> Alcohol ... has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco.
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.
The linear no threshold model of harm for radiation is debated but is the foundation of all nuclear protection policies. To policy, zero radiation is considered best and all increments above that, regardless of size or relative comparison to natural background radiation are bad.
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.
So when you walk outside and into the sun, you're exposed to radiation, we need sunlight exposure to live, so again bringing up the parents comments regarding the need for "practical" advice.
By radiation here it is meant ionizing radiation, which comes in 3 major forms (exceptions do exist):
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).
My understanding is you actually need to wear sunscreen that blocks UVb and a lot doesn't. Which is why Zinc is preferred in places like Australia, because it actually "blocks" UVa/UVb, does'nt just stop you from getting red skin, it protects your DNA from radiation.
Keep in mind that WHO recommendations go well beyond alcohol's role as a carcinogen. Alcohol has widespread and significant negative impacts across many of internal systems [1]. Even compared to "hard drugs", alcohol is a dangerous mind-altering substance with objectively high risk factors.
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.
"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."
The way these risks are reported often makes this mistake. A statistically significant difference is reported as a "significant" difference, which means something different to lay people.
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.
The thinking is backwards on this. They state there is no scientific safe drinking level. They even compare it to radiation. The goal is to establish an unsafe level. it's like saying there is no safe speed to drive a car - sure that's technically true, but worthless to say.
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.
I might be wrong here, but I have never heard the claim that 2 beers might be good for your health. I have heard that with wine, but that's not a claim that alcohol is good for your health.
"I might be wrong here, but I have never heard the claim that 2 beers might be good for your health."
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 ?
> They state there is no scientific safe drinking level. They even compare it to radiation. The goal is to establish an unsafe level. it's like saying there is no safe speed to drive a car - sure that's technically true, but worthless to say.
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.
> 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.
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.
From the BMJ *British Medical Journal). "Analyses of the dose of alcohol consumed showed that 2.5–14.9 g alcohol (about ≤1 drink) per day was protective for all five outcomes compared with no alcohol (table 2⇑). For coronary heart disease outcomes, all levels of intake >2.5 g/day had similar degrees of risk reduction. " https://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d671
They don't give a safe number of cigarettes, do they? There probably is a number that's minimally harmful, that lowers with age.
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.
as a continued social drinker, or more general doer of anything, i've noticed that anyone who no longer does that thing is typically quite vocal and negative towards said thing.
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.
>> i've noticed that anyone who no longer does that thing is typically quite vocal and negative towards said thing.
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.
I drink maybe 4 drinks total a month. I get where you're going with that though. There is actually data out there on smoking, and having a cigar once in a while isn't really more unsafe than sitting by the camp fire. Your body also recovers itself in most regards rather quickly after chronic smoking (months). I'm not a smoker, and it's better not to smoke because it's super addictive, but having a smoke is like having a drink, not unsafe per say. I'm more worried about sugar than alcohol.
There has been some suggestions that 1-2 drinks is the optimal (extends health etc..). So, this clears up any confusion on that topic. There are many things that are risky but make life worth living, the previous guidance made it appear you could enjoy life (1-2 drinks) with actual upsides which unfortunately turns out not to be the case of drinking.
I do not agree with your analogy or theirs. First most people have to drive at some point in their lives. Driving is not a choice we get to make so the associated risks are not something we can deal with. While it is debatable if you can avoid drinking socially many people do for a variety of reasons. The article is fairly clear. Drinking alcohol will increase cancer risks. And like someone eloquently said above you the real critique is not it is stupid to point out drinking is an avoidable carcinogen but it is our free choice as people to make that trade off knowing you might enjoy it. I think the point about radiation is a better comparison but again like driving it is unavoidable to a degree. We will all go outside more in our lives then is recommended. Once again drinking is not unavoidable. I don't think the article makes a worthless argument and I believe your analogies are false comparisons but I still take your point. I agree drinking is not something people want to avoid so it is certainly up to each person to choose their own acceptable risk but honestly that is more a personal choice that science can advise then a magic number we can all follow.
