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Comment by steelstraw | Hacker News Reader

Everything is a balance though, isn't it?

If a little alcohol reduces one's stress and increases socialization, then they may be better off with the alcohol on net.

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Yes, and the takeaway from this brief should not be "reduce your alcohol consumption to zero." It is instead, "know when you consume alcohol that there is no quantity that will produce no harm." That's a big departure from the previously accepted, and now thoroughly debunked, conventional wisdom that a small quantity is harmless or even beneficial.

It's not obvious that alcohol reduces stress.

Alcohol consumption increases cortisol production, so I'd say the opposite is true.

I had a doctor tell me it was probably preferable to have a beer after work to unwind than try to quit. I dunno, I think it's very dose and situation dependent. There are social aspects to drinking in our culture and being social has health benefits.

It's obvious to me that it reduces my stress. No study could convince me otherwise.

Always interesting when one group reports a subjective phenomenon, and someone else refutes their experience by pointing to an X mg/dL change in some serum test.

Obviously the experience is what matters, not what the machine says. Alcohol increases cortisol levels? Ok, all I know is I feel nice and relaxed right now.

Of course if I overdo it, or do it too often, then the next day will demand the debt repaid, or my baseline will shift upward. Ok, so don't overdo it.

You can get the same benefit of relaxed by making or buying a hops tincture in MCT Oil. The hops are what make a pilsner feel really relaxing. The pulse side is you don't have the harm from the alcohol.

Alcohol removes my anxiety/stress nearly every time I consume some. Depending on how much I consume the next day my anxiety could be worse though.

awareness of stress?

Does alcohol reduce stress or just delay it?

That common claim has a lot of asterisks/caveats, however: stress has many bad health effects and alcohol can reduce stress, but it does so while inducing many of the same phenomena that make stress dangerous (e.g. cardiac issues).

Increases socialization only because the culture is required to socialize over alcohol. In other societies, we socialize over tea and coffee.

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