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Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#191

Post by wutbrodo »

TylerE wrote: post #179
wutbrodo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very very wrong. You should be hesitant to extrapolate so wildly from your bubble. The timing and circumstances of when I started drinking means I've only ever drunk craft beer, but I'm also aware that where i live is not representative f the country. Craft beer has a 12% share of the US's beer market. "Overwhelming popularity" is just flat wrong.

3.5 is still really low. Even stuff like Miller/Coors Lite is 4.2%. Bud is 5%.

Yea, but the baseline for that _type_ of beer is pretty low so the shittier ones in that part of the market can easily reach 3.5. Many of the fraternities at my (large, public) university would bulk-buy 2.5% beer.

This is in contrast to the baseline that the parents claim would imply, in a market supposedly "overwhelmingly" skewed towards stronger craft beer.

Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#192

Post by dang »

mothers wrote: post #164

funny how this is downvoted. guarantee you all of the downvoters are drinkers who don't want to be told they're doing the wrong thing.

Please don't comment like this here. It breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14649917 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#193

Post by dang »

EpicEng wrote: post #151
mothers wrote: post #21

would you give a 5 year old a beer? no? exactly. everyone knows drinking is bad for you. they do it anyway, because "reasons" [1] anyone who disagrees is just being irrational. [1] which may include partying and hooking up, as well as removing any awkwardness they have.

I bet you're a load of fun. Yes, we know that alcohol is generally not great, but that doesn't mean there's no value in quantifying what "not great means". What was the point of your comment exactly? You sound like a bitter old man who never got invited to parties.

We've asked you repeatedly to stop posting personal attacks to HN. If you do it again, we will ban you.

Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#194

Post by loeber »

surement wrote: post #107
codyb wrote: post #41

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…

> Here's to hoping they cancel out! It's funny but it's probably fairly accurate. Two 12oz 5% beers per day is not exactly extreme, and evidently many people drink 'this much' without terrible consequences. Articles like this cater mostly to people who are obsessed with articles like this.

> evidently many people drink 'this much' without terrible consequences

This assumption reflects an underlying statistical bias: if most people you know exhibit this behavior, then that's what you see as normal.

It may very well be the case that the consequences are actually terrible -- they're just hard for you to perceive because they're normalized by everyone exhibiting them.

Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#195

Post by dungle6 »

Symbiote wrote: post #113
novia wrote: post #45

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.

20 years ago I was just old enough to drink, and that means today my memory is not yet shot. Not much has changed in 20 years. So if you define average beer across all beers for sale in the US the average has gone up because of the 50 million hipster craft brews. But the bulk swill that really everyone drinks outside of this crowd hasn't changed at all.

Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#196

Post by dpark »

wutbrodo wrote: post #191
TylerE wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3.5 is still really low. Even stuff like Miller/Coors Lite is 4.2%. Bud is 5%.

Yea, but the baseline for that _type_ of beer is pretty low so the shittier ones in that part of the market can easily reach 3.5. Many of the fraternities at my (large, public) university would bulk-buy 2.5% beer. This is in contrast to the baseline that the parents claim would imply, in a market supposedly "overwhelmingly" skewed towards stronger craft beer.

And what exactly were these 2.5% beers that your university's fraternities were buying? Can you provide a concrete example of these popular 2.5% beers available in bulk?

And where is this university located?

Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#197

Post by jasonkester »

wutbrodo wrote: post #190
wutbrodo wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think alcohol is a pretty horrible drug so I try to minimize my intake, but I know a fair few people who reach this without any behaviors that seem out of the ordinary. 6-8 drinks on a Friday night (this is about what I'd drink back when I used to go to bars), and then one or two drinks scattered across the rest of the evening: beer/wine with dinner or scorch afterwards or a mimosa or two with brunch. Especially wh…

Urgh, it's too late to edit it but it should say "scattered across the rest of the evening s ", not all in the same night...

Gotta lay off the scorch.

Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#198

Post by pavement »

resu_nimda wrote: post #63
startupdiscuss wrote: post #4

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...

The study linked in the article says "Information was collected in face-to-face computer-assisted interviews conducted in the participants’ homes." [1] It seems like this is a study where people might be likely to lie about their consumption, or even earnestly estimate it incorrectly. Is there any way to control for that? The distribution feels too extreme, like a significant number of people underestimated and overe…

One sure-fire way to control for this sort of loose testimonial data is to collect many volunteers among those who affirm such habits, and follow many or all of them longitudinally, and engage with them and make observations, hopefully without influencing behavior too much.

It's not a short-cut by any means, if that's what you had in mind.

Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#199

Post by eecc »

chris_va wrote: post #66
baq wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

desperately seeking non-popular news with non-clickbait articles. got any referrals?

The Economist

Neoliberal bias... but yeah, for a while I read it for the quality of the English writing

Re: Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning

#200

Post by coldtea »

mothers wrote: post #166
exclusiv wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drinking has no benefits compared to water. period. "Resveratrol (RSV), a red wine component, and red wine itself exert cardio- and nephroprotective effects by modulating the Nitric Oxide system (NO). Elucidating both upstream and downstream molecular mechanisms of the SIRT-1 pathway is an open field of investigation that can explain its role not only in long-term processes, such as aging, but also in short-term pr…

ok, and will you now cite the studies showing the harm that alcohol does. I shall wait. water has none except in extreme amounts (i'm talking gallons) by the way, anyone can play this game: the benefits of water are virtually limitless: [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11978586 [2] aids in weight loss and metabolic control (alcohol makes you fatter) press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jc.2003-030780 [3] keeps…

Without alcohol we wouldn't be here today or have any civilisation. How about that?

http://archive.onearth.org/blog/beer-saves-human-civilizatio...

(Not to mention how much good poetry -- e.g. from Rubayat to Baudelaire's, rock music, and such we would be missing. Nobody cares for tee-totalling rock bands...).

>the fact is, every time you drink something that's not water, you have the opportunity cost.

And every time you miss on something fun you also have an opportunity cost.

Now, if you legitimately don't like the taste or effects of wine, beer etc, more power to you. Or if you like them too much to drink in moderation. But if one likes them, to avoid casual drinking also comes at a cost.

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