
Is alcohol actually bad for you? - dimitar
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150901-is-alcohol-really-bad-for-you
======
seibelj
Despite what I would like to be true, I know from experience that alcohol
cannot possibly be healthy for me. Even with only 3 drinks, I feel slightly
off the next day, and if I binge and drink 6 to 10, I feel awful. Plus, my
memory feels a little fuzzier for a bit too.

I love alcohol and I don't plan on abstaining. But I don't fool myself that it
might be healthy for me. Drinking is a calculated decision, that I enjoy it
more than the risks to my health.

~~~
Domenic_S
If I run 15 miles tonight, my legs will be crazy sore tomorrow. I might not
even be able to walk up stairs. That's why I don't fool myself into thinking
running is good for me.

~~~
codyb
This analogy doesn't really hold because if you run 15 miles tomorrow, get
sore for three days, then run 15 miles when you're not sore again, you'll only
be sore for 2.5 days, and then 2, 1.5, 1, and 0 or whatever.

Where as with alcohol, you can never really _strengthen_ your body against a
hangover. And you certainly don't get stronger and healthier because of it.

~~~
Domenic_S
You absolutely can strengthen your body against a hangover; it's called
alcohol tolerance and it works quite similarly to exercise! It's why a casual
drinker will get drunk/hungover from a couple wine coolers and Grandpa Willie
can down a 5th of Jack nightly and barely feel it.

How something feels is not a reliable indicator of how good it is for you.
Exercise often feels terrible, but is good for you. Pizza and chocolate often
feels great, but is terrible for you.

~~~
mreiland
Incorrect, the reason a casual drinker gets a hangover is because they don't
know enough to keep themselves hydrated, whereas someone who is more
experienced will absolutely keep that water by their bed throughout the night.

~~~
waterlesscloud
That certainly minimizes hangover effects, but tolerance is why the habitual
drinker gets less drunk (if all other factors are equal).

~~~
gluelogic
Intoxication does not cause hangovers. Dehydration does.

~~~
ionised
That's a myth isn't it?

My understanding is that it was acetaldehyde accumulation that causes the
shitty feeling on a hangover.

You can down a bottle of whiskey and be hungover and dehydrated the next day.

You can also drink pint after pint of beer which is mostly water and feel
hungover, but it's not due to dehydration.

~~~
mreiland
The body uses water to process alcohol.

------
narrator
Alcohol's primary mechanism of screwing up your body is inhibiting
methylation[1][2]. There was a study of Harvard graduates that tracked how a
few hundred did into their 90s. To quote the study:

"In fact, alcoholism is the single strongest cause of divorce between the
Grant Study men and their wives. Alcoholism was also found to be strongly
coupled with neurosis and depression (which most often follows alcohol abuse,
rather than preceding it). Together with cigarette smoking, alcoholism proves
to be the #1 greatest cause of morbidity and death. And above a certain level,
intelligence doesn’t prevent the damage. "[3]

1\.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20868231](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20868231)

2\.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24313162](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24313162)

3\. [http://www.recoverystories.info/75-years-in-the-making-
harva...](http://www.recoverystories.info/75-years-in-the-making-harvard-just-
released-its-epic-study-on-what-men-need-to-live-a-happy-life/)

~~~
thomyorkie
I think everyone agrees that alcoholism or chronic alcohol abuse is bad for
you. The interesting question is if moderate or light use is correlated with
longevity.

~~~
clickok
...but there's all sorts of confounds there, too. Like is a lifestyle that
features moderate drinking more likely to include longevity promoting things
like exercise, friends, and financial security?

I am not sure how easy this could be to study-- swearing off alcohol for life
as part of a science experiment sounds like a sitcom plot; anyone who goes
along with it may not be representative of the general population.

~~~
Jtsummers
It seems we need more lifelong study participants. No one would have to
deliberately swear it off as a part of the study if the population was large
enough. Statistically we'd end up with enough individuals who don't drink or
rarely drink.

~~~
greglindahl
You're describing an observational study, which has significant scientific
problems compared to a randomized study.

Sure, you can end up with a lot of non-drinkers, but you will have to attempt
to correct for the fact that they probably won't be similar to drinkers.

A randomized study starts off with 2 very similar populations. You still have
to worry about dropouts skewing the results, but at least you started off on
the right foot.

