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

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

#41

Post by lotsofpulp »

mindfulplay wrote: post #37

Why is it that hard to do actual research? Like science? Observe what alcohol does to the body and identify risks. I know this is hard. Lazy survey door to door salespeople posing as scientists dominate this field unfortunately. This is not science. This is guesswork. And this causes serious problems to people who trust this crap. Throw away your shitty biased studies and start doing actual science. It took Newton a…

Because there isn’t sufficient funding to pay for non biased scientists who have the understanding of statistics and probability to perform the correct experiments and analysis. And there isn’t sufficient funding for the types of large scale control groups needed for studying health effects on a complex organism such as humans, especially when mechanisms of actions can’t directly be observed.

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

#42

Post by ricree »

roel_v wrote: post #28
carbocation wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Observational studies can be incredibly hard to do in a way where you can infer causality. But most of the data you can get your hands on are observational. Does cataract surgery reduce mortality in older women? It sure looked like it, until it was recognized that the study suffered from a concept called "immortal time bias" [1]. Now the reverse "seems" to be true. (Unhelpfully, it's easy to make an "explanation" for…

Is 'immortal time bias' not 'survivorship bias'?

Looking at the notice of retraction[1], "immortal time bias" seems to be a particular subset survivorship bias, in which there is a distinct delay between two events, and by definition one facet of the study only looked at those who survived that time period. In this case, the time period between diagnosis and the actual surgery.

[1] - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullartic...

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

#43

Post by [deleted] »

carbocation wrote: post #7

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.…

[deleted]

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

#44

Post by sjbase »

carbocation wrote: post #7

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.…

Edit: disregard, seeing the updated link you posted.

----

If I'm reading correctly, that 2015 MR paper establishes that LDL and triglycerides play a role in heart disease by filtering populations used in prior studies for genetic blood lipid factors. But it doesn't make any claims about alcohol. Is there already a well established link between alcohol and LDL / triglycerides?

My impression is that the relationship between LDL, HDL, and triglycerides and what we eat/drink is not well understood. But I'm not involved in biology or medicine, so maybe you can help me understand this better?

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

#45

Post by danmg »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #24

That page was nearly unreadable in Chrome on my phone due to bizarre scrolling ads everywhere and eventually crashed and died. A pity, I was learning a lot.

Read it through rss: "https://damng.github.io/hackernews-rss-with-inlined-content/...

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

#46

Post by dhimes »

sytelus wrote: post #32

Glass of wine in the night is a very bad habit and you don't need a large scale study to prove it. If you have a watch that can track your sleep cycle, you will see that your deep sleep doesn't start until much later if you consuming alcohol before going to sleep. In other words, a glass of wine might make you feel relaxed but it robes you from your deep sleep.

If you have a watch that can track your sleep cycle, you will see that your deep sleep doesn't start until much later if you consuming alcohol before going to sleep.

Maybe that's good.

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

#47

Post by another-cuppa »

Obviously I can't say anything about my own longevity, but over the past few years my alcohol consumption has decreased to virtually zero and I've never felt better. I was never a big drinker, but I would semi-regularly go out and drink a few pints of beer or have wine with dinner. I never intended to cut down on alcohol, but my lifestyle changed, I stopped going out so much, and the drinking went with it. I would still drink maybe once a month, but I've realised that it makes me feel bad every time, so I now completely abstain.

The interesting thing is how people react to it. For some reason you are expected to provide a reason for why you don't drink. I don't smoke either but nobody asks me why. I've noticed also that it makes people uncomfortable if you're not drinking. When I do go out now I drink diet soft drinks so that I don't get constantly asked why I don't have a drink.

I foresee a shift in cultural views towards alcohol much like the shift with respect to tobacco of last century. I wonder if the USA and UK will again lead the way with this leaving much of continental Europe behind.

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

#48

Post by darpa_escapee »

jMyles wrote: post #23
thrownaway954 wrote: post #18

because more people are becoming alcoholics and the penalties for a DWI are getting harsher. bottom line is... if you think you have a problem, you already have a problem. Get help and get help now before you hurt someone (you don't want this on your conscience... trust me). Go to AA, NA, a therapist, a doctor, rehab, a detox, doesn't matter, open up and tell someone you have a problem and get the help you need befor…

> because more people are becoming alcoholics Do you have a source for this claim, which both does a good job of defining a measurement schema for alcoholism and also shows convincingly that it is on the incline? Do you also have a source for the claim that this particular increase is the reason (or even a contributing factor) to the apparent decline in correlation between moderate wine consumption and positive healt…

This study[1] purports that alcoholism doubled during the decade after the turn of the millenium. It also has a concrete criteria for what they consider alcoholism.

> Now this just seems like toxic thinking to me. Plenty of thoughtful, responsible people continually ask themselves whether they are experiencing various problems in life, and sometimes the answer really is "no."

To you it may seem like "toxic thinking", but to anyone with a problem who had the insight to ask themselves such a question, it can be a life changing moment.

If someone is at a point in their alcohol consumption career where they step back and have to ask, "Do I have a problem?", that insight usually stems from encountering a problem most people don't face.

The nature of alcoholism is to tell yourself everything is fine and normal, that there is no problem even though your life is falling apart.

To wish to portray as truly pivotal insight that an alcoholic would be lucky to have as "toxic thinking" is, IMO, minimizing the issues of drug abuse in our culture.

> Really? It doesn't matter?

When you're at the point where a substance controls your life, there's no saying when you might overdose or drink too much and plow your car into innocent people.

Finding someone who can direct you to help now is paramount.

> Your links at the end of your comment are only to AA and NA. Can you explain what aspects of these programs are preferable to you?

There are no months-long waitlists for AA or NA like there are for rehabs, detox clinics, therapists, psychiatrists and addiction specialists.

There is no pretense of requiring an in-network insurance provider that will cover the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars worth of treatment you might require.

As much as I disagree with some aspects of those programs, their existence is infinitely better than the alternative. Which, for most people with that problem, is the destruction of what is left of their life.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

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

#50

Post by FLUX-YOU »

carbocation wrote: post #7

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.…

>There may be something about alcohol that was helpful in the 1950s that is no longer so today, due to these environmental changes.

Maybe an interaction with the prevalence of leaded gasoline?

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