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Comment by eptcyka | Hacker News Reader

This is just wrong. 0.5 liters of beer is already detrimental to health. Drinking a glass of wine daily does not have, on balance, a health benefit. Alcohol is not as bad as smoking, but it is a vice at any amount consumed. You do not need to defend an industry of billions for free.

I am writing this after having a couple of beers every evening for the past two weeks, and a wine tasting trip too.

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I wear a fitness tracker every day, and it is extremely clear on which days I've consumed alcohol because my resting heart rate spikes by at least 5% the day afterwards. And I'm a one-beer drinker. It actually took tracking my entire food intake for about two months to figure out what was causing it.

Last time I mentioned this on HN, people here have claimed that the effect was psychosomatic.

I think people grossly underestimate the negative health effects of alcohol, and I doubt any amount of research will really change peoples minds.

Yes, I've noticed that I sleep longer and harder after having one glass of wine with dinner. It's a pretty solid correlation because I don't drink that often.

>You do not need to defend an industry of billions for free.

And you could do better by being a little less preachy and a bit more pedantic, anecdotes and opinions are not facts after all.

What specifically am I being preachy about?

You called alcohol a "vice". Definition of vice from Merriam-Webster is "moral depravity or corruption; wickedness; a moral fault or failing." You are specifically asserting that people who drink alcohol are bad people. How is that not being preachy?

I do apologize then, as this was not my intention when I chose to use this word. Instead, I meant to convey that alcohol is a net negative healthwise, not unlike smoking cigarettes or consuming large amounts of bad food.

There are many shades of meaning to "vice"; it broadly indicates a weakness of character, not necessarily to the extent of making someone a bad person. If you know that alcohol is bad for you (and the people around you) and should not be drunk, and yet you drink it anyway simply because it feels good, is this not a failure of self control?

Although the slippery slope is a fallacy, down the road you speak is monkhood and the productivity optimization cult of recent times.

>You called alcohol a "vice". Definition of vice from Merriam-Webster

the phrase "every man has his vice" is supposed to be interpreted as every man is corrupt and wicked?

>it is a vice at any amount consumed

Sounds like you're evaluating it through a moralistic/religious lens as opposed to unbiased scientific one. Vice is such a preachy way to frame it.

>You do not need to defend an industry of billions for free.

I don't buy from the giants. 90% of my consumption is locally produced beers from small businesses in my community.

There is no evidence to support any of your claims.

There is this - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

There's no evidence of the contrary from your side - drinking alcohol is like any abusing any other organic solvent, I can't imagine why anyone would presume it'd be any healthier.

Sorry but the study you linked doesn't support any of the specific claims from your initial post, and my other reply earlier in the thread lists plenty of evidence for a protective effect of alcohol consumption for certain cancers.

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