Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking Is Healthy
psmag.com
psmag.com
"When it comes to cancer, no amount of alcohol is safe."
"The evidence showing lower risks for diabetes mellitus, stroke, heart failure, and total mortality stand in stark contrast to the harms associated with excessive alcohol consumption."
"The evidence for the harmful effects of alcohol is stronger than the evidence for its beneficial effects."
And finally:
"Other than celebrity drunk-driving stories, we rarely see headlines about the harm caused by alcohol. Dr. Rehm comments, 'I do not know why a beneficial link would be more important than a detrimental link, if the beneficial link overall is about one tenth of the detrimental link. We have counted how many studies are reported in the press, and there are many more reports on the beneficial link than on the detrimental link between alcohol and health.' "
It would seem our news media has the opposite problem from admitting drinking is healthy.
Yes, alcohol benefits some things and hurts some others - that is why in the chart above the line for "all causes" (of death) does not exactly mimic the one for "all cardiovascular diseases". But see where the low point of the "all causes" line is.
To paraphrase: when it comes to teetotaling, no amount of cancer studies make it safe.
The response has been lukewarm at best: basically, they've all said that it probably wouldn't hurt, but that the benefits were marginal, may present other risks, and it would be secondary to losing weight, getting regular exercise, and watching dietary risk factors (or, for that matter, taking statins, which so far I've decided against).
Still, it's about time for my yearly visit with the cardiologist and a GP, perhaps I should take the chart with me on my next visit.
(OTOH, the urologist I've been seeing advises me to avoid alcohol, so...)
Wiki has a nice write up .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_cancer I don't endorse or claim to comprehensively know the leading research on that, but it does definitely seem like the majority of people are only aware of the addiction risks and assume that health risks only come with massive alcohol consumption.
For example, despite being heavily out-drunk by the English, we have almost exactly twice their levels of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
...of course this is because Americans drink less and not because they like they burgers extra large.
I believe that high fructose corn syrup is somewhat rare, though? So maybe that's it...
That said, there have been quite a few studies arguing that light to moderate drinking is healthier than abstinence (e.g., less cognitive decline [2], increased longevity [1, 3], etc). For the most part it seems like a U-shaped curve, since heavy drinkers lose these benefits. A comprehensive list of studies that claim benefits to health was put together by Prof. David Hanson of SUNY Potsdam, and it can be found here: http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/AlcoholAndHealth.html#.U_pwJ...
In the Holahan et al. study [1], they found that moderate drinking was the best for longevity after studying mortality rates among 1,824 people. From their results: "Controlling only for age and gender, compared to moderate drinkers, abstainers had a more than 2 times increased mortality risk, heavy drinkers had 70% increased risk, and light drinkers had 23% increased risk. A model controlling for former problem drinking status, existing health problems, and key sociodemographic and social-behavioral factors, as well as for age and gender, substantially reduced the mortality effect for abstainers compared to moderate drinkers. However, even after adjusting for all covariates, abstainers and heavy drinkers continued to show increased mortality risks of 51 and 45%, respectively, compared to moderate drinkers."
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010....
[2] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713114506.ht...
[3] http://singularityhub.com/2010/09/02/heavy-drinkers-outlive-...
People will gravitate and cling to any evidence that alcohol has a health benefit so they won't feel so bad about drinking.
That it is addictive.
That abstinence can literally kill an addict.
That many people live crippled lives or have their lives cut short after consuming it frequently (and abusing it regularly) for decades.
That hangovers are a living hell.
That camels were the shit back in the day: https://www.google.es/search?q=doctors+recommend+camel&rlz=1...
TL;DR: Alcohol is a drug. Drink responsibly.
First, let’s address some typical objections to these findings. Of course, abstainers may not drink because they are already ill. Thus the meta-analysis relied on studies that eliminated subjects who are abstaining due to illness, or else contrast drinkers with lifetime abstainers. Additionally, objectors note, drinkers showing such longevity may be wine-sniffling, upper-middle-class professionals (virtually no study has ever found that the type of alcohol consumed impacts these results), people who exercise, eat right, and don’t smoke. To counter this argument, researchers from the prestigious Harvard Health Professionals Study published a paper which found that even men with four healthy life factors (diet, weight, non-smoking, exercise) had one-third to one-half the risk of suffering a heart attack if they had one to two drinks daily, relative to comparable men in each category who abstained.
The more alcohol a society consumes, the fewer alcohol-related problems and alcohol-related deaths (including cirrhosis) it has, since these societies, such as those in Southern Europe, integrate drinking with social life. And alcohol conveys health benefits.
My response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8174613