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Comment by uhryks | Hacker News Reader

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.

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The title directly contradicts an article that appeared recently in the Guardian [1] (although as you say the title hardly seems appropriate given the content of the article)

A slightly better summary can be found at [2] which explains the differences better (i.e. moderate drinking lowers risk of dementia and heard disease, but increases the chance of e.g. accidents)

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/03/alcoho...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45283401

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.

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.

We know that women over 50 may get some small benefit from drinking low amounts of alcohol regularly - about 2 small glasses of wine a week.

We know those advantages don't happen for anyone else.

The evidence is unclear to the general public because a multi-million dollar industry (especially in the UK) keeps pushing inaccurate information to print media who suck at science and health reporting.

> There are much bigger fish to fry than moderate alcohol consumption.

When we ask people how much they drink they all say "not much", and then when we check what they actually drink it's often far more.

Here's a guy who thought he was drinking moderately when he was drinking far more than the recommended maximum.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45262469

Here's the link to the study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

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