Study disproves the theory that light alcohol consumption benefits heart health | Hacker News Reader

Study disproves the theory that light alcohol consumption benefits heart health

sciencedaily.com

77 pointshubraumhugo60 comments

I have a hard time believing alcohol has any positive health effects other than socializing. What it does to your sleep alone is highly problematic, and even one drink at happy hour affects your sleep.

Nothing is better for your health than sleep.

Not so sure about that causation. There's nothing helping me more to sleep than being healthy.

It’s a cycle. Lose one. You’ll lose the other.

I don't know. I've been feeling ill and sleeping lots, and when healthy sleeping 6h and waking up refreshed.

On the other hand, if you don't sleep as much as your body requires, it's a road to hell.

At an extreme, refraining from arsenic and salmonella is better for your health than sleep. I have a hard time believing there's nothing reasonable in between that's also better than sleep.

I had sleep problems a while ago, and have another perspective.

I don't want to say that alcohol works against sleep problems, because in my experience it generally doesn't. Just like I don't want to say that food does — eating when not hungry is bad. But still, when I couldn't sleep you might find me in the kitchen with a bottle of bock beer, or I might have a glass of milk and a banana. Both of those gave a decent chance of sleep, if I didn't repeat them too often. Better, somehow more realistic sleep than my pills.

Alcohol may result in below-average sleep, but depending on where you are, reaching a below-average status may be good or bad, see?

fair enough! there are times when it probably is the best option

I have a hard time believing that alcohol would only have 'negative' effects on health. It seems unlikely.

“People who drank heavily had the highest risk. However, the team also found that light to moderate drinkers tended to have healthier lifestyles than abstainers -- such as more physical activity and vegetable intake, and less smoking.” That’s surprising if you think abstainers are vegan fitness freaks stereotype, less surprising if it’s actually pretentious stoner stereotype. Low to moderate alcohol points to being in control and reasonable, no alcohol points to substitution. There’s also a funny thing where the pretentious stoner decides smoking is bad and moves onto nangs.

“… analyses also revealed substantial differences in cardiovascular risk across the spectrum of alcohol consumption … minimal increases in risk when going from zero to seven drinks per week, much higher risk increases when progressing from seven to 14 drinks per week, and especially high risk when consuming 21 or more drinks per week… findings suggest a rise in cardiovascular risk even at levels deemed "low risk"… (of one or two drinks per day)” So one to two every day puts you in 7-14 per week which is moderate. So it becomes 1-2 a day is fine but that doesn’t literally mean do it 365 days a year. Orrrrr that one party a week of 7 drinks is the way to go!

Are we also talking about heart disease and drug use? Heart disease and coping? Heart disease and quality of life? Because it seems like we are in that although alcohol bad, somehow alcohol good, or rather alcohol not as bad as not alcohol?

There’s an episode of doctor House where a guy slams cough medicine and vodka to make himself dumber and he proclaims it’s worth it even at the cost of his health.

Doctor House also mentions type a and type b personality, type a being a big risk of heart disease from being (angrily passionate) all the time. Is wiping yourself out, or a 7 drink party once a week, like a form of psychiatric sleep? Be a dumbass for a bit every now and then and your heart won’t explode? Pick something to allow you to belly laugh and not worry for a bit?

>That’s surprising if you think abstainers are vegan fitness freaks stereotype, less surprising if it’s actually pretentious stoner stereotype.

I suspect a substantial portion of abstainers are former heavy drinkers or people with other health problems.

This shows some general weaknesses of observation studies:

- Participants couldn't accurately estimate the amount of alcohol they drank

- People change their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed(Hawthorne effect)

- Moderate drinking correlates with a healthier lifestyle

Yeah, I've long thought that the "light drinking is healthy" effect was more like "people who regularly drink alcohol but stop at one are probably restrained in their other consumption, while there are plenty of non-drinkers who have terrible diets and have trouble putting down the fork."

I find observational studies only useful in suggesting what to investigate next. It’s not helpful to build theories or anything resembling science on.

It is a Mendelian randomization based study of observational data. This is much more that JUST observational. See Pearl’s Book of Why on how causality can be tested by MR.

