Some doctors would say a different thing.
“This might not be the answer people want to hear, but there is no safe level for drinking alcohol.”
https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention...
> Research has shown a lower risk of ischaemic events (heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes) among middle-aged and older, light-to-moderate drinkers. But the detrimental effects of alcohol far outweigh any potential protective benefits. An older person will get much greater health benefits from being physically active and eating healthy food than from alcohol.
... what? Someone should tell this guy that you can both have a drink and exercise. To paint it as a choice between the two is silly.
> alcohol doesn’t just harm the drinker; it’s related to violence on the street and in the family.
Having a glass of wine does not lead to "violence on the street and in the family" -- this is "War on Drugs" levels of disinformation.
Also most of family going back at least 3 generations are alcoholics.
For many years I had this weird sense that alcohol cleared up my head. But didn’t last long, and felt like crap later, so I almost never drink. Plus, watching family die young is good motivation to stay away.
So I have a pet theory that the reason a lot of my extended family fell into alcoholism is because it was a way to manage the disease even though they didn’t know they had it.
Been reading through support groups for years now. A noticeable cohort of people find relief via diet. Sugar=bad, mostly. But even things like tomatoes sometimes need to go.
Or conversely that the standard America Diet is so horrible, that if you have any possibility of an autoimmune condition, then diet will push you over the cliff.
Maybe this is a good public health tactic, to push people to a “lesser evil”, but according to meta-analyses like https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17478320/, there really is no safe level for alcohol. And even a “lesser evil” approach can be applied while being honest — know that when you’re drinking, it should always be pure indulgence, not under some false pretense of getting resveratrol or some other nonsense. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25670722/ provides something of an overview.
Apropos of nothing, sci dash hub dot se.
> Our meta-analytic results indicate that the few studies without this error (i.e., those that did not contaminate the abstainer category with occasional or former drinkers) show abstainers and "light" or "moderate" drinkers to be at equal risk for all-cause and CHD mortality.
Equal risk, or in other words, there was no increase in mortality from light or moderate drinking.
That quotation is from the first link, the meta-analysis "Moderate Alcohol Use and Reduced Mortality Risk: Systematic Error in Prospective Studies and New Hypotheses". It's a single piece of work focused on the "sick quitter" phenomenon, which only shows that light or "moderate" consumption is at best providing no benefit, as you say. This was the main thrust of my point -- it's not health-promoting. I did make a mistake and say that this meta-analysis justified a stronger claim though. I should have justified it using the second link.
The second link is an editorial, "Alcohol’s evaporating health benefits: Industry lobbying and promotion are rife and unchecked by governments". It's more of an overview of many studies and meta-analyses, and is the reference I should have given for my claim of "no safe level". Choice quotation and it's reference.
> A recent mendelian randomisation meta-analysis further concluded that “reductions of alcohol consumption, even for light to moderate drinkers, may be beneficial for cardiovascular health.” [16]
> [16] Holmes MV, Dale CE, Zuccolo L, Silverwood RJ, Guo Y, Ye Z, et al. Association between alcohol and cardiovascular disease: Mendelian randomisation analysis based on individual participant data. BMJ 2014;349:g4164
CHD is the number one killer in the US.
Indeed. I think I get the vast majority of my exercise whilst drunk.
Back, knee, and mood problems that prove obstaculous to exercise due to pain and fatigue are surmounted with the energizing and lubricating effects of alcohol.
Furthermore, occasional, moderate alcohol consumption has pretty minimal risks, all things considered, and eliminating every little thing in your life with low risk would leave you with an impossibly dull existence. You wanna live the safest possible life? Don't go anywhere (cars are terribly dangerous and biking has its risks too), don't have too much of a social life (other people can infect you with all kinds of things, even in normal years the flu kills 700k people/year), don't go near water, don't even go anywhere you might slip (fall deaths kill tens of thousands annually in the US!) And don't even think of running off to a farm somewhere to escape it all (more than half of all workplace fatalities occur on farms!) At some point, you just have to live, dammit, because living life in fear is not living life at all.
Anecdotally it seems that the people who take these things to the extremes (i.e. never have even a single drink because drinking alcohol is bad for you) tend to stress out about a lot of other things as well. Obviously if someone doesn't drink because they find the effects unpleasant that's different, but I'm talking about the kinds of people who for example are overly concerned about microplastics (to the point of not eating any food that has been stored in a plastic container), or air quality (co2 monitors in every room, etc), or diet (will not touch anything with nitrates, only eat unprocessed foods, etc).
To a point, yes all of these things are legitimately harmful to your health, but having this kind of mentality is also not great for your well-being. Really perhaps the highest health-yield lifestyle change they could make is to relax a bit more and try not to get stressed out as much through meditation/mindfulness
Not sure why, but SV in particular seems to attract a lot of people with this kind of mentality.
I'm going to take exception on this one. Alcohol acts as an _amazing_ pan deglazer and general solvent without any real substitute to carry flavors and aromas out of the pan and into the final dish. You don't even need much, maybe 2 tablespoons of wine get fond unstuck and dissolved. Some of it _does_ evaporate, you can literally watch it happen as it reduces in volume. You can flash evaporate a tablespoon of wine and return to a dry pan if it's hot enough. What it's not going to significantly evaporate out of is adding alcohol to an existing volume of liquid like a red sauce. It'll happen but not in an ideal or useful time frame. But for deglazing, try swapping your deglazing wine with broth, water or even vinegar and it's easy to see, smell, and taste that they are not functionally equivalent, an alcohol does the job so much better.
Now, if you or someone in your home has a problem with alcohol addiction or your religion forbids it, I'm not going to tell you to change your ways but for the average home cook (even a nondrinker) a bottle of wine kept next to the stove strictly for cooking purposes is an undeniably valuable tool.
You can be gainfully employed and meet your social responsibilities while having a beer or two on a Friday evening, as the majority of people are able to do.
I've never heard of this myth about the alcohol evaporating during dinner, so I won't comment on that - when I drink alcohol, I do so because I intend to consume said alcohol.
As for the potential for addictiveness, there are many things in life that certain people are not able to handle well, with ruinous effects on those people's lives. Unhealthy junk food for example, or even something seemingly innocuous like the ability to invest in the stock market. I tend towards the philosophy that we should not have the government ban those things, especially when the vast majority of people are able to enjoy those things responsibly. Certainly we can provide additional resources as a society to help those people, but lets not ban it for everyone else.
Drink to relax or drink for fun, but don't expect anyone to tell you to drink for your health.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...