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“Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

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Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#111
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this a given though...? Exercise and eating right will improve outcomes no matter what genetics you have.

What if you don't like exercise and like to eat? A lifetime of forcing oneself to do something unappealing and then topping it off with denial of things one likes doesn't sound like a overall good trade, even if you live longer.

What if you don't like exercise and like to eat?

That's me in a nutshell. There are lots of ways to get exercise without "exercising". Personally I tend to get off the bus a few stops early each morning and walk the last 30 minutes to work. Great way to some exercise in and a great way to start the morning. Another example, my closest food store is 1.5 km down the road. If I know I only need a few things I'll walk instead of taking the car.

On the food front I eat most of what I used to eat but less, compensating with getting higher quality products. I also started to get much more adventurous with my eating trying all kinds of different ingredients and cooking techniques, not because they where healthy, but for the love of food. It turned out that some of those things that where pretty delicious also had the side benefit of apparently being healthy as well (who knew). So I slowly started to phase those things more into my diet. Over the course of a handful of years I managed to greatly improve my diet without feeling like I was giving up on anything or denying myself anything I wanted.

Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#112
>But our latest research challenges this view

Well, it's still a single research. Let's wait 5-10 years for it to be criticized by other studies, replicated, further proved and all that.

Until then it's just noise as far as any layperson is concerned.

Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#113
post #19

OK, so moderate drinking is not good for you, it's just that being wealthier and better educated makes people more likely to be moderate drinkers. So, hopefully the causal explanation is that drinking moderately makes you smarter and richer, and eventually healthier.

>OK, so moderate drinking is not good for you, it's just that being wealthier and better educated makes people more likely to be moderate drinkers.

Or, rather, that's what a single, recent, and not battle tested, study claims.

It will take a lot more studies, and meta-studies to come to any such conclusion -- even assuming this one got it right.

Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#114

The headline looks like another entry in the endless "x is good for you / x is bad for you" genre of science journalism, but the article is actually a valuable object lesson in the complexities of trying to control for variables in any study. It's also a timely reminder of how socioeconomic factors remain one of the biggest predictors of health outcomes.

Not to mention it's a sobering view into the world of science. Disappointing that nobody thought of this correlation for tens of years.

Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#115
I just stopped reading after this sentence:

> We split the adults aged 50 or older into groups reflecting their average level of drinking, from non-drinkers through to those drinking three or more drinks a day.

The decision to split a naturally continuous or interval variable into discrete groups and then compare those groups has no valid statistical purpose. It serves no advantage over the regression alternative but it does lower the power of the analysis. ANOVA really just needs to die already. It became popular in the social sciences because it was a feasible way of doing inferential statistics back when computations were done with a pen and paper. Now we have computers and there's no excuse not to use better methods, an obvious alternative being linear regression.

Boycott bad stats. If you are a reviewer then hold the field to a higher standard.

Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#116
post #21

Honestly, with all this stuff about whether drinking or whatever is or isn't good for you, part of me wonders why I should even care any more. I mean, it's pretty clear that genetics have a huge impact in how long you live regardless of what your lifestyle is like, and it's also clear that the advice seems to change every few years anyway. May as well just live how you like and deal with things as they come. And if t…

Some things are proven to be very bad, like cigarettes or morbid obesity. There's really no question that those things kill people, and will drastically affect your life expectancy.

Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#117
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some interventional research on the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption like the one listed below. I have no idea what the quality is, but just wanted to point out there is some non-observational evidence. Moderate-dose Regular Lifelong Alcohol Intake Changes the Intestinal Flora, Protects against Aging, and Keeps Spatial Memory in the Senescence-accelerated Mouse Prone 8 (SAMP8) Model. https://w…

There's much better research than that. Try "Effects of Initiating Moderate Alcohol Intake on Cardiometabolic Risk in Adults With Type 2 Diabetes: A 2-Year Randomized, Controlled Trial" https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yftach_Gepner/publicati... , Gepner et al 2015

Wow, this is really interesting (at my quick glance). I'm concerned that they don't state that they clearly isolated to what degree the alcohol vs. other compounds specific to wine had which effects.

Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#118
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> moderate drinking is wealthy person thing Cross-culturally? Would the similar results be obtained in Ireland, Poland, Russia? Perhaps my generalizations are somehow better match to reality? You're probably unaware, but some regions has tradition of alcohol consumption deep in their culture and even national identity and nearly everyone consumes alcohol to various degrees.

> some regions has tradition of alcohol consumption deep in their culture and even national identity New Zealand is one of those places. > nearly everyone consumes alcohol to various degrees. That's the point of the study. Wealthy people consume alcohol in moderate amounts, the working class are likely: 1) Consuming it in much greater amounts, or 2) Abstaining from alcohol entirely. Perhaps because of previous proble…

  New Zealand is one of those places.
Is that a NZ tradition or an imported British tradition? Did the Maori brew alcohol before European settlement?

Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#119
I had also read elsewhere that the worse health of non-drinkers (relative to moderate drinkers) could be explained by the fact that many non-drinkers are recovering alcoholics, and had already trashed their bodies pretty badly. A study (can't find link) controlled for this and found that non-drinkers are healthier than moderate drinkers, even without controlling for wealth.

Re: “Health benefits” of moderate drinking disappear when controlling for wealth

#120

I just stopped reading after this sentence: > We split the adults aged 50 or older into groups reflecting their average level of drinking, from non-drinkers through to those drinking three or more drinks a day. The decision to split a naturally continuous or interval variable into discrete groups and then compare those groups has no valid statistical purpose. It serves no advantage over the regression alternative but…

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