This is really bad editorializing: the original uses "challenges", while this uses "disproves". "Disproves" is not appropriate in any empirical setting, doubly so where there are constant back-and-forth "no, your results are wrong" publications.

Pardon the ignorance but did you mean non-empirical? If one has empirical evidence to contradict, is that not disproving?

empirical meaning new statistical data? which is more data, but does not 'disprove' the old data, whereas perhaps a non-empirical analysis of previous studies could theoretically 'disprove' earlier conclusions, by demonstrating how these conclusions were erroneously reached.

at least i think that's how those terms are used..

Empirical as in observational, which means others can reproduce and observe as well?

empirical data shows that something happened, not that it will happen again

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

In mathematics or other formal systems you can disprove a statement. In empirical studies that's a literally impossible bar to meet, indicating infinite certainty.

Obviously, white wine helps with white blood cells, and red wine helps with red blood cells!

Beer is one of the pleasures that make life worth living.

YMMV. I cut out alcohol and my life overall has become better and more enjoyable. Alcohol can become a crutch when it's a pre-requisite to relaxing or having a good time, and then the side effects begin to make other aspects of life much worse. It's nice to be able to have fun without needing a drink first.

I think the biggest thing that made me stop drinking was learning how much even small amounts of alcohol negatively impact sleep quality, and how important sleep is for mental health and mood.

A big part of the problem is that the alcohol industry has had such a profoundly successful marketing campaign that they have actually embedded nonsense beliefs into the culture.

They have convinced society that A) it's almost impossible to really enjoy oneself in a social setting without alcohol and B) anyone who has multiple negative behavioral incidents related to alcohol must by definition be severely genetically deficient (rather than the alcohol having any blame for their behavior).

And C)you relax from a stressful situation by drinking, like going to the bar after a difficult day.

That’s true, along with countless other pleasures which aren’t literal poison. So at some point many of us just stick to the healthy pleasures that make life worth living.

Figurative, not literal poison. Unless you mean poison as in a substance that can cause serious harm under certain conditions. But then avoiding all such 'poisons' would probably not be that healthy.

Pretty literal IMO. Alcohol poisoning kills thousands of people every year.

Then in that case water is literal poison as is just about everything else if too much is consumed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

Alcohol is more poisonous than water but less poisonous than arsenic, the main unresolved question is how much alcohol is "safe", arsenic is regulated to certain amounts in food and drinking water to be considered a "safe" amount.

I think this is a common fallacy. We need water to survive. If there is safer way to survive without drinking water, please let us know. However, I am certain that anyone can survive without alcohol.

We can survive without the being in the sun and the sun gives us cancer, do you want to live without the sun?

Not everything we do should be judged on that basis, many things we do for enjoyment that are not required for living have risks associated with them alcohol included.

I just want good information on how risky alcohol is to make an informed decision.

Yes, if there wouldn't be any issue with Vitamin D I would prefer to live without sun. There is reason why I use sunscreen.

People take drugs for enjoyment too. There are reasons why many drugs are banned. There are few drugs that are less lethal than alcohol.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cocaine-ecst...

The problem I find with alcohol is not some occasional drinkers, but the one who ruins everything for the sake of pleasure. In my country, these people cause a large damage. They speak nonsense in streets, harms pedestrian by reckless driving, waste money on women etc.. I have never seen such behavior when someone drank water. Many things looks okay in ideal state or in philosophy, but in real life people have to face the naunces.

Hence, I think comparing Alcohol with Water in terms of harmful effect is vacuous.

But water isn't toxic to cells of the body, like alcohol is. It's just that killing or causing DNA damage to individual cells doesn't necessarily create an immediate noticeable effect, so it seems like there's little going on once the hangover clears. The doesn't mean it's doing nothing

>At the onset of this condition, fluid outside the cells has an excessively low amount of solutes, such as sodium and other electrolytes, in comparison to fluid inside the cells, causing the fluid to move into the cells to balance its osmotic concentration. This causes the cells to swell.

Water is absolutely toxic to cells and will absolutely kill you with enough dosage as will just about anything. Caffeine is 3 times more potent than arsenic and 30 times more potent than alcohol.

In the same way that cancer is harmless because "we're all slowly dying", sure.

