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But they define "moderate" as 2 drinks/day for a man. That is 14 drinks a week which puts you in the second highest decile for Americans! https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the study which was linked in another comment [1] they were using the standard defined in [2]. This site shows that one pint of lager counts as 2 units of alcohol. One pint is 19.2 oz [3]. A bottle of beer is usually 12 oz, aka 5/8 of a pint, aka 1.25 units of alcohol. I trust the source over the science journalist. [1] http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353 [2] https://www.alcoholconcern.org.uk/unit-c…
One British pint is 568mL, and one "unit" of alcohol is 10mL -- I think the latter might be a European standard. That makes a ½pt (284mL) beer, at 3.5%, almost exactly 10mL of alcohol (284*0.035 = 9.94). The average beer is stronger than it was 20 years ago, but there's still a feeling that 1pt = 2 units in Britain.
But they define "moderate" as 2 drinks/day for a man. That is 14 drinks a week which puts you in the second highest decile for Americans! https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...
I would consider moderate drinking to be 4-5 drinks a week (drinking socially weekends). 2 drinks/night is practically getting drunk/tipsy every night. In what world is that moderate?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article says a 12 oz beer (slightly larger than the standard 330ml beer) is 1 drink for the purposes of the study.
Right, but beer varies widely in alcohol content. One "standard beer" might be defined as 12 oz / ~330ml @ 4.5% alcohol by volume, but many IPAs are 6-7% or greater, and in most U.S. states you can find lots of beer in excess of 10% ABV.
Alcohol is getting a pretty bad rap to me the more I read about it. After reading this I was curious about ways to _increase_ hippocampal function. According to [0] it seems like exercise can increase hippocampal function. Another link I can't find again since I found it on my phone and am now on my laptop indicated things like learning languages, and an omega 3 rich diet can also help. This is good news for me since…
This clip has Putin back in 1999, Chechen War, raising a glass with the troops to then put the glass down and command his men to get back to work, deferring the drinking until the job is done. The supposed 'secret FSB lecture' explains how alcohol strips the outer 'oily' layer from blood vessels causing things to go wrong in the narrow capillaries of the brain. The clip ends with the former president Yeltsin dancing like an idiot and generally being out of it due to the booze.
Whether you see Putin as friend or foe matters not, when it comes to attitude towards alcohol Putin sets quite an example. He also challenges the belief that there is something innately Russian about getting sloshed on alcohol - it doesn't have to be that way.
I enjoy thinking more than drinking so drinking the work trip to the boozer is always a 'do I really have to?' thing for me, almost a chore. From this perspective of 'extremely moderate moderation' I do wonder why it is universally normal (outside of Utah and the Muslim world) for there to be a company 'tab'. An employer that doesn't do that (even xmas party) would be considered miserable and miserly. However, imagine if you had a company where cigarettes were dished out freely on a Friday afternoon and something that you could put on expenses. Any employer doing that would be considered reckless. So why is it different with alcohol?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 550 civil servants Bureaucracy causes brain damage. Those with heavier damage took refuge in alcohol.
I'm not sure if you are trying to be funny - if so, you've succeeded. However, this also reads to me like a very plausible explanation. I like the idea of specifically studying this component further.
Fwiw, two glasses of wine a week is what I'd call moderate consumption of alcohol. Where I live, most people drink far too much.
As a stats man, before I read the article I said to myself: "bet it's from a survey". With that kind of methodology, I imagine the "moderate" drinkers are going to contain the group of people who said they (frequently) drink, but not that much. I'd be willing to bet there will be a relationship between reporting that you drink frequently and the negative effects of alcohol that will outweigh the attempt to self repor…
As a stats man, before I read the article I said to myself: "bet it's from a survey". With that kind of methodology, I imagine the "moderate" drinkers are going to contain the group of people who said they (frequently) drink, but not that much. I'd be willing to bet there will be a relationship between reporting that you drink frequently and the negative effects of alcohol that will outweigh the attempt to self repor…
Actual study: http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353
The study is pretty detailed, but there are some oddities in the results, higher IQs drank more on average and lost more, people who drank heavily lost less than those who drank moderately.
This was based in the UK, in one community, middle-class, civil servants, predominantly men, average age 43 at start of study (and I would guess almost all white, though they don't say it).
Unsafe drinkers differed from safe drinkers by having a higher premorbid IQ, a higher percentage of men and smokers, and higher Framingham risk scores
Some of the interesting results:
Higher alcohol consumption over the study predicted faster decline on lexical fluency but not semantic fluency or word recall.
People drinking has a % greater reduction from their baseline in lexical fluency per year:
7-21 units 0.6% per year (16% over 30 years)
Their conclusion doesn't highlight that it doesn't seem to matter how much you drink in terms of lexical fluency, it's that you drink at all?
I don't really understand the section titled "Grey matter". 3.4 odds in lighter drinkers, 5.8 odds in heavier drinkers? They don't really explain what that means.
Edit: having now listened to the audio it seems there was some technical problem with the white matter measurement, but they say they saw a decline.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508201