
There's No 'Safe' Level of Alcohol Consumption, Global Study Finds - elijahparker
https://www.livescience.com/63420-alcohol-no-safe-level.html
======
robbick
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."

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

~~~
JoeAltmaier
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.

~~~
dspillett
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).

~~~
Omnius
LOL hand-egg did you make that up on the spot or is this honestly what
american football is called outside the US?

~~~
tonyarkles
Heh, I'd never heard the phrase but apparently it goes back a long time:
[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/handegg](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/handegg)

------
cwyers
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.

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2698337?ut...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2698337?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social_jama&utm_term=1735239284&utm_content=followers-
article_engagement-image_stock&utm_campaign=article_alert&linkId=55887642)

Someone will come out two weeks from now and say booze makes you immortal.

------
kartan
I would like that people saw this as a reality check to another promoted
narrative.

"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...](http://www.foxnews.com/story/2010/01/15/healthy-beer-
drinking.html)

"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](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...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/184382/one-five-americans-say-moderate-
drinking-healthy.aspx)

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.

~~~
FabHK
Just want to point out that in many countries public transport is such that to
„drive safe home“ is not a consideration.

~~~
kartan
Yes, you are completely right. Going Friday night back home in Stockholms
tunnelbana can fully confirm this. :)

------
johnmoberg
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.)

~~~
refurb
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.

A major pet peeve of mine.

~~~
commandlinefan
Especially since your risk of death increases every time you get out of bed in
the morning. Pass the vodka!

------
mattnewport
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

------
raffael-vogler
> 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.

~~~
vilhelm_s
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...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/did-drinking-give-me-
breast-cancer/)). 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".

~~~
raffael-vogler
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](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.

------
archagon
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:

[https://i.imgur.com/MhJm6Si.png](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.

------
jacknews
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.

~~~
DanBC
Those are health risks of alcohol. People need to know all cause mortality.

~~~
jacknews
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.

~~~
DanBC
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?

------
HelloNurse
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.

------
frank_s
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.

RIP. Ian Murdock.

~~~
finaliteration
> 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.

~~~
freehunter
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.

~~~
DanBC
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.

~~~
freehunter
Define harm, and explain maximum recommended level for what.

(This is rhetorical)

------
Mikeb85
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.

