl oz) or 143 mL (4.8 US fl oz) of liquor. A shot glass is ~1.5 US fl oz. (Or 640-1140mL => 22-39 fl oz of 5% beer, for women and men respectively.) So this is something like 2-3 "standard drink units."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think... ( https://archive.is/fa25J )
a) low volume alcohol consumption does not INCREASE all-cause mortality rate
b) low volume alcohol consumption does not DECREASE all-cause mortality rate
c) both A & B
Same paper, different headline.
> This is true. https://hubermanlab.com/what-alcohol-does-to-your-body-brain... Two drinks a week seems like the upper limit beyond which health issues eventually start to surface. Which is not to say that some people can’t get away with more provided they do a bunch of other things right and perhaps also pick the right parents. People should do what they want provided not harming anyone else. But it’s nice to know what you’re doing. https://twitter.com/hubermanlab/status/1643692569585676288
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_chlorination)
I can see the case for ethanol also having no long-term effects. Though it is in much larger quantities than chlorine and does have short-term effects, so this is some evidence against it having long-term effects.
I actually agree with you that alcohol is probably bad, but I think the reasoning "of course adding poison to your body is unhealthy" is not correct.
I have two recommendations for you:
1. Look up hormesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis
2. Watch out taking statements like that for granted and embed the infamous last words of "Of course"
I'm not sure if I agree with this view. Antibiotics, for example, are a kind of poison and if used under the right circumstances they can reduce the mortality rate.
This is in contradiction with the basic principle of toxicology: "dosis sola facit venenum".
A "systematic review and meta-analysis of 107 cohort studies involving more than 4.8 million participants" cannot simply be shrugged away the way you do.
"Province Alphaville" in the High French Speaking part of Canada, has a vote and decides to go "alcohol free" for the next 30 years. Province consents to cross-sectionally divide itself for controls into sub-cohorts, where: Cohort A - has legal access to psychedelics, B - to marijuana, C - to something else TBA, D - to no intoxicants not even tobacco. And we just observe over time. Surely some place in the world / large enough group of people would be willing to sort themselves like this. Then with a large and diverse enough population I think we can clearly get some good data and mostly lay the question to rest as to the "health effects" of chronic use of various intoxicants/inebrients/entheogens/empathogens/whatevers :) ;P xx ;p
That statement is far from the mark.
Nobody in the US drinks under 21 as well.
Anyway I'm not asserting that no muslim has ever had alcohol or that there's no disagreement within islam about its use. But the idea that the majority of muslims are routinely violating one of the main proscriptions of their religion is an astounding claim you must be ready to back up right?
Kind of like how lots of citizens can (temporarily, occasionally, whatever) eschew some of the laws. I'd hardly consider Americans <21 a solid no-alcohol control group even if it were valid to compare adolescents to adults as control and treatment in any study.
I got the "Why do they have a word for beer?" from a Palestinian instructor I had, who was well versed in wining and dining. He was fairly cynical about the claims of "no alcohol".
Or you are in a state of high aclohol consumption?
I heard good comments about Nalmefene or Naltrexone "as needed" (aka Sinclair Method). Even here on HN if you search for it in comments. Basically, you take a pill an hour before drinking. They suppose it works by blocking formation of conditioned reflex caused by endorphin reinforcement. In absence of reinforcement patient unlearns the habit.
Psychotherapy. In particular, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). I think one can provably even study this method himself and apply it.
Group therapy. May be useful IMHO, because people with the same problem can share experience.
Medications to help maintaining abstinence: acamprosate, disulfiram, nalmefene / naltrexone (taken constantly, unlike the Sinclair Method, where they are only taken when drinking).
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. Just curious about this topic.
A useful link: https://alcoholtreatment.niaaa.nih.gov/
"A term that refers to death from any cause. In statistics, all-cause mortality is usually a measure of the total number of deaths from any cause in a specific group of people over a specific period of time. For example, all-cause mortality may be reported for people who live in one area of the country or who are of a specific gender, age, race, or ethnic group."
As I understand it, this means that light to moderate alcohol leads to no additional deaths of any kind for __a specific group in a specific time__. This being a meta-analysis of 4.8m people how did were they able to reduce variation enough to qualify so many to such a study. Meta-analyses are known to be fraught with problems: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7950571/.
Besides, these studies contradict it directly:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26286216/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22910838/
https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-1/39-51.htm
BUT
"Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Stockwell reported receiving personal fees from Ontario Public Servants Employees Union for expert witness testimony and personal fees from Alko outside the submitted work. Dr Sherk reported receiving grants from Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported."
