No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health
who.int
who.int
But as I understand it we do have a notion of "safe" dosages of radiation.
Isn't this statement then like saying "no level of exposure to radiation is safe for our health?" Maybe I'm wrong but I would think that the risk of cancer from radiation increases smoothly as the dosage increases such that "there is no threshold at which the carcinogenic effects 'switch on'". Thus, by extension, nobody should ever fly on an airplane because the increased radiation exposure is inherently unsafe.
The thing is, we draw these threshold lines on smooth continua all the time. Nothing special happens to you at midnight on your eighteenth or twenty-first birthday. You are not meaningfully more intoxicated at 0.07 BAC than at 0.08.
To the extent that we expect agencies like the WHO to help us make informed, practical decisions regarding this sort of absolutist statement seems like an abdication of that responsibility. It equates all drinking of any amount into a single class with no gradations, which is clearly false. Drinking a lot has a lot more risk than drinking a little. And drinking a little may add only a little risk to a life that's full of other risk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model
It's extremely hard to scientifically back this or challenge it due to the noise. Some people try to show that low dose radiation is measurably harmful while others try to show that it is beneficial (hormesis).
The best science suggests that measurable, statistically significant harm (in the form of increased risk of lifetime cancer) begins around 100 mSv acute or 300 mSv over a period of time. If you get that, your lifetime risk of cancer goes from 42% baseline up to 43%.
Natural background is about 3 mSv per year on average.
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/11340/beir_vii_fi...
1- Alpha radiation: Basically helium atoms. Pretty harmless on the outside of your body, really really bad if inside your body. Do not eat/inhale.
2- Beta radiation: Electrons. Harmfulness varies, kinda. Stay away from it.
3- Gamma radiation: Likely what you're thinking of. These are photons. Harmfulness increases with frequency/energy of photon, mostly. Think X-rays, not UVa radiation.
Aside: UVa/b isn't ionizing, it just so happens to be the same wavelength as the short channel of your DNA strand and has a small, but noticeable, chance of breaking up your DNA. The biology of a sunburn is somewhat complicated, so please research on your own. Wear sunscreen and you're fine. With ionizing radiation you need to wear a lot of lead to be fine.
Other forms of harm exist for every known particle, but you'd need to stand right inside of the LHC to experience it or be cosmically unlucky (for say, neutrino based ionizing radiation).
Drawing a threshold on a distribution is inherently arbitrary, but it's also a) necessary for clear public communication and b) able to be refined by quantitative risk assessment models. As we have been refining that threshold and learning more about alcohol's impacts, that threshold for an equivalent level of risk has been dropping - i.e. our understanding of the "safe" level of alcohol has been approaching zero as we add more data to the model.
The WHO is simply making the logical conclusion of this convergence to zero. Picking a non-zero threshold is simply not possible without significant risks. Given all the well-documented harms of alcohol, it's irresponsible to claim that there is any such thing as a "safe amount". So the public health message shifts from moderation to abstinence.
You can choose to ignore the recommendations; go ahead and drink if it makes you feel better. But you can't ignore the many significant negative impacts or hide behind the dubious concept of "safe drinking". You're poisoning your body for recreation - own it.
[1] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/c...
It is need vs want debate.
"So a total of 50,000 bottles of gin among these 1,600 people is associated with one extra health problem. Which still indicates a very low level of harm in drinkers drinking just more than the UK guidelines."
https://medium.com/wintoncentre/the-risks-of-alcohol-again-2...
The WHO is fear mongering.
Maybe it is good health politics, people are scared of alcohol and people will have a better live.
Maybe it would be better to communicate the risks more quantitavily. Not everyone is stupid.
For example, if a change in diet increases the chances of getting a specific cancer from 1 in 1000 to 1.5 in 1000, that very well may be statistically significant. But, your odds of not getting that cancer go from 99.9% to 99.85%, which most people would not consider to be a meaningful difference.
How do you draw the line?
I think this is what people don't get about the study. The study is not saying no one should drink. It's not saying that the risks of drinking outweigh the benefit. It's saying that for any amount of alcohol, ingesting it, on aggregate, decreases life expectancy. Nothing more. It's a measurement of the increase of risk, which can then be combined and contrasted with other measurements and help make informed decisions.
You draw the line however you want. You now have more information to make that decision.
Jumping off a building is not hazardous to your health, hitting the ground is.
A vehicular accident as a driver is not a direct cause of driving any more than a pedestrian accident by a vehicle is the direct cause of walking.
I object to the conflation of quantitative risk of experiencing an incidental event with the qualitative risk posed by a voluntary event.
Not that there isn't acceptable tradeoffs with what is attained by driving.
Which is ironic, because, while most people use the "Linear no-threshold" model for radiation, we know that small amounts of radiation are actually beneficial.
The most charitable reason I can think of for why people still use the LNT model is because it's simple and robust. But that doesn't mean that it's the most accurate understanding that we have.
How could ionizing radiation be beneficial? Unless the argument is exposure to ultraviolet in order to get Vitamin D, I can’t imagine ionizing radiation to be beneficial in any way.
