
No Amount of Alcohol Use Is Safe, Analysis of Studies Finds - srameshc
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-23/no-amount-of-alcohol-use-is-safe-analysis-of-studies-finds
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bluewater
For anyone that’s looking to drink less or moderate their consumption I’d
recommend a book by Annie grace called this naked mind. I’m about two weeks
past finishing the book and although I haven’t stopped drinking, I’ve had the
first real mental shift in how I view alcohol consumption. She was a high
functioning, heavy drinker and she dives into the unconscious mind and
societal norms/pressures around consuming alcohol. I have a hard time
picturing a life without ever drinking again (which is sad in and of itself)
but I’m on the mental path of reducing considerably without counting drinks or
time till I can have my next one.

~~~
oceanghost
I'd recommend AA.

~~~
oceanghost
Not sure why someone would downvote this. I myself am a member. If you have a
drinking problem you can't control, come to a meeting please.

~~~
headShrinker
If you have a problem get help. That said, AA was started by a group that had
no idea about physiology of addiction but definitely understood ‘God’... It
gets tons of support and money from private and government and its completely
unchecked and its validity remains untested next to other methods. AA has a
13% 7 year success rate, which is pretty dismal. There are better ways to
treat addiction. To be honest I don’t know of them because AA sucked all the
air out of the room.

I also personally don’t like it that, anytime someone demonstrates they have
an a very functional understanding of drinking and their intake and can
control its many facets through a multitude of different means indicating that
they are in no way under some spell of blind addiction, people are still so
quick and judgemental to assume they have a problem, a disease, an addition
that they aren’t handling and should get help from a group of people who
really don’t know what they are doing with regard to the psychology of
addiction.

Something no one will ever tell you is, most people go through a period of
heavy drinking at some point in their lives and will miraculously let up on
consumption all on their own without the help of a 12 step group.

~~~
oceanghost
Those are all fair points. I'm sorry if I came across as condescending.

AA worked for me, but only at the point that _I_ wanted to change. Most of the
people I see coming in day after day-- they're court ordered--they don't want
to be there, they don't think they have a problem, so I would have no trouble
believing that 13%.

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uhryks
I thought the article was about how even small amounts of alcohol were bad for
the health but there's just a line about it and no link to the study. The rest
is about heavy drinkers, which seems like nothing new.

~~~
Engineering-MD
This is generally true for most of these studies. They rarely look at low
alcohol consumption, and then extrapolate to it being true for all levels.
They also tend to quite heavily correct for morbidity among those who drink no
alcohol. It’s a good idea, but often not made clear to the end reader.

My general perception is that maybe small amounts of alcohol aren’t
necessarily good for you (which was previously thought) and may just be
neutral. Moderate drinking certainly doesn’t seem as significant for
morbidity/mortality as smoking or obesity from the current evidence.

Plus at the end of the day, everything carries risk. It is about deciding what
is worth a slight risk. I don’t get the focus on demonising small amounts of
alcohol. Even if it increases risk slightly, it provides joy to many people
and encourages socialisation- important to improving both quality of life and
health. There are much bigger fish to fry than moderate alcohol consumption.

~~~
eggy
I call the category of low alcohol consumption into question as being
substantial enough of a number to create an argument against the ill-effects
of worldwide alcohol consumption. Is it the yearly total, factoring in several
days of binge drinking? I am 54, and have lived and traveled the world, and I
have rarely met people who only have one drink every few days or so, or if
they did, are now mid-to-high alcohol consumers. Like a cancer it grows. I
have given up drinking several times in my life, and I currently do not drink.
Alcohol culture and marketing seems the same everywhere except when I spent a
year living in Indonesia, or traveling to less developed areas in the world.
No signs and billboards, no print or TV ads, or conversations with people
mentioning how hungover they were, or looking forward to drinking over the
weekend, or drinking and driving and making it home somehow, all created a
stark and telling context when returning to the US after 8 years overseas. At
my current workplace, alcohol is talked about by my young colleagues in a
large percentage of their conversation and with passion. The romance and
addiction associated with alcohol probably fogs the eyes of those trying to be
objective when studying it.

