Even light drinking raises risk of cancer, heart disease, and early death | Hacker News Reader

Even light drinking raises risk of cancer, heart disease, and early death

eurekalert.org

26 pointsstringfood34 comments

>It turns out that two drinks per day, which might be considered ‘moderate’ from a social standpoint, is associated with a substantially elevated risk of a premature death caused by alcohol, they explain.

Two drinks sounds moderate to me. Averaging two drinks a day does not.

2 drinks a day is approaching Mad Men levels of alcohol consumption.

more like 2 drinks per meal in Mad Men

2 and 6 are the same order of magnitude.

They're within an order of magnitude of each other but they're not _in_ the same order of magnitude. 2 would be in the 0th order and 6 would be in the 1st.

But even if it weren't so, I'm not sure what your point is. Do you have a reason for thinking that orders of magnitude is a good way to compare alcohol consumption?

The typical glass of wine you'd be served at a dinner party is actually two "standard" drinks. So... no. Not at all. Not even close.

The article says 5oz (approximately 150ml) of wine is one standard drink. Unless you're being served nearly half a wine bottle (300ml of a standard 750ml bottle) in a single glass at a dinner party, you're wrong about that.

And if your dinner parties really are like that, cheers friend. Fun times.

haha I stand by my statement

Alcohol education classes promote (or used to promote…I had to attend one a couple of decades ago in college), the 1-2-3 system.

Not more than 1 unit an hour, don’t average more than 2 units a day over a week, and never exceed 3 units a day.

The caveat here is that a unit is much less than a regular serving size. A pint of beer is usually closer to 2 units.

So the recommendation was to not average more than a pint of beer a day, and to never drink more than about 1.5 pints in a day.

It’s much more stringent than people imagine.

> It’s much more stringent than people imagine

Only from a perspective of "drinking any amount of alcohol daily is normal"

I realize that I'm a pretty extreme outlier in that I don't drink alcohol almost at all anymore.

Even when I did drink, drinking any amount daily would have been unfathomable to me. A couple of drinks on Friday and over the weekend was plenty. Maybe one drink after work on a weeknight if I went out with coworkers or something

I don't really get why people love it so much, honestly

I agree with everything you wrote except that last paragraph.

A pint of beer a day is a lot. It's almost 500 calories - a meal by itself.

EDIT: I multiplied wrong, it's more like 250 calories.

I don't see how that's "stringent".

Maybe there are different sized pints, but in the uk a pint of beer is about 200 calories.

Depends on your social circle of course, but it’s pretty standard to have two or three pints if you meet up with friends in a pub.

Nah I multiplied wrong. Edited my comment.

NIH would define this as "heavy alcohol use". According to their estimates, only 5.5% of adults did this in the past month:

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to...

(Search for "Prevalence of Past-Month Heavy Alcohol Use")

Some interesting stats in there. Like only 85% of adults have drank ever in their lifetime.

You can spend your entire life minimizing risk, maximizing safety, and avoiding discomfort, or you can actually live. Either way you’re going to end up dead.

Moderation > abstinence in most things.

I wonder what's the impact of abstinence in terms of not participating in social events that generate around alcohol consumption. Some cultures rely heavily on drinks for social bonding and such.

In my experience, a social life that requires drinks for social lubricant goes away very quickly if you aren't drinking. It's an extremely fine veneer of socialization, not real connections

I know what the impact of drinking is on socializing before 10 AM. It just doesn't happen very often at all.

After a few drinks, the value of socialization drops considerably and a lot of it is just hanging around because you don't want to go home and feel the effects of the alcohol.

I'm not an anthropologist, so I won't handle this topic with gloves. Cultures are a shared ignorance. They have to be this way, almost by definition, else they wouldn't have any appeal.

The way we discuss health today is different from even 50 years ago. The debate about alcohol isn't new, but things like fitness trackers and smartwatches are. People can now prove it to themselves in real time that "feeling like shit" is not "all in their head", and that it's not a matter of "just drink water" or "eat something".

On the flip side, this cultural step forward comes with a step back. There's a lot of money to be made with this health anxiety.

Why is abstinence "not living" but drinking is?

I'm not really anti drug or alcohol, but I am absolutely anti "substance use is the only way to truly live", even in moderation

I spent my twenties drinking moderately, and I barely drink at all in my 30s. I don't miss it even a bit and I'm way more alive now than I was then.

I guess if you enjoy drinking, and would miss it in its absence, then you can call it "not living"

I dunno, that seems simplistic imo

I was diagnosed as celiac only a year ago. Many of my favorite meals and desserts contain gluten because I didn't know I was celiac. I can't have those things anymore. I do miss them, but I don't think I'm "not living" now that I have to avoid them

I'm just living differently and much more carefully about what I eat

You can spend your life avoiding grain, sugar, and alcohol... or you can actually live a real life /s

Whether you drink is probably irrelevant to why you feel more alive. Life experience opens up a ton of opportunities.

as a recovering alcoholic I am so tired of people saying that abstinence is not living. Like... you can't enjoy life sober? And what am I suppose to do with a statement like that? Seems very unaware thing to shout into the ether (my uncle invented the ethernet)

Yeah. I've never been an alcoholic myself, but my aunt was for many years and she has the most full life of anyone I know

Happy for you that you were able to kick the addiction, all the best for you. You can definitely enjoy life sober

I interpreted the comment as a general statement about risk, not about alcohol specifically. Always trying to reduce your risk from bad things to zero is not a great way to live.

Lots of things will increase your risk of cancer, like preserved meats, sitting in car traffic, and sunlight.

Because the mindset behind the modern, health conscious version of abstinence does not stop at alcohol. It tells you to monitor and optimize every single parameter of your health, avoid any substance that may or may not damage your body, just so you can maybe live five more years - five more years spent doing what exactly?

It's a paranoid way of living and frankly people are likely doing more harm to their health by being so anxious about ingesting one nanogram of carcinogens than the carcinogens themselves.

This is true. Everything is in a constant state of decline (including our health). Enjoy it while you can.

I like how you implied not drinking alcohol implies not living a full life... that is so false

https://theonion.com/world-death-rate-holding-steady-at-100-...

So I'm looking at Figure 2 of the study and it shows that risk is negative (I.e. it's a benefit) below 7 drinks per week or 1 drink per day. And then they say "There was no protective net effect of alcohol observed at any level of alcohol consumption." And then they discuss the observed protective effects and just say "this body of evidence [that we used] has substantial limitations". They also say "Readers should therefore consider both the point estimates and their associated CIs when interpreting the risk thresholds presented in this study." but then their CI indicates only 2+ drinks per day can cause statistically significant issues.

Overall, a very boring study. It would be more interesting if they published the code and we could play with the numbers, seeing as all the data they used is public, but we can't even do that.

And going outside increases your risk of getting hit by a car

Reply on news.ycombinator.com