

Heavy drinkers outlive nondrinkers - CWIZO
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201433200

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dctoedt
Reminds me of an old Willie Nelson song, "I Gotta Get Drunk," with the lines:
"There's a lot of doctors that tell me / that I'd better start slowin' it
down, / But there's more old drunks, than there are old doctors, / So I guess
we'd better have another round."

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dododo
title of paper is: "Late-life alcohol consumption and 20-Year mortality"
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1530-0277.201...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010.01286.x/asset/j.1530-0277.2010.01286.x.pdf)

in particular, they are looking whether some 55-65 year olds died the next 20
years, women were underrepresented in their sample (just 37%) who tend to be
lighter drinkers anyhow [citation needed]. participants were select by having
been at a health care facility in the last 3 years. the socioeconomic factors
they took into account where those _at the start_ ("at baseline"). i.e., who
knows what changed in the past or future, or why they were in a health care
center, etc. was there an observation effect? who knows.

the yahoo article doesn't seem to represent this very well. hype hype hype

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gary201147
Doesnt this exclude heavy drinkers who died before the age of 55-65? This
skews the results towards individuals whose bodies are presumably quite
resilient against alcohol related health complications and managed to keep the
person alive long enough to be included in this study. The title should read
something more akin to "Late life heavy drinkers outlive late life
nondrinkers"

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nandemo
The study is about a population aged between 55 and 65 and what happens to
them in the following 20 years according to their drinking patterns. So it's
not fair to say that the results are skewed. It only excludes 40-year-old
drunks in a trivial way: the study is not about them.

Analogy: suppose we have a study about the effect of using or not using
sunscreen on a Caucasian population. It wouldn't be fair to say that the
results are skewed just because they didn't include non-Caucasians.

> _The title should read something more akin to "Late life heavy drinkers
> outlive late life nondrinkers"_

Indeed, the title of the paper is "Late-life alcohol consumption and 20-Year
mortality".

I understand it's normal to be skeptical of whether the results apply to
younger people but, as someone else mentioned, I doubt that so many alcoholics
die before 55. There's probably also some practical difficulty of doing an
analog study for a younger range.

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invisible
He was referring to the title of the article in the last sentence. I think if
there is a better article on their research, it may help in explaining better
as this article seems shy on explanations.

Also, the article cites that the nondrinkers may be more likely to be poor.
This means a) less medical care to have doctors find things early, b) less
stress, and c) they are not benefiting from escaping any stress they do have.
Really, this article seems more like, "Stress kills, alcohol relieves stress
temporarily, those who drink often have less responsibilities." So an
alternative to alcohol: relaxation.

It also (as far as the article) does not go into detail about how many were
from natural causes, etc. I'd be interested in whether the nondrinkers were
more prone to heart attacks and this caused the discrepancy in deaths.

I can see so many holes in the research that I think it is far from conclusive
on the matter.

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jamesseda
Did they verify non drinkers are non drinkers? My Doctor friend tells me that
she is amazed at how many people when asked if they drink, emphatically say
"Never".

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maxawaytoolong
Cognitive dissonance is widespread. An old roommate once informed me she had
given up drinking, because she switched from vodka crans to wine. It's similar
to vegetarians who sometimes eat chicken and people who "don't watch TV"
because all the shows they watch are on Hulu.

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yalurker
I'd suspect it's less to do with cognitive dissonance, and more intentional
lying to meet social norms or out of fear of future problems.

Anything controversial, highly personal, or with stigmas attached will get
biased results from self-reporting. Alcohol, drugs, sexual history, religious
views, political views, racial prejudices, etc will almost always be biased
towards what the person thinks is the right answer.

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rcthompson
What the study actually finds is that heavy drinkers who live to age 55 live
longer than nondrinkers who live to age 55. This might be because heavy
drinking confers some health benefit, or some behavioral benefit (couch
surfing vs outdoor activity). But to me, the more likely explanation is that
heavy drinking selects for people who are genetically or otherwise predisposed
to live longer (by killing the rest before age 55).

Imagine a headline that read "Smoking correlates with increased life
expectancy among centenarians." You probably wouldn't conclude based on that
that smoking is a good idea.

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barrkel
Do enough heavy drinkers really die by 55 to account for the difference?

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rcthompson
I don't actually know. I'm just saying that it's one possible interpretation,
and that it seems to me like a more likely explanation than heavy drinking
extending your life.

The point is that harsh selection early in life means that anyone who survives
to late life will be hardier. This has been shown in studies of, for example,
plants that survive heavy storms as seedlings. Is heavy drinking harsh enough
to show this effect? I'm not sure.