Edit:
> The good includes abundant evidence showing increased 1) physiologic performance, 2) immune competence, 3) health, and 4) mean lifespan.
From the article in the comment below. Apparently in very low doses it stimulates the immune system and healthy cell reconstruction.
I'm not going to pretend that I understand the reasons. But there have been a lot of studies.
(maybe it was not as crazy as I thought)
This is wild stuff:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180306-a-spa-where-pati...
Heart Disease is a bigger killer than cancer.
If you take a look at the studies you can determine how much of an increased risk you're comfortable with. For example, figure 5 in https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
When doing this analysis though be sure to note that scientists studying this use 10g drinks, which is 12.5mL of ethanol, one tallboy of 6.5% beer is therefore about 2.5 drinks.
What we see - empirically - is that light/moderate drinkers have better overall health outcomes than both heavy drinkers and people who consume zero alcohol.
The outcomes of the heavy drinkers seem self-evident so we don't need to bother with that ... it is the relative better health vs. non-drinkers that is interesting.
One conclusion that many people draw, and which you are alluding to, is that alcohol has properties that are beneficial in small doses.
However, a much simpler and more explanatory conclusion is that in developed, western (or, "global north") countries there is nobody that isn't drinking and the individuals that consume zero alcohol are doing so because it really affects them, or bothers them, etc. They are less robust, generally, and therefore have health outcomes that are worse than light/moderate drinkers.
I draw your attention to the fact that NFL players have lower all-cause mortality and live longer lives than the general public. Is that because violent collisions and football playing, generally, magically helps them ?
Of course not. They're just stronger than we are.
It’s not worthless at all.
Funny enough though driving is by far worse for your health than moderate or light drinking, and it’s even more insidious than drinking because not only do that negative effects take a long time to manifest, but they’re couched inside of a “necessity”.
I think it’s more funny you choose a rhetoric that suits your lifestyle and your needs, and dismiss that it might be helpful for people who don’t find alcohol culture appealing.
Couple issues with this. First why not a 20 minute trip by car with fees for parking and all that versus a 20 minute trip by train? Depending on where you live this can be your currently daily experience. It could also be anyones daily experience if we just decided we wanted to do that.
The second issue is that simple comparing the surface level time-by-transit misses most of the particulars that matter. And you are also mistakenly applying individual experience with aggregate experience i.e. 40 minutes saved for the individual but in aggregate many people actually do die because of the 100x serious injury probability.
I can emphatize, though, if the feeling corresponds to what I feel participating in this thread.
Edit, I can't read
Alcohol has numerically similar numbers of cancer cases, and cancer is just one aspect. Now it is less, and we can argue about how widespread the use is ect. However, it cases 1/3 of the cases, heart disease, mental health problems.
Are you a drinker? Especially since quitting, I've noticed a lot of drinkers get incredibly defensive against something that seems very rational and well supported by evidence.
Set aside alcohol for a minute; this article is saying that because the absolute risk of an activity is not zero, the activity is inheriently unsafe. That's not true, not an appropriate strategy for decision making, and most importantly not an effective way to influence behaviours. This is the definition of perfect as the enemy of better.
Well ya? Is that not self-evident?
See, there's this thing I enjoy very much, but I was forced to stop because of evidence of the negative consequences. Now, since I am a kind person, I can share the knowledge of those negative consequences so may be you could avoid them, too.
Said another way, if I were not negative to said activity that I enjoy, I would still be doing it. And if I were indifferent to the well-being of others, I wouldn't be vocal/share.
The premise of this “no level of consumption is safe” is this requirement to prove 0 risk.
If for instance drinking one glass everyday increases your cancer chances by 0.0000000001%, bringing it to 0. 0000300001%, it would still be considered unsafe, as your chances of cancer increased.
I see the logic, but that isn’t layman‘s categorization of safe or unsafe. And what are the actual base risk of cancer for a healthy individual ?
Taking a base of 60 million death per year, who’s numbers on cancer are of 10 million [0], where death by liver cancer are 830 000, roughly 1%. Given that those don’t all come from alcohol, and to reach that stage requires way more than standard consumption, the base risk feels already pretty low.
All in all, while this article is factual, it turns this facts in such a biased way it feels dogmatic at times. If we’re going to have serious discussions around alcohol, we shouldn’t start them like this.
Alcohol users really don't like people pointing out that their habit isn't safe.
In my experience that is because people who point that out usually eat all kinds of crap full of sugar and transfats, drink bubbly-sugary drinks (is Coke even better than a good beer?), live in noisy polluted cities and often work themselves to death for status or 3rd car for their family or whatever. But somehow my couple of bottles of beer on weekend is a health emergency and we need to tax it 1000% and only allow to sell if from 9 to 10 am on Mondays or something...
Because there is such thing as occasional smokers, and having a curve of how much it affects them depending on how much they smoke would be helpful, instead of the generic “just don’t smoke” advice that they are already not following.
If you drank a spoonful of gasoline thinking it was something else, you wouldn’t want your generalist to tell you “that was bad for you” and keep it at that. How bad was it ? what effect should you expect at that dose ?
