How Much Alcohol Is Safe to Drink? None, Say These Researchers | Hacker News Reader

How Much Alcohol Is Safe to Drink? None, Say These Researchers

nytimes.com

"Researchers". You mean people desperately trying to make a name for themselves with exaggerated pseudoscientific claims. The amount of food/diet related "studies" that have been retracted,contradicted and rinse/repeat is so staggering that "news" companies should stop publishing it because it's more harmful to the public than anything.

"Benefits of moderate alcohol consumption such as wine include a 30% reduction in the risk of heart attack compared to non-drinkers, a finding that has been repeated over 30 years and in various countries, according to Eric Rimm, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition who has been researching the effects of alcohol and chronic disease for decades at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Additionally, alcohol consumption has been associated with a 30% to 40% reduction in the risk of Type 2 diabetes, compared to those who don't drink. "

https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/21/health/wine-healthy-food-dray...

How about moderation? I can't wait for the next studies:

"How much salt is safe to consume? None, Say These "Researchers"".

"How much sugar is safe to consume? None, Say These "Researchers"".

"How much water is safe to consume? None, Say These "Researchers"".

They forgot to consider the 'brave new world' effect -- society crumbles if people don't get their soma.

Ideally we should also skip or go easy on the best tasting food. Oh well..

One drink a day is quite a bit of drinking compared to what I consider normal, and the difference between 914/100,000 and 918/100,000 is small.

I'd say the advice that you can drink in light or moderate amounts without any significant risk is still sound. But if you're not inclined to drink for other reasons, you shouldn't start doing so for your health.

I don't know what circumstances you live under where that's the case. Most people don't limit to one, but also don't drink every day. In much of the US 5-8 beers, or similar mixed drinks is a totally normal, not even a heavy drinking night. This is repeated 2-5 nights a week, though some nights might be more like 1-3 drinks. I'm talking about standard alcohol units here.

My theory/rule is that drinking 3-4+ in one session is what causes liver damage, and your body is otherwise able to recover from 1-2 drinks (and also not build tolerance).

I have no data for this however it is consistent with my preference for moderation.

What you described sounds like a lot, and it doesn’t sound like it allows for recovery.

Even with fond remembrance and sometimes not-so-remembrance of my University days in Bavaria, where beer is a big part of the culture, that sounds excessive to me. Unless you mean that those weeks are spread out sparsely over a longer time?

Not really. Keep in mind that I'm talking standard units, while users are drinking 1.5-2 units per drink. They'd drink 3 at the bar (4-6) without thinking anything of it, with pre-games / nightcaps possible. This could be easily repeated 3 times every week, possibly more.

I still don't get it. What demographic are we talking about here? Who goes to a bar 2-5 times a week? Again, even as a student, where we actually would have had the time (not all the time, but definitely stretches of), going out in such close succession would only happen occasionally, at best, even for the more, um, "ambitious" people I knew. Now after university, I can't even imagine going to a bar after work more than once in a few months (and even then, keep the alcohol intake at a minimum).

And here you are talking about 5-8 beers on a single evening, which definitely qualifies as "getting drunk", with loss of control (not necessarily unexpectedly or with grave consequences), hangover, and everything, and then repeating that multiple times per week? Maybe US beer is less strong than German beer, but that's not really my experience here in San Francisco.

At a sustained rate, I think even amongst university students in drink-happy countries that qualifies as alcoholic.

> I still don't get it. What demographic are we talking about here? Who goes to a bar 2-5 times a week?

Plenty of people. I don't understand what you're so confused by. 5x per week @ 5-8 is the high end, and I'm not talking about actual cups. They aren't ordering 5 separate beers, everything is 16-24 ounces.

> And here you are talking about 5-8 beers on a single evening, which definitely qualifies as "getting drunk"

There's a lot of people that wouldn't count 5 beers as "getting drunk", especially if spaced out. Buzzed sure, but not approaching drunk.

> Maybe US beer is less strong than German beer, but that's not really my experience here in San Francisco.

In this day and age, it's much stronger, and I'm accounting for that.

> At a sustained rate, I think even amongst university students in drink-happy countries that qualifies as alcoholic.

I think you'd be wrong, university was mental. People would drink that much before they even went out. I'm not the first person to point out the normalized drinking culture. Most people don't map out their drinking and fully consider the health implications. They tend to underestimate and report.

There was a (UK) film about this called Drinkers like me. The guy said he didn't think he had a drinking problem, his friends would laugh at the idea, but he was clocking over 100 units per week (note that 1 unit != 1 drink). As long as you're "social", not obsessed, or fixating on it, people think nothing of it.

5-8 beers, 2-5 nights a week is a ton. This is not typical for most drinkers. That's up to 40 beers a week. 5+ drinks in a row is the definition of binge drinking.

https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/binge-drinking.htm

"One in six US adults binge drinks about four times a month"

Your "normal" is as many nights per week as the CDC claims per month, and the CDC claims this for only 17% of the population. Put another way, your "normal" is 4x as often and at least 3x more common than reality.

If you're hanging out with people drinking this much all the time, then you may have normalized it, but it's absolutely not normal for "much of the US".

Simply put, what the government describes as normal (or ideal) is far different than what the alcohol-consuming populace considers normal.

(Side thought: Some of the risks in that article are suspect. STDs and domestic violence? Those are reflections of the individuals using the drug, not the drug itself.)

This isn’t the case of the CDC describing what should be normal. I quoted a statistic about actual consumption to contrast the anecdotal claim that binge drinking up to 5 times/week is “typical”.

Now, if you don’t like the standard definition of “binge drinking” that’s fine. 40 beers/week is still very, very far from typical.

