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.
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.
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.
Edit, I can't read
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.
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.
Not that there isn't acceptable tradeoffs with what is attained by driving.
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.