The real point I think is, a binary safe/unsafe is of no help in this discussion where people have wildly different drinking habits. I mean, even kids will ingest traces of alcohol in cakes, should we ban it from pound cakes ?
No level of automobile usage is safe, either, but I know the risks. My chances of dying due to driving (sober) are much higher than my chances of dying due to having a few beers a week.
I’m fine taking both of those risks.
A source of public health information should never say something vague like "cigarettes are bad for your health." They need to specify precisely how bad they are and how much damage is done with each individual cigarette.
Same with gasoline- if someone was to accidentally consume a small quantity of gasoline and wanted to know how much trouble they are in, they should be able to easily discover exactly how many ml of gasoline you need to drink to experience any associated problems. If there is a "safe" level, where there are no major side effects, that's something they need to know.
Chlorine is toxic, and you should not drink it, but tap water has a small amount to ensure to kill al bacterias. We had a cholera epidemic like 30 years ago, and the official recommendation was to add two drops of chlorine to water if you were unsure if it was clean enough. Also swimming pools have chlorine, more than tap water, but you are not suppose to drink too much of it.
A few years ago a moron pissed in a water reservoir and uploaded the video to youtube, so it was an unnecessary public outrage and the water authorities decided to release all the water and fill the reservoir again, as if birds and squirrels use the toilette. Don't ask about swimming pools.
Gasoline? Sometime food has contamination form industrial oil, gasoline and other stuff. It was common to use benzene to remove the natural oil from flour, but I think they changed to another safer solvent. Anyway, there are safety limits for all of that. Zero is very difficult because chromatography is too sensitive.
Cigarette smoking? Probably zero cigarettes is the best, but I remember a silly trend a few years ago about third hand smoke, i.e. how dangerous was to go to a home a few years after someone smoked there and you can still get a small amount of toxic compounds released by the walls contaminated with the smoke.
Asbesto? A single fiber can kill you, but two fibers have like the double of probability to kill you, and a million fibers are even more dangerous. In which case should a building be declared inhabitable?
In any case, those kind of "research" is for modern americans (and people taking their cues from anglosaxon culture) , who are already conditioned in such hysteria - which is funny in the country eating some of the worst quality food in the Western world, cooked the worst ways, in the worst portions, and with the worst mass production integredients. Or perhaps an overcorrection.
The average Italian, for example, should, and definitely, would just laught this off.
we don't even drink that much, compared to other countries.
we simply enjoy it, even if it doesn't make our life longer, like many other activities that are not even enjoyable.
I'm sure you wouldn't have seen anywhere near this kind of reaction if the headline was instead "Any level of alcohol consumption increases liver cancer risk by X in 10,000" or "Adjustments to confounding factors show that non-drinkers have a 0.0000X% longer life expectancy".
Beyond the headline designed to invoke a reaction, I think there's a good basis for general fear of this kind of judgment - it invokes the language around many other prohibitions of all that is good and fun in the name of our physical or moral health.
We are only just working through lifting prohibitions on Cannabis here in the west, albeit with many strings attached. Many countries (and a good number of North American counties) still have prohibitions on alcohol. We as a society prohibit many kinds of mushroom, plant roots, leaves and oils.
Here in Canada the health authority has a "no safe levels" attitude towards absinthe, house-made mayo, rare burgers and many of the world's greatest cheeses. We've put "for external use only" warning labels on cooking ingredients like mustard oil and tamarind extracts. We've banned cooking wines entirely!
So yes. When I see "no safe levels of alcohol" I do tend to over-react. Keep your grubby little hands off my bottle.
jeez, i use all of those here in the uk, except for absinthe, which you can't get [actually, you can, but not in your average offie or supermarket].
i remember when a bbc comedy program had a sketch "the worst thing you can hear when you turn on the tv" - it was a shit-eating voice, introducing a documentary, saying "welcome to canada; friendly giant of the north!"
sorry, it just popped into my brain and i had to share it - i don't really hate canadians.
Without values, we can pretty much say that anything increases odds of disease: walking, driving, eating, shitting, sleeping.
And what's to gain? Hysteria because there's a million ways to die? Or increased distrust in health recommendations, as they're barely actionable?
I think the current recommendations are: do exercise, eat well and get good sleep. They should get you a good baseline. But you don't need to be a fundamentalist: you don't need to obey them 100% of the time!
Ever read any HN thread where the article states that to combat obesity one just have to eat less? ... yeah.
I assume he was sacked for producing such a poor data visualization, or just the political "data" behind it?
Some of the criteria are that might fall under harm to others are:
Crime
Environmental damage
Family adversities
Economic cost
Community
As far as I know.... unlike the US, the UK doesn't have a large community of dependent meth users. The level of distribution is low and if some did become available, it would probably be used by poly-drug users as an alternative/combination to other party drugs and not give much of an on-ramp to habitual use. The measurable harm would be acute health events like heart issues etc. and not the consequences of long-term use.
To get a taste of the person before reading the book:
This is ridiculous and boarders on intentionally false & misleading. We look for meaningful or demonstrated risk all the time in our assessments, not the absolute absense of it.