------
eatmyshorts
It's been a long while ago now, but I recall reading some actuarial studies
that indicated that moderate drinking improved life expectancy. Did these fall
victim to the same bias mentioned in the OP article? Did they not account
properly for people that stopped drinking at some point due to health issues?

IIRC, I recall reading that the over/under on life expectancy was 6(!) drinks
per day for regular drinkers. I recall thinking how high that was at the time.
Now I wonder if it was just another case of lies, damned lies, and statistics.

------
stinos
What I never got is the studies are about alcohol consumption but the people
in the studies never drink pure alcohol but instead wine/beer/whiskey/you name
it. Isn't there a chance that it isn't the alcohol which provides some of the
effects but rather something else in the beverage of choice? Take wine for
instance, what would be the effects of drinking 2 glasses of some kind of
grape/fruit-derived drink every day vs not drinking it?

~~~
nextweek2
A very slim chance, alcohol is the common ingredient to all of those drinks.
Alcohol is a muscle relaxant and lowers inhibitions, these qualities make it
ideal for stress relief. Which is why it is so popular.

Pure alcohol is toxic, so studying its effects is kind of hard.

~~~
spdionis
Actually it's easy but the results are pretty obvious...

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alephu5
I'm not sure the reductionist approach is the best for this. Many people use
alcohol to find mates and court, or socialise with friends; both of which lead
to measurable mental and physical health benefits.

People who drink recreationally are, in my experience, more likely to eat
greasy processed foods and have irregular sleep patterns.

I think that the body provides enough feedback about its state to let you make
an informed choice.

------
barking
FWIW I heard a liver specialist on the radio earlier this year say that all
alcohol consumption is damaging, the less of it you consume the less damage it
does to you and that's it. He said that as an admitted social drinker himself.

~~~
dragonwriter
> FWIW I heard a liver specialist on the radio earlier this year say that all
> alcohol consumption is damaging, the less of it you consume the less damage
> it does to you and that's it.

All alcohol consumption is damaging to your liver, sure. That's relatively
non-controversial.

That doesn't imply, however, that there is not some level of alcohol
consumption where the negative impacts to the liver are outweighed by positive
impacts elsewhere such that it actually is a net positive for longevity.

------
powera
The answer is "Yes", alcohol is bad for you.

Of course, it tastes good, so people want to believe these very specific
studies. And ignore any of the confounding evidence in the second half of the
article (such as the fact that people who drink moderately are healthy enough
to do so).

~~~
ryandvm
That is an awfully weak argument: "Yes, it's bad. Ignore the facts."

The reality is that moderate drinkers flat out live longer than alcoholics
_and_ teetotalers. Fairly hard to come to the conclusion that it's "bad for
you" unless your definition of bad doesn't consider... you know... not dying.

~~~
scott_s
What you said does not match up with the article. What facts are you talking
about? The article is clear that when you control for former drinkers, the
benefits go away.

I am a moderate drinker; usually a drink or two a week. So I would like it to
be true that this is somehow beneficial to me, but I am very skeptical of that
idea, and the evidence I have seen supports my skepticism.

------
ars
If it's that hard to figure out if it's good or bad, then it's probably
neither.

~~~
cnp
Its not hard to figure out. All of the indicators point to it being bad.

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theworstshill
Depends for what purpose. If you sense your mind is beginning to work like a
finite state machine and you're stuck in an unfavorable cycle, a few good
drinks can certainly break the pattern, at a price of a few brain cells. Its
good in moderation.

------
VLM
Its interesting that the article was entirely top down driven by statistics,
and most of the discussion here is anecdotal.

Looking bottom up from a biochemistry point of view:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_metabolism)

First there's ethanol itself. Enough in your bloodstream will quite
effectively kill you. It doesn't take much. Its a poison and the liver will
drop everything to save your life by converting it as fast as it can. It has
some tranquilizing effect on the brain which is the likely source of improved
lifespan... lower psychological stress leads to lower blood pressure, lower
adrenaline levels, etc. Fun as it is to get high, that stuff is really bad for
you. On to the first hop.

