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Comment by cosmiccatnap | Hacker News Reader

"Another part of Dudley’s drunk monkey hypothesis is that, in moderation, alcohol consumption can actually be beneficial for humans and monkeys alike"

We have emphatically had to disprove this time and time again. No amount of alcohol is good for humans despite a heavy bias in our media that claims otherwise.

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You talking about the study that made the rounds a few years back?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45283401

They found that out of 100,000 non-drinkers, 914 would develop an alcohol-related health problem such as cancer or suffer an injury.

But an extra four people would be affected if they drank one alcoholic drink a day.

A whole 0.004% extra risk!

Really conclusive finding that. Really emphatic...

The media really should have said 'study finds negligible damage from moderate drinking'.

But the media love hating on drinking, quite opposite to what you claim. You only have to open the guardian on any day in the month of January to see some article decrying the horrors of drinking.

It didn't sink in for me until I happened to learn about the relationship between alcohol and cancer, especially breast cancer. In hindsight, the fact that I drank casually for years without knowing anything about that risk is disturbing to me.

I think to put a finer, nuanced point to it is that there is no positive net health benefit to alcohol consumption[1]. So the mindset should not be "a drink or two confers health benefits" but rather "this is harmful, so I have to make sure I don't do it too often or too much".

This is not my area of study, so any other views are helpful.

1=https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

that only looks at physical health metrics. Things like social enhancement and stress relief are not captured in that study and are obviously benefits of moderate alcohol consumption

Then please post some of these multiple disprovals. You know, facts.

Best take care not to eat any especially ripe fruit, then.

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