This is typical WHO nonsense similar to their ongoing clanging of the Covid alarm.
Half a litre of beer a day is considered "light"?
also they don't say how many of those cancers can actually be attributed directly to alcohol consumption. my guess would be few.
> Globally, an estimated 741 300 (95% UI 558 500–951 200), or 4·1% (3·1–5·3), of all new cases of cancer in 2020 were attributable to alcohol consumption
It's completely unreasonable to call that level of consumption "light".
You think that a pint of beer will leave you inebriated most of the day?
i'd really like to know where all of these people that can't seem to handle a glass of beer, quite probably with something to eat, without freaking out are coming from?
And again, this is the UPPER BOUND. not the average as you say
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-long-should-...
Where would that be? German beer is usually 5-5.5%, same for Austria. In Norway it's 4.5-4.7%
It's very light - in many (most not zero-tolerance) country is legal to drive. One beer is around 0.04-0.05% for a grown up man, around 2h after consumption it should be below 0.02%.
I wish the article would tell us more about this curve. How much does my risk increase for each drink I have?
It's like drugs.
Take too many pills, you die.
Take them when you need them and their benefit will surpass the risks.
Alcohol works the same way.
We know for a fact that moderate drinkers live longer than non-drinkers and heavy drinkers.
We still don't know why.
edit: most people don't want to hear the truth.
Moderate drinker live longer than non-drinkers.
It's a well known fact
For example, one study following more than 333,000 adults for about eight years found light-to-moderate drinkers were more than 20 percent less likely to die prematurely from all causes and from cardiovascular disease in particular than people who never drank at all.
When they tried to "debunk" it the only explanation they could find is that non-drinkers die prematurely because of the risks they took earlier in life.
Confirming that moderation is key, abstinence due to guilt for past behaviour and a sudden fear of death, won't solve anything.
I'm sorry if the alcoholics that took the 12 steps here are triggered by the truth, but your problems are not everyone's problems.
We have been drinking alcohol for longer than we were able to write, we still do it, because it's a social rite, it keeps people together, like a good meal, you can't simply delete it because you used to drink scotch straight from the bottle since the moment you woke up and the only solution you've found is getting a different addiction: staying clean at all costs.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/22/4714163...
the point is that non-drinkers live less.
Which totally contraddict the point that non drinking is good for you.
a recent Lancet study confirms that at 2 standard units per day there is non-drinking equivalence for health risks
2 units per day it's about a pint of beer per day.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
still non drinkers do not live longer on average.
which totally defeat one of the few benefits associated to not drinking, unless you don't like drinking.
even if minuscule doses of alcohol increased the risk of getting some form of cancer, I live in a big city, I already increased my risk of getting cancer 10x by simply breathing ...
And I surely don't enjoy smog and pollution as much as I enjoy beer.
If I had to eliminate one of them, I would go living in the country, where air is cleaner.
it's independent scientific studies
alcohol industry doesn't need to convince people, they sell alcohol, people enjoy alcohol, it's not like cigarettes that stink and taste horribly and are bad for those around you,e specially kids.
The ability (which is common) to moderate oneself when drinking is associated with general better health (Modest drinkers were more educated, less obese, more active, less smoked, and had lower rates of hypertension, diabetes, and high triglycerides, proteinuria, high uric acid and high level of C-reactive protein when compared with regular drinkers)
So in general we should not look at the substance, but at the person.
non drinkers are usually people who are scared of losing self control.
heavy drinkers are usually people who cannot control themselves and did not chose abstinence.
But the solution is to learn moderation, since young age.
That's the point though. Even if this fact is true it doesn't mean that drinking is healthy for these moderate drinkers. There could be other reasons that they're living longer and that drinking is actually working against them, not for them.
That's not the kind of inference we can derive from the data though.
The conclusion is that, even if we know that alcohol is not good for our health, moderate drinking has not been correlated to higher mortality or shorter life span, so we can conclude that, at the time of this writing, there are no evidence that show that moderate drinking is worse than not drinking for our health.
Regardless of the causes, the data simply doesn't show any correlation whatsoever with worsening health conditions, it shows, however, a correlation with a mildly longer average life span, which has not been explained, yet.
Let's say if I drink 3 drinks per day I shorten my life expectancy by 5 years. And if I drink 3 drinks a year, I shorten my life expectancy by 5 seconds. Ok, no level is safe, but noone gives a damn about losing 5 seconds from their life expectancy.
A human is the only animal that is aware they will die. Also unique to humans is that we think about what others think. This makes us very anxious.
Alcohol is a known way to relax. It helps calm our minds down. No it's not good for our bodies. But it's very healthy to relax.
There are doubtless other factors at play but the data at least seems to correlate with the WHO's recommendation.
But, I like this phrase “the generational zeitgeist is ostentatious abnegation”, so much that I’m going to use it in the future and pretend I do believe it. Thank you
I don’t know how these things affect other people’s “sober lives” but if it’s anything like that I don’t see how people can function when getting intoxicated semi-regularly. The cost-benefit just seems completely lobsided.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Walker_(scientist)
source: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/12/even-smal...