Meanwhile, there isn't clear evidence that there is no safe level of radiation. Biological systems are buffered in all kinds of ways, including against low doses of radiation, mutagens, and even... acids
! (Contrary to modern health biz ideas "oh your body is so acidic, drink this basic water to fix it!")
And they make zero comment about genetic risk. That’s what matters, genetic risk, as well as the total amount of exposure to carcinogenic’s. It’s just a worthless dumb thing to say.
You seem confident that you can categorize any activity. what about: strolling along a pathway, hiking in the footlhills, scrambling a mountain, ice climbing, base jumping? At what level the rock climbing rating system do we inflect from indirect to direct risk?
Assuming arguendo that you're not talking about repetitive stress injuries to the body or brain from overdoing physical or stressful activity, and just the acute harm from accidents, they're pretty much the same as driving. The correlation to accidents does not mean the activity is dangerous: it's the accident that's dangerous.
I object to the conflation of quantitative risk of experiencing an incidental event with the qualitative risk posed by a voluntary event.
and according to the WHO one particulate from that exhaust increases your risk from pollution above absolute zero, hence driving is not safe when it comes to your health.
Tire particulate is a particularly nasty form of pollution that most are unaware of. EVs aren't particularly better at reducing tread wear (some say it's a bit higher due to instant-torque at 0 RPM).
It is also beneficial because various crap gets delivered, people move fast to where they are needed and generally stuff gets done. Some paramedics even get so brazen as to fly helicopters to the rescue.
It's not about drawing the line, it's about quantifying the impact.
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.
I think overall it is likely slight net negative. Just from things like particulate pollution and siting not moving for a period. Also the UV light from sun possibly.
Not that there isn't acceptable tradeoffs with what is attained by driving.
Driving may be a necessity while drinking is rarely an obligation. Also driving may cause instant harm while, drinking may cause a very much delayed harm. So, by knowing that not driving or not drinking are the safest choice I can choose to skip having a single drink and avoid driving if I don’t have to, thus completely minimizing the risk.
Sure but you can basically play this game forever and arrive at a very bad, but safe quality of life.
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”.
Why would choosing a safer travel method or avoiding unnecessary drives ruin the quality of life? I am not proposing to quit living a life, only adjusting the methods of living. We obviously don’t share the same values regarding the quality of life.
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.
Consider having to decide between a 20 min trip by car, or 1 hour trip by train, and the car driving has 100x serious accident probability. However, you save 40 minutes if you drive. Likely, driving doesn't take 40 min off your life expectancy. And even if it did, you save the minutes now, and not at the end of your life.
> Consider having to decide between a 20 min trip by car, or 1 hour trip by train
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.
> To identify a “safe” level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption.
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.
I think the only time my grandma drank that I know of is a thimble full of wine at church communion a few times a year. Would these scientists have advised her to skip that ceremony?
Which brings up a related question: is the religion part, the transportation to the place of worship, the risk of communicable disease, or the alcohol part the most dangerous in that day?
Yeah. We should. You can smoke a cigar a month and not be considered a smoker by life insurance companies. You can smoke 4 a week and not be considered a smoker by health insurance companies. I’d love to see actual stats because I really enjoy a pipe and am willing to take a slight risk for it.
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.
Are you sure? Because I mentioned that I had smoked one cigar at my high school graduation (which about 3 years before the health insurance interview), and I got demoted from 'preferred plus' to 'preferred' for my life insurance. This was about 20 years ago.'
> 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...
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.
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 ?
What about safe amount of chlorine to drink? Piss?
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?
and yet we do this all the time. Your city probably produces an air quality alert that has some form of ranges; I doubt it says "one particulate of pollution found in the air; stop breathing!".
There's also a limit between a healthy lifestyle and enjoyment of life, beyond which towards "maximum health" you'll either go to an early grave because of how bland your life is, or live a joyless life avoiding things you'd enjoy.
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.
