
The benefits of light to moderate drinking might have been exaggerated - acsillag
http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/put-down-the-booze-drinking-may-not-be-good-for-you/
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Scea91
Funny ambiguous title. Until I've opened the article I thought that light
somehow helps to moderate drinking. I haven't thought about it before but it
could make some sense too, considering that most of us drink at night when
it's darker.

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mhd
I think the general conclusion isn't just "If something looks too good to be
true, it should be treated with great caution" but "If it relates to food or
drink, we know diddly squat". And even less if the purveyor of said knowledge
is not even a full-time research scientist. Or heck, not a scientist at all.
Sadly that seems to be the source of 90% of diet "wisdom".

Now let us get back to honestly saying that we like to drink to get sloshed,
without any excuses of health or even just taste.

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T-hawk
My general conclusion is more like, if it relates to food or drink, there's
both positives and negatives that can be spun either way.

Take eggs, an easy example. The protein is good for muscles, but the
cholesterol is bad for arteries. A scientific study will balance these
variables in depth. But the clickbait headlines that filter up to public
internet visibility will polarize on one or the other because that's what gets
the clicks and attention.

Moderate drinking: good for stress, bad for the liver. Easy to frame a
headline to highlight either aspect.

Agreed that the real problem is 90% of diet "wisdom" coming from clickbait
headlines rather than seriously considered science.

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mhd
Bad science reporting is yet another bad commercial exploitation of the
scientific data, but quite often you don't even have to go that far. We're
talking about _really_ long-term effects and _lots_ of variables. It's quite
rare that you can just _watch_ something happen metabolically and draw your
conclusions from that. Most of the time, we're talking about surveys or small
studies. And it's not like the people surveyed are getting in-depth tests
every single day. Then add some bad statistics and interest groups on top of
that.

Your example ain't that easy, either.

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mikecmpbll
Am I the only one who thinks this article contradicts itself? Starts off
leading towards some great conclusion that any amount of alcohol is bad for
you, then tails off with this:

"The team found there's at best a small decline in mortality rates for men
aged 50 to 64 and women aged 65 and older. Former drinkers, meanwhile, had
somewhat higher mortality rates than others, suggesting that past claims light
drinking was good for your heart were based on faulty comparisons. After all,
some of those who'd quit were probably heavy drinkers in the past, and,
compared to them, light drinkers had likely done less damage to their hearts."

In summary, it appears to be saying that there's a small benefit in light to
moderate alcohol consumption but heavy drinking is probably bad ... uh no
shit, that's what people have been saying for years?

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DanBC
For years we've known that people who drink no alcohol at all have worse
outcomes than people who drink some alcohol. We also thought that drinking a
very small amount of alcohol - a glass or two of wine per week - was
protective but we didn't think more alcohol than that was protective.

Recently a study was released and heavily reported.

One reason we thought that tee-totalers had worse health outcomes was the
number of people with alcoholism in that group or people with other severe
health problems. This new study claimed to have corrected for that and only
included healthy people in the teetotal group. The study then said that
drinking no alcohol was associated with dying sooner than drinkin alcohol. The
curve they released showed most benefit to people drinking one drink a day,
but showed benefits over not drinking at upto about 5 drinks a day.

That was different to what we thought before.

It turns out this new study has a bunch of flaws. There are some interesting
effects. Older women who drink do see some protective benefits. But the health
benefits of moderate drinking for most people are not at all clear.

It's pretty important to publicise the corrections because of the heavy
reporting of that flawed research, and because of the misunderstanding (that
you repeat) that moderate drinking provides health benefits.

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mikecmpbll
I'm probably being dense, but that did not help me understand it at all.

I understand the perceived flaw in the previous studies that former heavy
drinkers, now teetotalers, were included in the non-drinking bracket and
therefore negatively skewing the results for non-drinkers, HOWEVER, is the
article still not claiming that even having adjusted for that that the results
still show benefits from small amounts of alcohol?

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DanBC
Yes, that's right.

The study claimed to have removed people who can't drink alcohol for medical
reasons and then it claimed that people who drink upto five drinks a day live
longer than the corrected non-drinking group.

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mikecmpbll
Thanks for clarification :). /files under 'non-story'

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mekazu
I don't know of anyone who drinks because they think it's healthy.

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code_duck
I know some older people who justify drinking wine because of the stories of
how it is good for heart health.

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otakucode
I've never understood how something that interferes directly with GABAminergic
parts of the brain was supposed to be beneficial.

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dspillett
So I need to go back to heavy drinking then? Fair enough, if I have to...!

~~~
Kenji
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. - Oscar Wilde

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vegancap
The trouble is, alcohol is addictive, so the tendency; health benefits or
otherwise is not to drink in moderation. The tendency is to drink more and
more.

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raverbashing
Yay for generalization

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vegancap
I said 'the tendency'. Also are you suggesting that alcohol isn't in anyway
physiologically or psychologically addictive?

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DanBC
Most people who drink problem do mot have any addiction to alcohol. That
includes many of the people with increased risk drinking. ("Increased risk" is
an English health thing. It includes men who drink more than about 21 to 28
units per week but less than 50 units per week; and women who drink more than
about 14 to 21 units per week but less than 50 units per week. Four bottles of
wine (with an ABV of 13%) would be 39 units.)

I'm not sure that the tendency is for people to increase their alcohol level
over time. (Apart from the obvious increase after they start drinking at about
18).

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Marwy
That's great news actually, and I hope scientist will keep studying this
topic. We need less drinkers, not more, even if the dosage is moderate.

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raverbashing
> We need less drinkers, not more, even if the dosage is moderate

Why? Because you don't like it?

I'd say the fact that humans metabolize alcohol (have evolved it) it's a
pretty good hint that there was an evolutionary pressure selecting for it.

I'd also hope for more study, but it's not like moderate uses of alcohol are
significantly bad (as opposed to a high consumption, of course)

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gambiting
>> it's a pretty good hint that there was an evolutionary pressure selecting
for it

Or it is just a random mutation that we never got rid of. It could be either
way.

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raverbashing
A random mutation that suffers no evolutionary pressure is usually spread
randomly across the population. Eye color for example.

As opposed of something that gives an advantage (like lactose tolerance or
falciform anemia) which usually spreads quickly, while those that don't have
that advantage died out.

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koja86
It might look entirely different if you take social pressure into account as
well.

