Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#1

Post by tomp » Sun, Sep 23, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?
popsci.com

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#2

Post by nibs » Sun, Sep 23, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

Because the studies that looked at it didn't control for wealth.

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#3

Post by tomp » Sun, Sep 23, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

nibs wrote: post #2

Because the studies that looked at it didn't control for wealth.

Nah that’s an obvious one. Having unrelated health problems is a more important confunder (i.e. people with health problems, or old, or mentally ill, are mole likely to not drink).

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#4

Post by kens » Sun, Sep 23, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

Link is to page 2 of the article (in case you wonder why you ended up in the middle). Maybe someone can update it?

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#5

Post by wjnc » Sun, Sep 23, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #3

nibs wrote: post #2

Because the studies that looked at it didn't control for wealth.

Nah that’s an obvious one. Having unrelated health problems is a more important confunder (i.e. people with health problems, or old, or mentally ill, are mole likely to not drink).

People with health problems or mentally ill are more likely not to drink? That seems false. Any sources? I found [1] that suggests comorbidity.

[1] https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://...

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#6

Post by lngnmn1 » Sun, Sep 23, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

Let me guess - food technology and cost cutting? ;)

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#7

Post by carbocation » Sun, Sep 23, 2018, 3:01 PM UTC

1. The best evidence that there is no safe amount of alcohol consumption is the Mendelian randomization (MR) by Holmes et al from 2014 [1]. I believe that the more recent paper making such claims is no better than the usual observational studies. But the MR paper is convincing to me. The risks for mild drinking appear to be low enough that I don't abstain, and I am happy to tell my patients about my thought process.

2. While we like to claim that a study randomizing people to alcohol wouldn't be ethical, pre-2014 I don't think that would have been true. I think there was enough equipoise. Post-2014, I would need to see some strong counter-evidence to make me think there is equipoise once again.

3. The environment changes. A trial came out last week showing that ASA may be harmful for older healthy people [2]. This probably reflects that our bloodstream is no longer nicotine-filled, etc., so the heart attack risk is low enough that the bleeding risk may outweigh it. There may be something about alcohol that was helpful in the 1950s that is no longer so today, due to these environmental changes.

1 = (Free full link): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4091648/

2 = https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1800722?query=fe...

Re: Remember when a glass of wine a day was good for you?

#8

Post by _null_ » Sun, Sep 23, 2018, 3:04 PM UTC

I have been reading for years about the numbers of studies being done (especially in the public health field) that can be whittled down to correlation without any strongly proven causality. Is this an issue with science, or with how the media reports on science? Is it really as bad as it seems?

I understand that it's difficult to control for various factors when doing large scale studies of health and behavior, but my perception as a layman is that there is some willful ignorance or absence of rigor. I realize this is perhaps too harsh a statement; I'm just trying get my point across.