Plus, drinking together with food instead of on an empty stomach (as more common in more northern cultures) slows down absorption allowing more time for the liver to process the alcohol before it reaches the brain and other organs, if we are talking about a standard dosage (a glass of wine etc). Even if this is not enough for the liver (even with a glass of wine and full stomach it will not be able to process alcohol without getting overloaded), it is definitely better than binging beers on empty stomach, as less alcohol will be in circulation and reaching organs for less amount of time. But then, how often one does that matters too.
At a recent physical I was talking about this with my doctor. This can reduce the toxicity effects but actually increases the contact time and the carcinogenic impact, so might be better for your liver but have a higher cancer risk. I was like, "damn..."
If you need to have a strict health-based regiment for eating and drinking to have a joyful life, I'm even sorrier for you.
In the end, it's less about health and living life to the fullest, and more about a modern hysteria based on fear of living (or fear of the thought of our eventual demise, which is the same).
That's so dishonest; c'mon man - there are millions (likely billions) of people who enjoy a drink, I am rather confident you have absolutely no sorry given for the extreme vast majority, nor it bothers you.
There’s no reason you can’t have a joyful life without alcohol. The biggest joys in life don’t directly correlate with it.
But, a good glass of wine with a nice meal adds something beautiful. The dinner parties where everyone is 3 glasses in produce some of the most memorable, happy, joyful conversations of my life.
There’s a reason that throughout history people always mention “moderation” with respect to alcohol. In moderation, it adds a unique pleasure to being alive. You don’t need it, but it’s nice to have.
Everybody needs things to have an enjoyable life. Alcohol can be one of those things. It can also destroy your life, of course. As can too much sugar, too much sun exposure, etc etc
Do you need sugar, red meat, fat to have a joyful life? You do, don't you. Having a glass of wine or two should be treated the same.
If you have religious reservations, please use your energy to fight off islamists who deal drugs, take bribes and marry with young children. Those sin more than people who indulge in a glass of wine or two.
Well, for example we are currently experiencing 80% p.a. inflation, because Islam forbids interest rates. Gulenists were religious extremists but they were at least somewhat educated. Erdogan and his crew are not. We are turning against science and into a medieval interpretation of Islam each day. It is very frightening.
Alcohol is so culturally embedded in West the replies here are so sad. Alcohol is poison and it fucks up kidney, liver and brain. Sets cortisol base levels higher and perpetuates a habit in such a way that, you HAVE to drink to feel normal and relaxed. This cycle perpetuates and you associate alcohol with relaxation all the while alcohol is imposing higher and higher tax on you.
It is like a robber - robbing $100 when you are sleeping and giving $50 when you visit them. Its the unawareness that you are being robbed of hundred makes him look like a good guy.
note: I do not mind your downvote.. but if you are downvoting - please schedule a bloodwork and take a look at your numbers.
So much denialism going on here, it's like talking to my alcoholic relative. This shouldn't trigger such a strong reaction, if it does, one should look into why that is.
The reaction you're seeing is not because we've all got drinking problems. It's due to the reactionary way this and other similar studies are headlined: "No level of alcohol consumption is safe...". It's click-bait, and so you're seeing the resulting clicks.
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.
> 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!
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.
I'd be perfectly fine never touching a drop of alcohol again, and think this sort of dire warning is crap. It's actively harming the dissemination of good health advice.
"X amount of alcohol increases odds of disease by Y%".
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!
I've never had more than a literal sip, usually when parents let me see what a drink tasted like, and I don't plan on drinking and my reaction was much the same as other reasonable people in this thread. The framing of the title and contents is absurd.
How is it denialism? What I’m reading here is mostly people acknowledging there is some risk to alcohol consumption, but judging the risk to be worth it. Life is fundamentally risky.
> So much denialism going on here, it's like talking to my alcoholic relative. This shouldn't trigger such a strong reaction, if it does, one should look into why that is.
Ever read any HN thread where the article states that to combat obesity one just have to eat less? ... yeah.
This is not news, it has been known for some time. For anyone wanting to get an in-depth, balanced, and rigorous take on alcohol I can heartily recommend Drink? by David Nutt. Reading it has made me more mindful of when and why I choose to drink, and increasingly I find myself drinking less and less.
