The benefits of light to moderate drinking might have been exaggerated | Hacker News Reader

The benefits of light to moderate drinking might have been exaggerated

psmag.com

38 pointsacsillag54 comments

Funny ambiguous title. Until I've opened the article I thought that light somehow helps to moderate drinking. I haven't thought about it before but it could make some sense too, considering that most of us drink at night when it's darker.

I think the general conclusion isn't just "If something looks too good to be true, it should be treated with great caution" but "If it relates to food or drink, we know diddly squat". And even less if the purveyor of said knowledge is not even a full-time research scientist. Or heck, not a scientist at all. Sadly that seems to be the source of 90% of diet "wisdom".

Now let us get back to honestly saying that we like to drink to get sloshed, without any excuses of health or even just taste.

My general conclusion is more like, if it relates to food or drink, there's both positives and negatives that can be spun either way.

Take eggs, an easy example. The protein is good for muscles, but the cholesterol is bad for arteries. A scientific study will balance these variables in depth. But the clickbait headlines that filter up to public internet visibility will polarize on one or the other because that's what gets the clicks and attention.

Moderate drinking: good for stress, bad for the liver. Easy to frame a headline to highlight either aspect.

Agreed that the real problem is 90% of diet "wisdom" coming from clickbait headlines rather than seriously considered science.

Bad science reporting is yet another bad commercial exploitation of the scientific data, but quite often you don't even have to go that far. We're talking about really long-term effects and lots of variables. It's quite rare that you can just watch something happen metabolically and draw your conclusions from that. Most of the time, we're talking about surveys or small studies. And it's not like the people surveyed are getting in-depth tests every single day. Then add some bad statistics and interest groups on top of that.

Your example ain't that easy, either.

Am I the only one who thinks this article contradicts itself? Starts off leading towards some great conclusion that any amount of alcohol is bad for you, then tails off with this:

"The team found there's at best a small decline in mortality rates for men aged 50 to 64 and women aged 65 and older. Former drinkers, meanwhile, had somewhat higher mortality rates than others, suggesting that past claims light drinking was good for your heart were based on faulty comparisons. After all, some of those who'd quit were probably heavy drinkers in the past, and, compared to them, light drinkers had likely done less damage to their hearts."

In summary, it appears to be saying that there's a small benefit in light to moderate alcohol consumption but heavy drinking is probably bad ... uh no shit, that's what people have been saying for years?

For years we've known that people who drink no alcohol at all have worse outcomes than people who drink some alcohol. We also thought that drinking a very small amount of alcohol - a glass or two of wine per week - was protective but we didn't think more alcohol than that was protective.

Recently a study was released and heavily reported.

One reason we thought that tee-totalers had worse health outcomes was the number of people with alcoholism in that group or people with other severe health problems. This new study claimed to have corrected for that and only included healthy people in the teetotal group. The study then said that drinking no alcohol was associated with dying sooner than drinkin alcohol. The curve they released showed most benefit to people drinking one drink a day, but showed benefits over not drinking at upto about 5 drinks a day.

That was different to what we thought before.

It turns out this new study has a bunch of flaws. There are some interesting effects. Older women who drink do see some protective benefits. But the health benefits of moderate drinking for most people are not at all clear.

It's pretty important to publicise the corrections because of the heavy reporting of that flawed research, and because of the misunderstanding (that you repeat) that moderate drinking provides health benefits.

Have they ever done this study on people who have never drank alcohol and are healthy? It seems biased that the only group of 'non-drinkers' are people that are former drinkers.

I'm probably being dense, but that did not help me understand it at all.

I understand the perceived flaw in the previous studies that former heavy drinkers, now teetotalers, were included in the non-drinking bracket and therefore negatively skewing the results for non-drinkers, HOWEVER, is the article still not claiming that even having adjusted for that that the results still show benefits from small amounts of alcohol?

Yes, that's right.

The study claimed to have removed people who can't drink alcohol for medical reasons and then it claimed that people who drink upto five drinks a day live longer than the corrected non-drinking group.

Thanks for clarification :). /files under 'non-story'

I don't know of anyone who drinks because they think it's healthy.

Larry King drinks wine (1-2 glasses/day) because his doctor told him, it is good for him...

I know some older people who justify drinking wine because of the stories of how it is good for heart health.