There are so few deaths attributed to water intoxication that each one has its own line in the wikipedia article.

Surely you can agree that there is a major difference here. If alcohol were discovered today it would absolutely be a schedule 3, highly controlled substance.

Salt is over twice as potent as alcohol, should salt be schedule 3? Salt is required for our body, yet is a deadly poison as well. Yes there is a big difference between water and alcohol and a big difference between alcohol and arsenic.

Black and white thinking gets us nowhere, this is literal poison, that is not, no its a continuum of toxicity. You can ingest more alcohol than arsenic safely and you can ingest more water than that, they are each about an order of magnitude away from each other on the L50 scale:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose

Salt is also required for us to survive.

Arsenic is a highly controlled substance.

You're really choosing poor arguments.

I am aware that it's a continuum, I am the one acknowledging that. Your argument of "yea well water can kill you too" is ignoring that and is entirely reductive and provides no real value to this conversation. It also ignores that we consume water directly, and only consume alcohol in very diluted forms...because our body literally hates it we have to disguise it going in or else we involuntarily vomit immediately. But sure, comparable...

On the continuum of toxicity - alcohol is reasonably deadly and is very much a literal poison (as evidenced by the thousands of people who die from acute alcohol poisoning every year, not to even mention the thousands more who die as a result of long term usage) and provides no sustenance. As soon as you ingest it your body works to expel it from your body as quickly as it can. The damage it does to human cells is well documented. It is completely unnecessary to human life and even claims of some potential minor health benefits are easily crushed by the health benefits of say, eating an apple every day. And yes, there's certainly a deadly dosage of apples too.

>entirely reductive and provides no real value

Calling alcohol "literal poison" is the same, that was the point.

>because our body literally hates it we have to disguise it going in or else we involuntarily vomit immediately.

Eat pure undiluted Capsaicin and see what happens which is 10 times more deadly than arsenic yet we eat it for enjoyment all the time.

>alcohol is reasonably deadly

More people die from heart disease which sugar and fat is a contributor, same with skin cancer, too much sun, everything in moderation. "reasonably deadly" is your opinion fine, that is not a rigorous definition. We would be at a lot lower risk of health issues if we cut out everything we eat or do only for enjoyment that provides no sustenance that can't be argued.

I used to think like this, including videogames, too, and this still long after reading in Siddhartha that everything is transitory, hah!

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic I stopped habitually drinking alcohol (1-2 drinks/day, pretty much every day for years, because it was customary in our house and with friends, except a started to cut back for a year or so before quitting since I was noticing how I felt). Alcohol no longer has any pull with me, and I've replaced that habit with other, more-enjoyable activities.

It's okay to change, and even better to steer the ship.

As soon as Mendelian randomization studies arrived at the scene, the correlational evidence for benefits of moderate alcohol consumption started to fall. Now we have even better Mendelian randomization, and even more evidence.

I don't know how he feels about alcohol, but I still suspect that somewhere, Judea Pearl is being smug right now.

Oh hey, another post about "concrete" science on a subject that is still far from certain, in a complex biological field where most such studies are far from certain, badly done or in some cases simply dishonest. The irony on top of the cake is seeing so many comments here applauding the reasoning, on a site where a great many commentators happily espouse the virtues of numerous other mind altering chemical substances for all sorts of "beneficial" reasons despite these substances even less clear-cut effects on the mind and body.

Then of course there are the frowning comments by virtuous abstainers, who seem to use their absolutist criticism of alcohol as a pretext showing off supposed self control and asceticism.

Regardless of this study’s validity, is there really any doubt that abstaining from alcohol is beneficial for the society at large?

By the way, none of the other “chemical substances” celebrated in this website,

1- Have an industry the size of alcohol’s. A lot of money depends on normalizing alcohol consumption as much as possible.

2- Are as accessible and affordable.

3- Are involved in as many cases of violent crime such as domestic violence, DUI, etc.

4- Are linked to fatal diseases due to heavy use over a long time.

>Regardless of this study’s validity, is there really any doubt that abstaining from alcohol is beneficial for the society at large?

Yes, there very definitely is. In countries where it's widely illegal today, there's no shortage of social and medical ills that happen regardless. And you certainly can't arbitrarily legislate or prohibit your way to a risk-free world without including trade-offs. Do you propose the same prohibitionism that worked such great wonders in the war on drugs? Or repeating all the successes of prohibition in the 1920s?