Was David Nutt the UK scientific advisor who came out and said weed, lsd, ecstasy are all far less harmful than tobacco and alcohol and was then publicly shamed and abused by the uk Media for daring to suggest such a thing?
I would think Crack Cocaine, Heroin, and Methamphetamine are similar to in harm to others (and there’s no way methamphetamine is that much less harmful to others, unless he’s not aware that smoke and production of it are toxic). I’m guessing most of that comes from it being illegal and people needing to steal to get it, so even more surprising is how harmful alcohol is to others even though it is legal. Full paper: https://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lanc...
Some of the criteria are that might fall under harm to others are:
For judging harm it's interesting how the culture and economics around a drug may chiefly determine the harm, not the substance itself. The measurable harm of different drugs varies across regions.
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 identify a “safe” level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption.
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.
> However, latest available data indicate that half of all alcohol-attributable cancers in the WHO European Region are caused by “light” and “moderate” alcohol consumption – less than 1.5 litres of wine or less than 3.5 litres of beer or less than 450 millilitres of spirits per week
If you drink the average every day, you will spend a large part of your days inebriated. And if you don't drink the average every day, you will be deeply drunk every few days.
It's completely unreasonable to call that level of consumption "light".
1 beer is not going to make anybody inebriated for a large part of their day. 3-4 beers will put someone into a good buzz but most will not be “deeply drunk” from that.
And again, this is the UPPER BOUND. not the average as you say
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?
>Half a litre of beer a day is considered "light"?
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%.
"Desitka" ("10" meaning 10 plato degrees of sugar content before fermentation) is very popular in Czech Republic. It usually has 3.5% - 4% ABV. Beer consumption in Czech Republic is about 130l per person per year. That's 0.35l per person per day. It used to be closer to 0.5l but the average ABV % probably went up so alcohol consumption stayed about the same.
Fair enough, ~5% would be more accurate I guess. 16 oz at 5% is still a relatively small amount of alcohol in most cultures that historically consume it.
> 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
> The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is.
I wish the article would tell us more about this curve. How much does my risk increase for each drink I have?
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.
"because moderate drinkers tend to be very socially advantaged," Naimi says. Moderate drinkers tend to be healthier on average because they're well-educated and more affluent, not because they're drinking a bottle of wine a week on average. "[Their] alcohol consumption ends up looking good from a health perspective because they're already healthy to begin with."
> Moderate drinkers tend to be healthier on average because they're well-educated and more affluent, not because they're drinking a bottle of wine a week on average
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.
> Both can be true at once, for exactly the reason described: the causal effect goes in the other direction.
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.
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.
> Even if this fact is true it doesn't mean that drinking is healthy for these moderate drinkers
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.
Id be interested in a source as it is my understanding that most of this research was disinformation from the alcohol industry. The small uptick in death rates at 0 alcohol consumption is due to the prevalence of people with severe illness not drinking. The illness causes both the non drinking and the increased risk of death. When this is corrected for, people who drink 0 alcohol live longest.
> Id be interested in a source as it is my understanding that most of this research was disinformation from the alcohol industry
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.
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.
I fear for a world with illegal drugs. Plenty of people use stimulants and psychedelics as part of their religion, yet the courts have (IMO wrongly) allowed countless lives to be ruined because of it.
Out of curiosity I looked up cancer rates in Islamic countries (which typically) have far lower rates of alcohol consumption. Seems there is a significantly lower rate of cancer there by as much as 2-3x compared to countries in which alcohol is more widely consumed: https://jenci.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43046-022-0...
There are doubtless other factors at play but the data at least seems to correlate with the WHO's recommendation.
I don’t think you’re right, every generation since modernity seems equal in this regard, the latest generations don’t seem special.
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
Definitely an interesting turn of phrase. Ironically, I think you've helped me understand why I might be wrong about some of the metaverse hype: while I steadfastly believe that people prefer the real world, moving consumption to a fake world (e.g., buying an NFT handbag for your digital avatar) would fall into this category of behavior. In effect, paying as much to own a fake good as the real thing is loudly saying, "Look at what I could have purchased if I were less virtuous."