Where "Alko Inc is the national alcoholic beverage retailing monopoly in Finland."
These studies always seems to categorize people into X per day buckets, but I don't know many people who drink every day, and I worry about those people, even if their overall consumption is low. I would view someone who drinks 2 drinks on Wednesday, 6 drinks on Friday, and 6 on Saturday as having much healthier consumption than someone who drinks 2 drinks every single day, despite that being the same amount of alcohol.
E: * = Probably also a problem, but less of a problem than getting drunk twice a week.
From the Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Stockwell reported receiving personal fees from Ontario Public Servants Employees Union (OPSEU) for expert witness testimony and personal fees from Alko outside the submitted work. Dr Sherk reported receiving grants from Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported.
Alko Inc is the national alcoholic beverage retailing monopoly in Finland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alko
Just because they claim the conflict doesn't mean it's not influencing the study.
In fact using the same philosophical criteria they use for this study attempting to eliminate "systematic biases that affect many studies" we should throw this one out, as having a commercial interest tied to anyone of the group should cause us to question the systemic bias within the study group.
edit: Thanks to CoolGuySteve for also pointing out that OPSEU is the union for Ontario's government run liquor store, LCBO
IMO, the LCBO does a terrible job at limiting the social and health impact of alcohol anyways and this stunt is yet another argument for disbanding it altogether.
"In this updated systematic review and meta-analysis, daily low or moderate alcohol intake was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality risk, while increased risk was evident at higher consumption levels, starting at lower levels for women than men."
For me the primary reason to stop drinking was preservation of brain cells. Recent studies have shown a simple dose response relationship between neuronal death and alcohol consumption, with no minimum threshold. Even one drink will kill a few. They don’t grow back.
Since quitting in 2021, I have become noticeably sharper, my code quality has improved, and I feel better. I do not miss it at all.
>Since quitting in 2021, I have become noticeably sharper
Those are conflicting statements literally next to another.
Firstly, it's important to consider neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between neurons. Even though the number of neurons may not increase, the brain can adapt and compensate for the loss by strengthening existing connections or forming new ones, leading to an overall improvement in cognitive function.
Secondly, alcohol impairs cognitive function through various mechanisms other than neuronal death. For instance, alcohol disrupts sleep quality, which in turn impairs cognitive function. When someone stops consuming alcohol, their sleep quality is likely to improve, leading to better cognitive performance.
Lastly, regular repeated brain insult from alcohol consumption leads to chronic cognitive deficits, as the brain is consistently affected by alcohol's neurotoxic effects. When alcohol consumption ceases, the continuous damage stops, allowing the brain to recover to a certain extent, even without replacing the lost neurons.
In conclusion, the statements in my original comment are not conflicting. Improved cognitive abilities after quitting alcohol can be attributed to factors such as neuroplasticity, improved sleep quality, and the cessation of ongoing damage to the brain.
There is some functional recovery after abstention from alcohol consumption due to regrowth of synapses and neuroplasticity, much in the same way our brains can partially recover from a stroke even though the neurons in the part of the brain that was deprived of oxygen are permanently lost. However the recovery is not complete and some of the loss of brain volume is in fact permanent.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.86305...
Cognitive decline and dementia are multifactorial, and with alcohol consumption there are trade-offs between neuronal death, potential improvements in vascular function, and other things known and as yet unknown.
Here's an interesting recent finding from a study of 20K BioBank participants: "Alcohol consumption above 7 units weekly associated with higher brain iron. Iron accumulation represents a potential mechanism for alcohol-related cognitive decline."
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
As it turns out, I do have one T, so I have another really good reason to avoid alcohol entirely - and also to take krill oil, quercetin, resveratrol/pterostilbene, D3, K2, the Bs, and lithium (the recommendations from the study you linked).
So what I do to start with is as long as it doesnt smell safe (you gota judgement call on this), then it isnt. Our body is crafted to defend itself it's as simple as that.
On the other hand, all cause mortality might not be the only end point we care about here. If I live just as long, but my health is poorer during the last decade, that’s a loss also. I don’t know how you would quantify that.
> Low-volume alcohol drinking was not associated with protection against death from all causes.
Prior to this it specifically says there is a rise in mortality due to alcohol consumption above 25g/45g for women/men respectively.
12 ounces of regular beer, which is usually about 5% alcohol 5 ounces of wine, which is typically about 12% alcohol 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits, which is about 40% alcohol