The acetaldehyde conversion stage is a good strong kick in the liver. Its
clearly a net negative for the liver with no possible, no imaginable,
redeeming characteristics. Dosing the rest of your body with acetaldehyde is
clearly not wise and its quite neurotoxic once theres enough. Not as bad as
ethanol, but poisonous, sure. I am a little fuzzy on what causes more damage
and kills people, the ethanol in the blood or the acetaldehyde output in both
long and short run. Its interesting that kids don't express the correct
proteins to clean up poisonous ethanol and its all fuzzy what is meant by
"adult". Obviously fetus-grade young will be totally screwed up by ethanol and
the immature liver's attempt at cleaning it up. At teen age, I donno, the
normal adult response should have kicked in? Tolerance should build as teens
age, I think? I think a kid that can feed itself and walk and all that is
probably medically safe to drink in small amounts?

The oxidation to acetic acid isn't too awful. Hard on your Vit B and Vit C
stockpile. Acetic acid is great for making pickles, not that you'd want to
pickle your internal organs. Its none the less less toxic than the previous
step (you see the path of ever lower toxicity...) This is the step that's
wildly genetically variable across races in our species. Most "whites" have
the strong enzymes to devour acetaldehyde quite effectively, most asians not
so much, they stew their innards in acetaldehyde, which will probably have
some kind of statistical result in the top down studies. Or maybe the lifespan
effects of alcohol in the top down analysis have no racial component implying
its nothing to do with the acetaldehyde pathway. Acetaldehyde is specifically
toxic to kidneys and I've never gotten a straight answer about alcohols
legendary diuretic effect as self preservation or is it merely happy
coincidence. I'm pretty sure that if alcohol didn't make you pee you'd have
heavy abusers dying of kidney failure rather than liver.

Now we're at the acetic acid stage. Very few people die of pickle poisoning
from eating too many dill pickles. Then again soaking your blood in it for
decades is likely not totally wise. At this stage I'd call it "mostly
harmless" and stop excessive worrying.

The next hop is to some funky intermediate that basically tosses acetyl
carbons into the right place to join up with the big ole citric acid energy
cycle later on. Its more or less on the carb and fat metabolism pathway,
nothing too far off the map as long as you don't consume ridiculous quantities
(like enough to make you fat beer belly). Now we're at the point where
slamming a cup of soda or fruit juice or lard would be biochemically mostly
indistinguishable from slamming booze. Of course in the top down study maybe
having the time and money to slam a fruit smoothie would have the same top
down study long term results, I donno.

The final hop is the harmless-ish intermediate becomes part of the boring
harmless normal citric acid cycle. Thats boring and theres nothing
"interesting" about alcohol once it hits this stage, other than maybe getting
fat. This is a rather normal and boring energy processing cycle.

Anyway thats the biochemical bottom up analysis to compare to the article. So
your brain chills, which might help with mental health and stress related
cardiovascular stuff. Its a hard kick in the liver best avoided if at all
possible. And later on its outright bad for your kidneys. How this all
balances up I donno. Frankly if you want to chill your brain a little there
are helpful little pills that'll do the same thing without the giant kick in
the liver or punch to the kidney. Or inhale some nitrous oxide laughing gas or
something. From a bottom up analysis ethanol is not looking all that good, its
basically a crappy poison. If it were not socially popular, it would have a
rep as being the shittiest illegal drug ever, right up there with drinking
cough syrup to get high.

~~~
venomsnake
You seem to conveniently forget that the liver is the most easy to repair
tissue in your body. We regularly remove 2/3rds of a person liver during live
donors transplants and it regrows in a couple of months.

------
LinuxBender
In this thread: people in denial about damage from alcohol.

------
cnp
Alcohol is the Angriest of Gods*

*and also the greediest

~~~
mohaine
Well, it actually exists so I'm pretty sure it (and everything else proven to
exist) wins those comparisons.

------
hapless
"Yes"

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a8da6b0c91d
A whole lot of these epidemiological results largely boil down to IQ. You see
it over and over again as the missing factor. People with higher IQs drink
more. High IQ is independently linked to better health and longer lifespan,
almost certainly at the physiological level. They don't live longer because of
smart things they do, they are smart because they're healthy. So from the
epidemiological data you get the false impression that things smart people
tend to do reduce disease or increase lifespan.

~~~
powera
How are you supposed to measure this IQ?

I could be wrong, but I don't believe traditional IQ tests give a significant
correlation to life-span once you control for environment. (though I think
it's clear that _wealthy_ people live longer and drink more)

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
You measure with an IQ test. They work very well.

The longevity-IQ correlation is robust.

~~~
ketralnis
Can you point me to a source for this?

------
scotty79
I think
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)
should be amended with "... unless the question contains word actually. Then
it can be answered with word yes."