What was the first miracle performed by Jesus (as documented in the Christian bible)? Turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana (after they had run out of wine). Would Jesus have done this if alcohol consumption was against God's will? Food for thought. I'm not saying that God wants us to drink, but I think it provides some evidence that God doesn't view alcohol as inherently evil or bad (from Christian perspective). Abuse of alcohol is a different thing.
As I’m getting older I’ve basically had to swear off alchohol and marijuana completely. Even if I don’t get intoxicated (or stoned), I nearly always just feel like absolute garbage the next day (not hangover, just feel gross and groggy). Sometimes it’s lasted for days, even when I only have one drink or smoke barely enough weed to get a little buzzed. Fortunately I’ve also reached a point where I just don’t really feel good from being intoxicated either so I don’t really have a recreational incentive to do it anymore either.
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.
“Alcohol blocks REM sleep, and as a result, says University of California, Berkeley, professor Matthew Walker[1], drinking can make you forget new information.”
Fruit juice also contains small amounts of ethanol, so if the WHO is correct then do not replace your wine with fruit juice.
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.
I am sure this is absolutely the last scientific paper that comes out completely reversing the conclusion of the papers that came out before. This time they did it!
I wonder how the data is treated statistically. If 99% of millionaires have consumed alcohol, does consuming alcohol increase the chance of becoming a millionaire!?
Alright well you can call me names or you can talk about it. Do you have the intelligence and understanding to have a discussion or do you just want to screech insults at people on the internet?
Human liver has enzymes to metabolize alcohol for energy, which implicitly makes this claim questionable. If we have it, why not be putting it to work?
1) The word 'health' should not be used because that's just a buzzword. The right word in this context could tentatively be 'lifespan', meaning that they are tentatively projecting that in the big sample of humans they surveyed those who drink 0mL of alcohol will stick around for longer compared to those who drink even 1mL. Meaning that in their model there is a correlation between the 2 data of sticking around for longer and alcohol intake.
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.
From the BBC article: "Men who are dependent on alcohol or drugs are six or seven times more likely to be involved in domestic abuse against women than others, according to an extensive new study."
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.)
I mean, from the same article you have, they bring up the same point I did:
> 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."
> dependent on alcohol or drugs are six or seven times more likely
NB: this does not mean actively using. Dependency creates significant stress when sober, which almost certainly amplifies violent dispositions. Hence my GP's comment.
> 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.)
You’ve also got to be pretty miserable to get in that state in the first place. Maybe they are victims of abuse themselves or have untreated trauma/other mental health conditions.
That would be fine if drinking didn't affect people's ability to satisfy their social obligations (as coworkers, parents, friends, etc.) but that's not the case.
Drinking sometimes for some people impairs their ability to meet their social obligations. Prohibition was an unmitigated disaster and you have to be a special kind of idiot to think trying it again would produce a different result. People like to drink alcohol.
Prohibition is the go-to example of banning alcohol not working but I think this is blurry thinking. In no other area of policy would you just point to one big example of something not working and thereby declare the whole approach off limits.
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.
Fascinating that you keep getting downvoted for stating completely obvious observations. I would have thought your reasonable explanations could convince this supposed 'rational' crowd but apparently not.
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).
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/.
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.
It sounds like you're trolling, and that you're not seriously proposing a return to prohibition, but rather using it as a snarky frame with which to criticize unrelated beliefs.
I'm not trolling. I think America would be better if people didn't drink. I drink sometimes, but I also eat fried foods and skip the gym and do other things I'd acknowledge people shouldn't do.
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.
If you look at the articles I linked, it's actually the opposite. Black people are almost twice as likely to report not drinking as white people. Alcohol use also increases with socioeconomic status: https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/blog/socioeconomic-status-....
that's probably because drinking in the US is very expensive.
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.
Actually, only some populations developed the gene mutation to increase the alcohol people can tolerate, but I can't find the number now. Try navigating from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_tolerance to see if you are more lucky.
I think people are pretty tired of headlines like these tbh, it seems what it really say is "Alcohol risks are dose dependent" but it seems they wanted to go for a more ominous sounding headline, so the message is less effective.