YouTubers big and small with a massive child demographic were promoting alcohol or their own brands not long ago.
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pN6ksB3-QJ8
Or as is more likely, this is completely overblown just as the anti tobacco campaign has been overblown. Yes alcohol and tobacco aren’t good for you, no they are not imbued with magic properties where even 1 drop means cancer.
This type of thinking is common in pre scientific communities, where an object or substance is imbued with “bad energy” and having even the smallest contact with it contaminated the individual.
We’ve developed means to more effectively handle certain common poisons. That doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous.
Poisons are neutralized but are not energy source (nutrient). Turns out, alcohol is.
2) Not even lifespan could be the right word because there are all sorts of stuff that alcohol facilitates which prolong lifespan by decreasing stress and anxiety, which in turn lower cortisol which is just as bad for lifespan when considered vis-a-vis alcohol.
As always the so called authorities spend too much time in the lab and are essentially monodimensional individuals who (no pun intended) fail to see the bigger picture.
I have never seen someone who did those things drunk who didn't also do those things sober.
That makes sense--alcohol decreases inhibition. It makes you do things that maybe you were inclined to do, but wouldn't do sober. (That is part of why people drink alcohol in the first place.)
NB: this does not mean actively using. Dependency creates significant stress when sober, which almost certainly amplifies violent dispositions. Hence my GP's comment.
How does that not support my point?
> That makes sense--alcohol decreases inhibition. It makes you do things that maybe you were inclined to do, but wouldn't do sober. (That is part of why people drink alcohol in the first place.)
> While undoubtedly there is some link between alcohol and drugs and domestic abuse, this research should be treated with some caution, said Dame Vera Baird, victims' commissioner for England and Wales. She said: "Many perpetrators who commit domestic violence while drunk will also be violent and controlling while sober. "And many perpetrators of domestic violence and coercive control do not have a drink or drug problem, and therefore it would be a mistake to divert resources from domestic violence perpetrator programmes to tackling drink and drugs misuse."
Why not call McCarthy back too?
Alcohol problems are not the same thing of alcohol consumption.
Also:
Scotland's alcohol consumption is among the highest in the world, according to World Health Organization data; on average, Scots consume the equivalent of more than 13 liters (3.4 gallons) of pure alcohol a year, about 40 percent more than Americans (2.4 gallons)
We in Italy consume less than 7 liters per year (less than 1.8 gallons).
Talking about moderate drinking.
Americans are much more compliant now, not to mention health and socially conscious. For example, the culture of alcohol use has disparate impacts on black and brown communities: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2771773/ ("African Americans and Hispanics bear a disproportionately greater burden of alcohol-related health problems compared to whites, as evidenced by higher rates of liver cirrhosis, death rates due to cirrhosis, and rates of overall alcohol-related mortality.") That is true even though, for example, black Americans begin drinking later and drink less than white Americans: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3758406/.
American health issue are mostly class based.
Black and brown people are poorer on average, hence they face more issues regarding health issues in general.
Alcohol abuse is a well known addiction among people of lower classes, while higher classes prefer other more expensive substances.
Also with more money available come higher quality alcoholic beverages.
which is a form of prohibitionism in itself, but didn't stop people from binge drinking.
Here in Italy, where wine is very cheap, you don't see people drinking like the Americans do, especially not adult people.
Kids, maybe, sometimes, we have a problem with young people binge drinking, mostly because they gathered those habits from American culture which massively influence their daily content consumption.
Back in the day the American culture my generation has been exposed to was very different about who drank on screen and why.
Nor am I criticizing unrelated beliefs. I don't disagree with SJWs that we live in a society dominated by the attitudes and culture of white European Americans--including their drinking culture. I typically disagree with them on whether that's a bad thing, or how we should frame that for kids, or how that should affect legal relations between people. But I don't disagree with the notion that aspects of American culture adapted from Europeans--in this case drinking culture, but I'd also throw parenting culture in there, and individualism--can have negative impacts on minority groups.
America simply drinks too much
We Italians are usually described as people who love to sit and drink all day.
On average Italians drink half the alcohol of Americans yearly.
Consider that in Italy non drinkers are ~25% while in America 36% of adults described themselves as “total abstainers”.
>> Americans are much more compliant now
Are you saying prohibition is worth another attempt? Because we're currently in our 52nd year of the official start of the War on Drugs [1], which is just Prohibition by another name. Unofficially, the War on Drugs goes back much further, and it's a war that the government has been losing badly since the start [2]. Even per-capita, we're the biggest consumers of illegal drugs in the world [3]. So I'd be curious to hear what evidence of compliance you could give, which would outweigh the evidence of non-compliance going back to at least the Nixon administration.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs
2. https://www.ahdbonline.com/articles/2053-are-we-winning-the-...
3. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/drug-use-...
The whole argument seems like a discussion-ending cover for people's emotional attachment to alcohol. It completely doesn't engage with the cost-benefit analysis of how alcohol affects the functioning of society at large or navigate any of those tradeoffs.
See: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit...