Edit: I don't find the risks to be particularly suspect. Drinking lowers inhibitions and reduces ability to engage in critical thinking. Drunk people regularly do stuff they regret later, ranging from saying embarrassing things to driving intoxicated to getting into physical fights with strangers, friends, and partners. Certainly the person having unprotected sex or assaulting their partner is responsible for their actions, but alcohol also makes those actions more likely.

Certainly agree that 5x a week isn't normal or generally healthy.

Risk-takers and mean people are more commonly heavy consumers of alcohol. They like the feeling as it eggs them on and self-justifies their actions.

But this does not mean that heavy consumers of alcohol are uncontrollably pushed to emulate the former.

Basically, the bad folks always ruin it for the docile rest of us.

> Basically, the bad folks always ruin it for the docile rest of us.

To some extent, yes. But those who want to normalize and justify their drinking also wish to absolve alcohol of all association with these things even though alcohol absolutely increases their incidence.

You see the same bias in people who want to believe that drinking moderately is healthier than abstaining. There's nothing actually supporting this, but the few flawed studies that show some minor benefit get published over and over in the news because it's what people want to hear. In reality once you filter out people who abstain specifically because of their health, all cause mortality goes up with any level of drinking.

I was leaving plenty of room on the high end. In much of the USA, people would not be shocked by a young person who exhibited these behaviors, unless you mapped it out for them (then it starts to sink in). I guess there's some poor choice of words here. What was meant is "not abnormal or troubling" to much of the population.

> 40 beers/week is still very, very far from typical.

I don't know that it's as far as you think. I based much of my comment on a documentary from the UK that matches my observations. The guy found when he actually counted correctly he was over 100 units (~30-50 beers), yet no one considered him an alcoholic. I've noticed similar trends if you look at "social drinkers" and do accurate counting.

100% agree about the risk factors being reasonable. You're more likely to be the victim and perpetrator of crime, or be injured.

Well put. I should have specified that I was talking about people who drink regularly. Looking at large populations aren't that useful here, as many people simply opt out, because they're sick, religion, or just don't like it.

While I agree that the some of the risks are suspect, I tend to think the question is "how much risk are you willing to accept"?

IMO it's appropriate to consider things like STDs, injury, violence, abuse, and incarceration as risks. These problems are common among drinkers due to the heavy impairment alcohol causes.

I'm well aware that this isn't healthy, but it is the norm within much of the US. There was some unfortunate use of "most" and "much". However, the point is that this type of behavior is extremely normalized.

The cited percentages don't mean much to me, except I will take your point that I should have used words more carefully. 17% might sound tiny, but I don't think it makes much sense to look at the total population here.

There are quite a few people who don't drink at all, or very little (to the point that I wouldn't call them "drinkers"). I should have specified that the populations I'm looking at are 18-35 year old "drinkers". The cited behavior wouldn't be shocking at all within this group, and would absolutely be considered normal. The problem is somewhat masked by the fact 16 oz or larger beers are common these days.

From what I've heard CA/UK/AU isn't doing much better. I'd highly recommend the documentary "Drinkers like me". It features a middle aged man in UK, who's not considered an alcoholic by friends slow realization, that his drinking might not be as moderate as he thinks; and that society may normalize alcohol abuse.

> 17% might sound tiny, but I don't think it makes much sense to look at the total population here.

It's not just the population, though. Your binge frequency is 4 times higher than that of the CDC report, meaning that you're really discussing some population much smaller than 17%. My guess is that you're probably covering about 5% of population with your example.

Even when I was in college this wasn't normal. There were certainly people who drank this much, and given the frequency of binge drinking, they could fit in without being so obvious. But people who admitted to drinking a case of beer a week were very rare.

5% is one out of twenty people. That's not very rare, when you consider these things tend to have a lopsided distribution. You have to be careful with statistics, because in our minds numbers like 5-17% are minuscule, but the reality is that's not uncommon. If you were to consider this drinking pattern a disease (we'll call it "borderline alcohol abuse"), it would be considered "very common", since there are over 3 million cases (16 million +)

> Your binge frequency is 4 times higher than that of the CDC report

I think you're exaggerating a bit. I present a wide range and you're focusing on the highest end of it. The low end would be much more reasonable, though not completely healthy.

> But people who admitted to drinking a case of beer a week were very rare.

That's kinda the point. People aren't admitting it or being realistic with how much they drink (I'd be willing to bet these statistics are low also). A guy in the UK started counting and was over 100 units (~30-50 beers). Nobody thought he was an alcoholic at all. It's just a bit of fun social drinking. Of course you're gonna go out with boys after your beer league hockey game (where you had 1-3 beers in the locker room), later in the week there's trivia, and you have to go to Mark's party. Oh, and you like to have a beer or two with the game (forgetting you frequently grab 3). After a stressful day of work you have a drink or two, so what? In my experience, this kind of behavior is totally normalized; I'm not the first person to notice.

For what it is worth, I would guess most people under report their drink totals to surveys. Also, just using the following link:

https://www.alcohol.org/bac-calculator/

BAC can range greatly depending on size and gender. For a 200 pound guy, seven beers over three hours is close in BAC to four for a 120 pound woman. Age I would guess is also a factor. Three drinks would definitely would have a much larger effect on my in my thirties versus in my early twenties.

I probably drink 2-5 beers per year. A glass of wine once every few months. What you describe sounds excessive and a great way to get future health problems.

This study has a 95% uncertainty interval, and their conclusion is that alcohol consumption increases your risk from: 918 per 100,000 people from 914 per 100,000.

..I'd argue their conclusion is meaningless given the uncertainty interval.

Why the repost? This article is from last year.

No drug is ‘safe.’ But they save lives.

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