Is alcohol essential for a good social life? Growing up in Europe it definitely was a big part of it. Now I look at my younger colleagues in the US and many never drink, rarely go out and are lonely and single. But maybe healthier?
The problem is: No alcohol wozld be much more harmful for society these days... if i couldn't relax and unwind with a drink i would surely do something involving a chainsaw in a short matter of time...
I despise the WHO generally but this article is solid. There is too much confusion about alcohol in the medical industry. If you ask European doctors having a glass or two of wine "extends health". If you research typical government guidelines, they say a drink or two a day isn't bad or may even say it's "healthy" [1]
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.
I dunno, is it a solid article? They say "Risks start from the first drop" and I am having a a hard time imagining how they could prove that, regardless of how likely it is. Looks like fearmongering.
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.
All medicine have risks, the added alcohol is a tiny extra risk that the medical community thinks it is worth taking because it has benefits that are greater than the risks. For example, other chemicals that could be used as a substitute may be worse or poorly tested.
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.
"If they keep the alcohol, it is probably for a good reason."
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.
Acetaminophen is cytotoxic and causes liver damage. No amount of it is safe. Yet we have children's tylenol.
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.
> If this is true, the medical community is actively causing harm.
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.
With alcohol, its often times added to medicines as an inactive ingredient with little to no therapeutic value. It also has alternatives.
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.
> 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.
Even if there are risks you have to compare the risks. Would I have a child drink a small amount of alcohol for some life saving drug? Just like how you drive to work despite there being a risk in driving.
So what is the risk of damaging your life from 4 drinks a week compared to risks of getting killed by someone else walking to work every day (in the US with its drivers and SUVs)? Less alcohol is better, perhaps, but we live past our savings while drinking all the same.
What your example misses, is that alternatives exist to alcohol for most medicines. There's no reason for most of these medications to include alcohol.
It gets worse where people get issues and they start looking for some diet supplements or pills for "better liver" ,"concentration problems" or whatever else.
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.
> 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.
I know enough alcoholics who have similar issues connecting dots such that I tend to think it is real. I mostly hangout with teatotalers, most people have a lot more contact, and so probaby haven't realized how normal it is.
>If having one drink can decompress you after a hard days work, fine, you're not gonna get cancer.
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.
Except that a) the WHO says that amount knowably increases cancer risk (and so the author would disagree with the parent's comment), and b) if you just say "it won't have harm X" while not endorsing harms you think it has, you're implying there are no harms. As long as the parent wasn't endorsing the WHO's claim of harm from that level, he's disagreeing with the thesis.
On the subject of decompressing from daily stress.. I would humbly submit that a small (just above psychoactive threshold) puff of vaporized (not combusted) THC extract or other legal cannabinoid, is a good harm reduction measure, compared to alcohol. Especially if it eliminates the urge to drink or seek other more risky hedonic outlets.
> If you ask European doctors having a glass or two of wine "extends health".
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.
> “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. The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is,” explains Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges, acting Unit Lead for Noncommunicable Disease Management and Regional Advisor for Alcohol and Illicit Drugs in the WHO Regional Office for Europe.
I think that it is explicitly pushing back on that very concept.
That is an excellent question, perhaps the benefits of those fruit juices outweigh the small amounts of harm a small amount of alcohol may create.
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.
You’d get more traction for this kind of comment if you’d taken the time to check rather than cast vague aspersions. And if you have checked, detail it here.
Hold on, there is a lot of popular wisdom that thinks that small amounts of alcohol is either harmless or beneficial. Solid research on that topic absolutely is valuable.
Everyone absolutely does not know that small amounts are harmful.
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.
yes, i believe it is - simply don't use your very dubious research to tell others what they should be doing. we don't have these problems in astronomy, for example
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.
I think the challenge is really that even spices like pepper cause inflammation.
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.
I had to google the meaning of "socialized medicine" (no I don't live in the US). My first thought was that maybe it meant "getting better thanks to emotional support from other people", but Wikipedia had this to say about "socialized medicine":
>> 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.