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newnewpdro
This [0] was previously on HN, and it changed my attitude towards alcohol
consumption into one much closer to abstinence.

In the past I've used Cysteine and Thiamine supplements for effective hangover
prevention [1]. But after learning the same acetaldehyde largely responsible
for the hangover effects is carcinogenic. Having had experienced firsthand the
effectiveness of Cysteine targeting the acetaldehyde _in_ _my_ _head_ , it
became very clear consuming this poison, ethanol, should be avoided in
general.

[0] [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/did-drinking-
gi...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/did-drinking-give-me-
breast-cancer/)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysteine#Reducing_toxic_effect...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysteine#Reducing_toxic_effects_of_alcohol)

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dang
> The main causes of alcohol-related deaths in the 15-to-49 age group were
> tuberculosis, road injuries and self-harm

Tuberculosis? That's interesting.

~~~
rdtsc
> the biggest drinkers were in European countries. The average Romanian man
> drank the equivalent of 8.2 bottles of beer a day in 2016, the most in the
> world.

Tuberculosis is more common in Eastern Europe. Poor, homeless or incarcerated
people often get it. Those segments are more likely to abuse alcohol. Not sure
on the direct causation part. It weakens the immune system perhaps.

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im3w1l
When the scientific conclusions are rapidly changing like this, I hope our
leaders will have the wisdom to change recommendations and policy slowly while
this plays out.

~~~
DanBC
This isn't a rapid change. We've known this for years.

The only reason people are unsure about this is the multi-million dollar
industry spending huge amounts on bad science and press releases.

~~~
babaganoosh89
Multi-million? More like hundreds of billions.

[https://www.statista.com/topics/1709/alcoholic-
beverages/](https://www.statista.com/topics/1709/alcoholic-beverages/)

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nugga
Remember that, no matter how commonly used it is, alcohol is still a
neurotoxic solvent whose purpose is to diminish or impair cognitive function
to various ends.

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verrecken
I will not read an article where the first thing happening is the embeded
video starting to play. I do not event whant to load that Video on my mobile
phone if i do not click on it. If i open a Video site on YouTube, i know that
i want to See a Video, but even there the Video doesnt load without my
interaction. If i open an article, i definitly dont want to watch a Video.

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vixen99
While it's true that there is undisputed epidemiological evidence as to
positive effects of moderate alcohol use on health for some people, at the
molecular level there's no getting away from the toxicity of ethanol and its
breakdown product - the unpleasantly reactive acetaldehyde. Ethanol itself
denatures proteins. Certainly a conundrum. Maybe part of the answer is in the
side effects of the enhanced detoxification mechanisms in the liver in
response to alcohol intake. I suspect there are some interesting findings that
await discovery.

~~~
DanBC
> While it's true that there is undisputed epidemiological evidence as to
> positive effects of moderate alcohol use on health for some people

Where "some people" only includes women over 50, and "moderate drinking" means
"three or four drinks per week" \- far less than most people think of as
moderate drinking, especially in the UK where 2 large glasses of wine a day is
seen as normal.

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RickJWagner
Yeah, I think there's value in this. I stopped drinking about 15 years ago,
it's been very beneficial.

I really think others would probably benefit as well.

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dev_north_east
I'll just wait for the next study that says it's great for you.

~~~
etatoby
Considering the power and money at stake in the alcohol industry, the presence
of even one study proving that any alcohol level is bad for you, would be
worrying. The fact that it's not just one study, but many, is more than
enough.

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tinus_hn
Sorry but I’m pretty sure drinking 1 glass of beer every day is not going to
cause a major increase in road injuries or self harm. That just doesn’t make
sense.

~~~
DanBC
They're talking about a small effect across a large population on an uncommon
event.

Your small glass of beer most days isn't doing much to you, but across the
population it means you have thousands of extra accidents.

~~~
tinus_hn
[https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa...](https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-
drv_factsheet.html)

Even the slight effects start at 2 glasses.

This kind of statement is as useful as the ‘all products are known to the
state of California to cause cancer’ stickers.