No need to place chemical substances in brackets as if it was doubtful. That's exactly what these alternatives are, just like alcohol.

As for your other points:

1. Irrelevant. The size of the alcohol industry has nothing to do with being able to use alcohol responsibly or its clinical effects. They're separate things.. Also, it's not "normalized" by any modern industry. It has been one of the most normal and popular substances consumed by people since we learned to ferment and then distill millennia then centuries ago. Painting alcohol use as a marketing-induced mental weakness of the 21st century is absurd.

2. Many other substances are only less available because they're less widely popular, this is also separate from a debate about clinical effects.

3. Again, alcohol is historically much more popular. If as many people used MDMA, ketamine, marijuana LSD or whatever else is fashionably fun among some HN comment creators, who knows what social or medical problems might become far more visible. Either way, puritanical prohibitionism and scornful frowning against the one vs the others are more hypocritical than anything else.

4. I definitely don't deny that alcohol can be harmful. How many things would these many other substances be linked to if they were as popular and widely used as alcohol? Not sure, but that was sort of my original point. The science is still tenuous but it doesn't stop some from smugly shitting on one widely popular substance but praising other substances with no medical or other certainty to back up their praise.

I would relegate alcohol to ceremonial use, not the daily palliative so many use it as. To preempt such regulation, though (so far I think Portugal is doing a good thing with decriminalizing drug use, for example), I'd promote mental health education, starting with early childhood education for all parents, to reduce childhood trauma and help set the stage for more people to be skilled at noticing what they're feeling and deciding what to do next. Not a quick fix, but a quality one over the long term.

Lately any thing that i drink (from beer to wine) increases my heart rate to 100bpm. not sure if thats good for my health.

quitting drinking dropped my BP from ~135/80 to ~115/65

wow u got that high with drinking alcohol? did u went to see a doctor? i love drinking beer but i consider stopping everytime i feel my bpm increasing, it triggered panic attacks on me back in the day

Those are blood pressure readings, not heart rate.

And yeah, alcohol consumption tends to increase blood pressure.

That's pretty normal, alcohol causes high heart rate for a while

What I remember reading in the papers long ago is that drinking wine occasionally was good for you. Can anybody tell me if this study invalidates that too?

You mean like, someone else read it for you?

- Not everybody knows how to read a scientific paper, especially when there are so many conflicting studies. I wanted to hear from someone who better understands this subject than me.

- Wine, in general, has much lower alcohol content, and so some don't even consider it as an alcoholic drink.

As someone who better understands this subject than you, wine has plenty of alcohol, on average 10%, much more than beer. You don't need a scientific study for that.

Context needed: an individual’s environment, age, genetics, and pathogen exposure all needed to make any useful prediction (not that we yet have sufficient data to build the predictive model). Precision medicine is a mirage on the horizon. The population-based recommendations are crude tools.

There have already been tons of papers that read one way or the other on that topic. Pick the one you want to believe.

Picking the one you want to believe is not science and is how we arrived to a place where the meaning of "fact" is not shared. There is a lot of bad science out there, so picking the one you want to believe is akin to saying find any flawed study and choose to believe that over anything else (which is a shame if the person does not realize the flaws in the study, that would seem to be little more than corporate manipulation)

I didn't realize a /s was needed for something so obvious.

The point is that all of the available papers contradict each other, and no matter which ones I could provide, someone will come out of the woodworks to point to the others. So, I ask those who like wine to continue drinking it, or if they don't enjoy it to not, and stop asking about wine papers if they aren't going to look for the papers themselves, as the result is just going to be biased by who responds anyway.

At the end of the day, those who like wine aren't going to stop drinking it when they find out it has minor negative effects. That much should have been obvious considering getting drunk is literally poisoning yourself.

That study failed to split non-drinkers from those that quit drinking.

"It’s now widely understood that a lot of this data could be flawed: people abstaining from alcohol may be doing so because they’re unwell, rather than becoming unwell because they’re abstaining"

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191021-is-wine-good-for...

You could tell that by reading the article.

Hmmmm

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