The facts are facts. Alcohol is a poison that wrecks havoc on your mind and body. If having one drink can decompress you after a hard days work, fine, you're not gonna get cancer. Let's just stop pretending alcohol is a solid healthy choice.
1 - https://www.boston.com/news/health/2020/07/15/men-should-lim...
I know one guy who is ~90, survived cancer 3 times and attributes his survival to daily doses of Japanese Shochu.
You might be able to argue that alcohol was the cause of the cancer but I guess we'll never know.
Disclaimer: Currently not drinking even a drop.
Edit: Maybe I'd know more if they didn't drink....is a reference to the fact I read the article and I understand that statistically, there might be more old people alive because it seems like it's "statistically safer" not to drink so please, try to stay calm and stop telling me I can't understand anything about statistics...I know it's exciting to do this lately though.
I, of course, know what statistics is and how to interpret it , I'm aware drinking isn't especially good for ones health and other aspect of ones life, which is why I'm currently...not drinking.
I'm also aware how silly it is to worry about it and make absolutely claims like "No level..blah".
No level of C02 from fossil fuels is good for us anymore; However, I'm certain you'll get in your car and drive or on a plane and fly soon enough.
The point I'm trying to make is that what matters one minute often seems inconsequential the next, regardless of statistics.
For example, the WHO provides quite shocking statistics on the dangerous of food fires and other heating / cooking methods which are used in my neighborhood: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-a..., it freaks me out but I can't do much about it or my neighbors use of a wood stove. Should I move?
So while I think it's been obvious for sometime, alcohol is bad for ones health, smoke is also bad for ones health, is there anything really new or wise in this bulletin from the WHO, I don't think so really.
Have a read of this on the WHO's website:
FACT: Alcohol-based sanitizers are safe for everyone to use
Alcohols in the sanitizers have not been shown to create any relevant health issues. Little alcohol is absorbed into the skin, and most products contain an emollient to reduce skin dryness. Allergic contact dermatitis and bleaching of hand hair due to alcohol are very rare adverse effects. Accidental swallowing and intoxication have been described in rare cases.
So in this case, my body will adsorb alcohol, but in this case it's ok because it's on another page separate from the one we're discussing?
Yes look at the current world, media, and western societies
I know someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day who is almost 100 years old. Smoking is good or you!
On an individual basis, no. But on a macro, yes. We can pretty directly attribute a large % of liver-related deaths directly to alcohol.
I just have a real problem with talking in absolutes.
When first thing they should do is stop drinking alcohol.
In the reddit thread about article there was someone who could not connect the dots that after drinking alcohol they would have hangover the next day.
To me it sounds like you have been trolled.
- Paracelsus
I think that it is explicitly pushing back on that very concept.
or find another job.
what would you chose?
But "research" as this paper here are mostly useless.
They are good for nothing.
It's like researching the fact that "there is no amount of soap that can be considered harmless for the environment".
Yes, we know, and now that everyone knows that we all know, what about "we don't care and we'll keep using soap responsibly"?
p.s.: replace "soap" with "human activity" and the paradox will probably be more evident.
Everyone absolutely does not know that small amounts are harmful.
THEY ABSOLUTELY ARE NOT THE SAME THING!
Animals enjoy alcohol too, it's a beverage, it's a natural substance, there's no way that alcohol it's gonna be like cigarettes!
Hotdogs are bad for your health, do you think hotdogs and cigarettes are the same thing?
Do you really believe that alcohol is a modern addiction, like tobacco industry?
Have you ever heard that Christians drink wine because it's the blood of Jesus Christ? (who turned the water into wine BTW!)
Do you know that radical Islam prohibits alcohol because it can induce a loss of self-control?
Do you believe that radical Islam is the way to go for the future?
I really don't.
Alcohol is rooted in our ancestry, it's part of who we are, stop blaming substances, this is truly a modern take: it's the never ending bullshit of the war on drugs that started with prohibionism, it's the USA that promote the puritan way of life, while destroying the planet more than everybody else combined and indulging in the worst possible lifestyle (eating garbage, drinking like there's no tomorrow, working to death, healthcare considered a luxury etc.), it's the same old story of Americans not understanding that their problems are absolutely not everyone's problems
The oldest verifiable brewery has been found in a prehistoric burial site in a cave near Haifa in modern-day Israel. Researchers have found residue of 13,000-year-old beer that they think might have been used for ritual feasts to honor the dead
Those who believe alcohol is a fad are simply delusional.
If was to get my random opinion without expertise, I would guess that sugar is the dominating factor as to whether fruit juice is healthy combined with your typical non-juice sugar consumption or not; given you are not deficient in some key nutrient.
But to clarify, I was just quoting the article in response to the idea that the dose is the issue. I am a software developer without any expertise in the issue.
Paracelsus believed that true anatomy could only be understood once the nourishment for each part of the body was discovered. He believed that one must therefore know the influence of the stars on these particular body parts.[59] Diseases were caused by poisons brought from the stars. However, 'poisons' were not necessarily something negative, in part because related substances interacted, but also because only the dose determined if a substance was poisonous or not.