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sounddust
Sorry to post this is off-topic, but am I the only one who is incredibly
annoyed by the way Time slips in promotions for other content in the middle of
their articles? It's quite jarring and makes it difficult to keep one's
attention on the content. And the fact that it happens on almost every
paragraph just makes me more and more frustrated until I have no desire to
read the article anymore. Unfortunately, readability doesn't help here; anyone
know of a user script or other way to easily fix this?

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deno
CTRL+SHIFT+J (JS console) and type:

    
    
      Array.prototype.forEach.apply(document.getElementsByClassName('see'), [function(el){el.style.display = 'none'}])

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carbocation
This is a restatement of what we've puzzled over for some time now: that those
who consume modest amounts of alcohol have a reduced risk of mortality.

It's an epidemiologic association, so this isn't something you can exactly
hang your hat on and encourage people to do. But it has been observed that
cardiovascular risk is lowest for women who have just under 1 drink per day,
and men who have 2 or fewer per day.

This reinforces the older literature, but doesn't really help illuminate the
causal chain, if any.

( _Edit - as sp332 points out below, this does present new data about an
association between heavy drinking and reduced mortality in this cohort._ )

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sp332
What's new is that, in this study, _heavy_ drinkers outlived abstainers. Very
unexpected, even though I knew that moderate drinkers had some health
benefits.

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carbocation
Yes, good point. I agree that this part is a new finding; thank you.

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compay
Perhaps it's because the heaviest drinkers spend many evenings safely at home
passed out on the couch, while the abstainers are out incurring the normal
risks of daily life.

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tkhoven
_controlling for nearly all imaginable variables - socioeconomic status, level
of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and
so on_

It's been a while since statistics 101, and I'm curious - in practice, how do
you control for these variables? Do you try for a large sample size and only
compare like with like? Or do you try to estimate the impact of the
confounding variables and adjust the numbers accordingly?

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SebMortelmans
This is so skewed. 1800 participants, all with different health backgrounds,
then divided into 3 groups of heavy, moderate and never. That's not really a
sample size to get any definite conclusion from. These results might be a
reason to do a more trough research at the most.

The variance on this thing is huge. To tie their drinking habits to their
mortality, negating all other factors, on this sample size, is ridiculous.

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Retric
A sample size of 1800 / 3 where 40+% of them died is actually a fairly good
for this type of research. The only real value for a larger sample size is the
ability to measure smaller effects. And if the change is tiny then it's not
really significant anyway.

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kwantam
"Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk..., heavy drinkers
are less likely to die than people who have never drunk."

Hmm, seems to me that all have precisely the same likelihood of dying.

Sorry to be snarky, but this is just awfully poor editing. Reading pop science
reporting is often just painful.

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code_duck
My theory:

absolute non drinkers are uptight,

and heavy drinkers are pickled and preserved.

My grandfather just died at the age of 97 and he was never without a 'snort',
aka Coke and Canadian Velvet. He was quite normal up to about 95, and never
had any serious ailments.

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Perceval
Guess I'm going to die early.

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ryandvm
I'll drink to that.

jk

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jolie
Meh. I'm much happier with my non-drinking quality of life as opposed to my
former heavy-drinking quality of life. I'd give a few years up to live drama-
free for the remainder.

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vishaldpatel
I think it'd be better to check out drinking habits of aged Japanese to figure
out whats a good level =)

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sutro
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking.

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c00p3r
Nothing to see here. Abstinence is a much more stress and discomfort than
drinking, especially when you suddenly stop after years of a heavy daily
consumption. It is extremely difficult thing to change your habits because you
will face a completely different, unfriendly (literally - you will lose most
of your connections when you stop - no one need a stressed/depressed and sick
neurotic) world, which you need to learn to comprehend and love again. The
same type, but more intensive struggle awaits you after a sudden withdraw from
a dope addiction - the world will be alien to you. The problem with a booze or
dope isn't about chemistry or organic damages, it is all about losing a
connection with reality and the shock and discomfort to rediscover it after
withdrawal. Abstinence is worse than drinking, every drunkard or doper will
tell you. Even after years, if you can stay away from it, each day will be a
new challenge, new struggle. And each regression will drop you back below the
zero. This is the thing that kills you faster than booze itself.

btw, the only way out which may work more or less is about getting your mind
stimulated and busy - traveling to the different part of the world (India and
Muslim countries are the best), some hobby or business. There are a lot of
life-beaten people who are traveling - running away from their past and from
themselves. Especially in India.

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rubashov
I would bet the effect is simply due to heart attack deaths. Heart attacks are
the #2 killer. Alcohol improves circulation and ameliorates heart disease.

I bet if you controlled for triglycerides or waist to hip ratio the alcohol
has no effect.

In short, if you are going to be fat and coat your arteries with crap from a
sugary and vegetable oil heavy diet, then make sure to have a couple drinks a
day. That category happens to cover most people in the industrialized world.