The reason its effectively impossible to ban alcohol is because the precursors are sugar, water, and yeast. It's trivial to make alcohol even in small apartments.
this article is doing an even worse job though: there are a lot of people i the comments that are convinced that if they do not drink at all, they will live longer.
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
Anecdotally I know a lot of really old people who still drink. Maybe I'd know more if they didn't drink.
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.
Not what I said...however, I personally do know a lot more people who have actually died from health issues directly related to smoking: heat attacks, emphysema, lung cancer.
The thing they have in common is that they still have social connections, including with you. People who are alone for stretches of time have a lot more risk from falls, etc
It's possible to accept the risk of alcohol as being worth it. I do when I choose to drink. But it's always going to be worse than not drinking, ceteris paribus. If you're able to replace the drinking sessions with tea, or a game, that's probably better for health. Maybe that's not possible, maybe there's something unique about the effect of alcohol, even in small quantities.
You don't actually know if alcohol is the cause, it might be all the other shit that we've put into the environment to, such as PFOAs, PFOS, Microplastics, air polltion and more and more...
For the people I knew, there is no doubt in my mind. Only mentioning because until people I knew died, I thought liver disease only struck as you approached your 50s/60s.
The world is full of people who strongly and honestly believe anecdotes are more important than statistics and statistics are meaninglessly astrological in nature. Its a very popular set of beliefs, majority in some areas.
The world is full of people like you who thinks that making this comment ensures you're intellectually superior to others.
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?
The next level up are people that have no actual understanding of statistics, empirical reasoning, and the weaknesses therein but have learned that if you throw certain science-y words together your arguments will tend land better.
The problem is that how well anyone's particular life circumstances fit into a statistical model (or not) can be a very difficult thing to discern. There is a combinatorial explosion of factors that everyone is subject to, and most epidemiological statistics can address and account for a handful of them at a time. So what ends up happening is folks look at the statistics, shrug, and continue their own n=1. The best they can do is be honest with themselves about "how is that working out for you?"
To say this is true for every human being is an assault on the field of genetics.
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.
Give me a break. Do you know my grandfather? When I said sneaking shot, it wasn’t that he was hiding it from anyone. Don’t misinterpret what I say.
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.
Doing dry jan this year helped to change my perspective on alcohol. My current outlook is that its fine outside the house as an enjoyable social thing, but drinking at home isn’t worth it. I’m sure that view will change over the years.
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
Compartmentalization. Plenty of stimulant and H and other drug abusers in tech.
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.
Cite needed LOL. They're great for weight gain, which is not much of a medical necessity in the current year although there are special situations (cancer patients, 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.
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.
I realized when I stopped drinking that I thought I needed it to take the edge off, to relax or to be more social. It was all lies. I turned to meditation for when I’m stressed, and the rest I can do it sober.
I’d say not drinking anymore is top 5 in my best life decisions, up there with my choice of career and partner.
I enjoy a cigar or pipe once in a while. I enjoy a few fingers of bourbon now and then. I've been known to put back a few bottles of Coors on the weekend.
Not once have I thought, "yup this'll make me healthier [physically]."
“life is not just about going on for years avoiding any risk at all cost.”
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.
Societies that have banned alcohol, how do their longevity and other quality of life metrics and outcomes rank against ones where alcohol is available?
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.
many here seem to get hung up about how even a tiny risk would technically justify the headline which therefore must be exaggerated when in fact it means first and foremost that alcohol consumption even in moderation is not good for you.
This reads like a press release without any substantial discussion or references. COVID has died down...is WHO looking for the next thing to keep itself on the radar?
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.
i've drunk a fair amount of zero-alcohol beer, and the answer to your question is "yes", for reasons of flavour (alcohol changes this) and effect
("beer. it makes you drunk" - advertising slogan thought up by kingsley amis, i believe)
at least for me, depends. i don't like the way alcohol-free beer tastes -- it's just not the same.
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.
After reading through comments, I'm just glad that Gen Z drinks less than Gen Y (that drinks less than Gen X (that drinks less than a subsequent gen, boomers probably)), because
* 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
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.