That would seem to contradict the headline, and content, that there's a safe level of alcohol consumption.
In fact, the WHO really takes that claim seriously -- the headline is not a simplification:
>>when it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health ... Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer ... "We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage."
But yeah, I agree, in that I'm sure you can find a low enough level of alcohol consumption that can't be discerned in health outcomes. Like, 1 microliter, one time.
It sounds like your comment is more about rejecting claims that there can be a health benefit to alcohol, but the WHO is going much further than that.
You can always find a downside to anything you ingest.
I think you’re correct, the best approach is to explain “safe limits”.
Personally, I think it’s fine if people smoke, drink, etc until their heart is content. That said; it’s also why I’m opposed to socialized medicine. Almost everyone I know on social medicine didn’t take care of themselves (only a maybe one couldnt take care of themselves).
The challenge with socialized medicine is that we should now push to ban alcohol, logically.
That has not worked in the past. Do you think it would work any better nowadays?
>> More recently, American conservative critics of health care reform have attempted to broaden the term by applying it to any publicly funded system.
Fascinating how different political groups literally do not speak the same language. I now assume you mean that all people should pay 100 % for their own health care needs since people only have themselves to blame if they need health care?
Though I think some of the political proponents have shifted their SEO terms to “universal healthcare” in recent years after they found the term confusing.
> I now assume you mean that all people should pay 100 % for their own health care needs since people only have themselves to blame if they need health care?
I’m not saying one way or the other what I think. I’m saying the logical conclusion of paying for everyone’s medical bills is that you create regulation to try to lower said bills. By definition, this restricts freedoms, which I’m opposed to.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that everyone should stop drinking. I'm not a fan of mind-altering drugs and it makes for boring conversation. But we need to get used to the idea that literally nothing is safe. Living kills us all eventually. The argument against alcohol needs to be that an alcohol-free life is of higher quality.
If we're going to discourage people from doing unsafe things, are we planning to disband the army? There is no safe amount of time to spend in a moving vehicle either, those things are dangerous. Working a day job is no good for people's health. Safe doesn't mean no harm; that is impossible. And the question is always whether the benefit outweighs the cost.
If this is true, the medical community is actively causing harm. Many compounded or suspended children's medicines contain alcohol. Many do not have alcohol free alternatives.
That’s kind of a bizarre way of phrasing it. Yes, the medical community actively causes lesser harms, with the goals of preventing greater harms. Radiation therapy and chemotherapy, for example, are extremely harmful! Yet we use them as cancer treatments because the cancer we are treating with them is probably more harmful than the treatment.
Radiation therapy and chemotherapy are extreme examples, but this analysis is done across medicine with lesser treatments as well—and yes, we change the way we treat people as our understanding of the risks and benefits of various treatments changes.
My main point is that's it's hypocritical to say one drop is dangerous and then have a myriad of children's meds containing it when alternative ingredients exist.
You're miles away from making that point in a way that I can understand.
Medicine containing alcohol often comes with a few more counter-indications because of it, plus it limits the sales to people who wish to maintain strict abstinence, like Muslims. If they keep the alcohol, it is probably for a good reason.
It is completely different from recommending alcohol itself.
Can you name medications that require alcohol vs an alternative? Most of the alternatives are innocent like glycerin, or similar to food preservatives.
My main point is that there is hypocrisy. Saying that one drop is dangerous yet having it be heavily prevalent children's meds... one of these isn't right.
Why? Because the body heals whatever miniscule damage occurs with small amounts. The trade off is one which we decide to leave to people to make with their judgment.
but it's not because of the alcohol, why wine is "good", it because we mostly relax with it, which reduces stress levels. everything else is bad, at least that it the perception of the last 2-4 years in germany.
They won't.
> The facts are facts. Alcohol is a poison that wrecks havoc on your mind and body
So are almonds
If you eat 20 apples including the seeds, you die instantly.
But so are also soda beverages
but US citizens drink an estimated 154 liters per capita every year
There are several voltage gated ion channels that are inhibited by ethanol. So ethanol can clearly be seen as a medicine in those with genetic changes in these genes that cause channel channelopathies.
And anecdotally, my grandfather drank a lot. Not an alcoholic, but he was no teetotaler, and I would often see him sneaking shots of vodka before noon. He lived was 99 with his full mental capacity.
(inb4 no true scotsman)
How do you feel if he wasn’t alcoholic so what? That’s not relevant here the relevance is how it affected his health. He was healthy till he was 99. As well as his marriage and family life. He was a barber till was 82.
Tired of you people turning everything into a pathology.
Sneak generally means do something stealthily. Pretty easy to misinterpret, hell I'm still not sure what you meant by "sneak" besides hiding it.
There are so many things in life which no level is safe, exhaust fumes, microplastic exposure, radiation, the passage of time, the key to all of course is moderation and time between exposures. except that last one
https://www.who.int/teams/health-product-and-policy-standard...
https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/can...
https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/ecdd-41-cannabis-rec...
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/251056/9789...
It'll be the same discussion, addicts trying to rationalize away the science and statistics.
Pretty shocking to see this much denialism going on in a forum that's often much more rational and objective.