I do however know of several people who justify their drinking by claiming it's healthy

Here are a selection of headlines from one (low quality) daily UK newspaper.

It wouldn't surprise me if, in the face of this flood of low quality reporting, people got the wrong messages about alcohol.

"Why is red wine good for you?" http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-200858/Factfile-red-...

"So how good is wine for your health?" http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-107073/So-good-win... first paragraph of article "Wine drinkers have never had it so good. Not only does a glass or two, or even three, taste rather good, it's remarkably healthy, too, protecting against a whole range of diseases."

Cardiologist precribes red wine http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2661296/The-cardio...

Patients prescribed red wine http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-187164/Patients-pr...

Red wine is slimming http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2945133/How-glass-... -- first bold bullet point "Drinking red wine could improve conditions such as fatty liver disease"

Red wine not just good for your heart but may prevent deafness http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2282268/Red-wine-i...

I've never understood how something that interferes directly with GABAminergic parts of the brain was supposed to be beneficial.

So I need to go back to heavy drinking then? Fair enough, if I have to...!

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. - Oscar Wilde

The trouble is, alcohol is addictive, so the tendency; health benefits or otherwise is not to drink in moderation. The tendency is to drink more and more.

Yay for generalization

I said 'the tendency'. Also are you suggesting that alcohol isn't in anyway physiologically or psychologically addictive?

> Also are you suggesting that alcohol isn't in anyway physiologically or psychologically addictive?

Point to me where I said that.

Oh and by the way, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park, it's in the front page of HN today

Most people who drink problem do mot have any addiction to alcohol. That includes many of the people with increased risk drinking. ("Increased risk" is an English health thing. It includes men who drink more than about 21 to 28 units per week but less than 50 units per week; and women who drink more than about 14 to 21 units per week but less than 50 units per week. Four bottles of wine (with an ABV of 13%) would be 39 units.)

I'm not sure that the tendency is for people to increase their alcohol level over time. (Apart from the obvious increase after they start drinking at about 18).

That's great news actually, and I hope scientist will keep studying this topic. We need less drinkers, not more, even if the dosage is moderate.

Why do we need fewer drinkers?

> Why do we need fewer drinkers?

“We know that alcohol-fuelled harm costs society about £21 billion a year and are determined to reduce this burden to taxpayers. The rise in admissions is very concerning and we are taking action to tackle cheap and harmful alcohol.”

UK Department of Health, October 2014

Total NHS budget in 2014 was around £104 billion.

For comparison, UK defence budget was £33 billion.

So we need fewer drinkers at the high risk end (more than 50 units per week) and fewer drinkers at the increased risk end (less than 50 but more than about 21 units per week).

Neither of these are light to moderate, which is what the title is talking about. You said that we need fewer moderate deinkers. So, why do we need fewer moderate drinkers?

I would guess because almost all heavy drinkers used to be moderate drinkers

edit: Not siding with him, just guessing his opinion

Yep, but remember that all heavy drinkers used to be milk-only drinkers also.

>We know that alcohol-fuelled harm costs society about £21 billion a year and are determined to reduce this burden to taxpayers

So you tax it, like Canada does. It's partly why our beer/wine/liquor is relatively expensive.

We know that cars kill over 30,000 people a year in the US, and 500,000 people on Earth, every single year. Therefore, we should stigmatize responsible, considerate drivers.

Because drinking causes more problems than it solves.

> We need less drinkers, not more, even if the dosage is moderate

Why? Because you don't like it?

I'd say the fact that humans metabolize alcohol (have evolved it) it's a pretty good hint that there was an evolutionary pressure selecting for it.

I'd also hope for more study, but it's not like moderate uses of alcohol are significantly bad (as opposed to a high consumption, of course)

>> it's a pretty good hint that there was an evolutionary pressure selecting for it

Or it is just a random mutation that we never got rid of. It could be either way.

A random mutation that suffers no evolutionary pressure is usually spread randomly across the population. Eye color for example.

As opposed of something that gives an advantage (like lactose tolerance or falciform anemia) which usually spreads quickly, while those that don't have that advantage died out.

It might look entirely different if you take social pressure into account as well.

When our ancestors climbed down from their trees, they also started eating windfall. Ripe fruits tend to ferment. This is the reason why most carnivores can’t metabolize alcohol, while humans and other herbi-/omnivores can. The evolutionary pressure was to be able to eat more.

It seems more likely to me that it evolved accidentally and we later began drinking alcohol, given how long evolution takes and that we have probably been making alcohol for only 10s of thousands of years.

It seems more likely to me that it evolved accidentally

It is a complex metabolic pathway. My half-educated guess would be that it could not be a result of a mutation.

>I'd say the fact that humans metabolize alcohol (have evolved it) it's a pretty good hint that there was an evolutionary pressure selecting for it.

I think this was something to do with the dark ages when in the western world, drinking water with alcohol was better than drinking water with bacteria and other pathogens.

Over in the east, alcohol tolerance is a lot lower (see 'asian blush') because they boiled water and drank tea instead.

This is what I've always understood - if anyone knows otherwise, I'd be happy to stand corrected.

I'm not sure if this study, or any comments here mentions asians or different ethnicities at all.

There was an article on HN yesterday called "the medieval beer myth" or something like that.

> I think this was something to do with the dark ages when in the western world, drinking water with alcohol was better than drinking water with bacteria and other pathogens.

I've read recently that this has been debunked. See http://leslefts.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/the-great-medieval-w....

Edit: As pointed out by thisjepisje, it was on HN - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9031856

I'd say the fact that humans metabolize alcohol (have evolved it) it's a pretty good hint that there was an evolutionary pressure selecting for it.

I'm not sure about evolutionary reason "for" drinking. As I understand, when alcohol is digested, the body switches to metabolising it immediately. So, yes, there is a pathway, but it can be argued that alcohol is recognised as toxin, so the evolutionary pressure was to get it out of the system ASAP. Therefore, it is metabolized, but still "bad for you".

I'd say the fact that humans can cure other humans from 3rd degree burns does not make jumping into fire a beneficial.

We have only started system biology research, we barely started to realise we have more bacteria than our own cells and we have absolutely no clue how alcohol or any other metabolites affect those bacteria.

I believe any of high energy density foods (meat, sugar, alcohol, processed grains) have only short term benefits.

Sure, there was evolutionary pressure for it because fermentation products exist in nature and omnivores like humans are going to end up consuming them incidentally.

Fewer* drinkers. Perhaps you could spend more time understanding the English language rather than offering baseless implications that suggest people who drink are a problem for society.

Drinking is a great social lubricant if you are introverted. Without it, many of the social groups in security and programming that I have participated in would have ceased to exist. Bonding over laughs while having a pint is not something to pretend is irrelevant.

> Drinking is a great social lubricant if you are introverted.

I used to drink a bit and this was a common refrain in groups of drinkers, especially heavy drinkers. The reality is a bit more depressing - this justifies drinking that is covering up real problems.

Now I stopped drinking and, after an adjustment period, I have a much better and more satisfying social life. A social life that revolves around doing positive things - fitness, creativity, learning.

One difference I notice is the sense of humour - we laugh, but not at people and we don't exclude people from our groups. And we speak more freely without having to worry that someone will suddenly react badly and start throwing around insults to defend themselves... about grammar, say.

>The reality is a bit more depressing

I'm glad you're able to identify "reality" and explain it to the rest of us, wandering around in a fog.

>A social life that revolves around doing positive things - fitness, creativity, learning.

My social life revolves around fitness, creativity, learning and some occasional social drinking the inevitably ends up being a good time with people I love. None of those things are precluded by drinking.

Between the comments here and on the sports article a few weeks back, I've learned this community is oddly concerned about and sometimes nasty towards things other people might happen to find enjoyable, and enjoy explaining how they're "wrong".

It sounds like you were just an alcoholic or at least hanging out with alcoholics. I have never had any issues with having to walk on eggshells or have friends have outbursts. We only have one or two drinks so what you described is a non issue.

> Fewer* drinkers

I hate this. Less now means fewer whether you like it or not. Language changes and no amount of pedantry will stop it

Nope, you're describing a mistake grade school children have made for many years. It used to be corrected by high school, but failing education systems have led to confusion between discrete sets and continuous sets. Let's not try to defend ignorance.

"We need _fewer irresponsible_ drinkers", or even better "We need _less irresponsible drinking_"

FTFY.

By these downvotes I'd guess a lot of you like drinking, huh. Never thought I'd struck your cord.

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