Sugar and alcohol are addictive and addictions are irrational and you can't use rational objective thought to get out of a situation that is inherently irrational and subjective, like addiction.
Essentially zero H users, for example, have never heard the news that H is bad for them. Can't just concentrate hard enough to get out of an addiction, they don't work that way. So it is with alcohol, sugar, carb binging in general, etc.
If you don't eat an essential nutrient (vitamins, minerals, etc) you'll eventually get sick and die. If you don't eat a very high carb diet you'll ... be healthier and have better blood test results? Nobody never died from having a single digit A1c blood test result or a blood glucose no longer going up to 250 anymore LOL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_zone
Do we have any evidence that low carb diets have a positive effect on longevity compared to these diets?
Compared to the Standard American Diet, low carb may be far better as it can eliminates refined carbs with no nutritional value, but the optimal diet may include a moderate amount of carbs from healthy whole food sources.
I’m actually following a low carb diet myself for almost 1 year and agree it has benefits, but think ultimately it’s place is as a stepping stone. I will probably begin to incorporate healthy whole foods as I am exercising more than I was when I started and it’s hard to get enough calories.
Don't drink much. Beyond that, so what?
Not once have I thought, "yup this'll make me healthier [physically]."
Nobody does everything they do because they think "this is good for my health".
We usually avoid stuff that is very bad for our health, but life is not just about going on for years avoiding any risk at all cost.
Unless you are American, you pretend to like the monk life and then eat garbage directly from the garbage can
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/opinion/food-nutrition-he...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/opinion/sway-kara-swisher...
Very well said. Every choice we make has pros and cons. If someone wants to optimize for maximum longevity and avoid all risk factors, that’s a personal decision.
If you don’t want to follow that path, that’s fine too.
The equation is different for everyone. I have completely avoided alcohol for extended periods, and frankly, I just missed having a beer with a friend, so I decided to adjust my behavior.
Does that make me a bad person that’s going to die early?
If everything is a risk equation, we should be talking about our career choices (sitting at a desk), the risk of driving to the grocery store, living in cities is dangerous (pollution), etc.
I think it’s great for people to be informed, but the morality police squad is nauseating.
In my late adolescence, an old friend and I had a joke about "champagne socialists," where we decided instead we would be "single malt anarchists," and we would meet at a hotels rooftop bar to drink whiskey we could barely afford, in a place we were barely welcome, and argue about how to solve the worlds problems. Who knew that decades later enjoying a few drams and a cigar would become a revolutionary act?
If I could coin a term for all these bureaucratic false-concerns based on what they have in common (alcohol, meat, tobacco, cars, gas stoves, humor, firearms, nuclear families, heteronoramtivity, truth, etc.) it would be that they are all "anti-fraternal," and motivated by undermining the formation and relationships that historically present sources of resistance to political dominion. This advisory isn't about "health" or alcohol, it's a policy dogwhistle. Every single one of the people behind these pronouncements and organizations openly hates the idea of "bro's," or any group of men with a shared identity, and restricting access to alcohol is one of the key stages in consolidating a regime.
I keep a bottle of blantons in a box somewhere for just in case the world ends, or descends into apocalyptic bedlam as a result of yet another one of historys antagonists finding their way. It would be a shame to open that box.
neopuritans be damned.
But seriously, I’m fully on board with this sentiment. I’m so tired of everything quickly going to extremes. I’m glad to know alcohol has risks at any level. I’ll take that information and use it how I see fit. Same with cannabis, same with sugar, same with adult content, same with lead-containing enamel on my plates.
Give me the information I need and let me be responsible for myself. Awareness of risks is what we should be doing. Forcing people into padded rooms so they don’t hurt themselves is not.
Unless you happen to be a hungarian mathematician, in which case: have at!
sometimes i drink a nice whiskey because i love the taste (specially when paired with a nice cigar), but sometimes i drink to get tipsy because... well, it's fun for me.
it's like the difference between normal cake and cake infused with thc: i will eat cake for dessert, but sometimes, ingesting infused cake is more fun.
It doesn't taste exactly the same though - but similar.
* I should not have to explain why I don't drink, simple 'no' suffices
* I should not have to listen, that alcohol is not too bad/is completely harmless/is fine in moderation/is actually required in social life
And the best thing - they do it completely voluntary (or maybe because it's crazy expensive, but the outcome is still good, so...)
As for the local denialists: we live in poluted cities walking around polution generating machines just meters apart from them. Yes, it is unhealthy, but it is our choice to live like that, because EVs aren't that prevalent yet and living in the woods in a hut would not be enough for most
Go, smoke cigarettes, drink wine and hit a pot once in a while if you need it. It's your life. 0 alcohol intake is a recomendation, not a requirement. It is harmful, people should consider for themselves if they need it as copium or for the taste or for whatever else reason
It shouldn't be argued "but how much is bad-bad compared to just sligtly bad, where's my curve?". Make the curve for yourself, consider your situation and your needs
Besides, nobody outside the Us thinks this way. You are being pushed one against each other.
"No level of driving is safe for our health"