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Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

nhs.uk

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Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#41

Post by 52-6F-62 »

mrlala wrote: post #18
izzydata wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one doesn't make any sense to me. Alcohol is basically poison. Perhaps small amounts of it won't do any harm to you, but how could it possibly have a positive effect on your health?

Maybe it can have a positive affect on your mental health, in moderation? Sharing a bottle of wine or champagne with my wife can be one of the most enjoyable experiences to us.. going out to the pub having some beer with family & friends is great. An argument could be "you can have just as much fun doing something else", but I don't know.. that's not really my experience. A moderate amount of drinking usually makes t…

In a business regard, people are usually perfectly understanding of a cost/benefit analysis—but when it comes to something like alcohol you hear a lot more absolutism. It surprises me a little bit.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#42

Post by scrollaway »

laurencerowe wrote: post #5
_Microft wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mistake, I should have been more precise in my formulations. I was rather surprised that daily alcohol consumption still counted as moderate .

This seems to be a cultural UK/US difference which I've noticed moving to the US. In the UK a glass of wine with food every night would be seen as part of a healthy mediterranean diet and health advice on alcohol was refocussed to discourage binge drinking, emphasizing daily rather than weekly consumption limits. In the US daily drinking seems to be seen as bad (perhaps a legacy of prohibition?) while binge drinking…

"A glass of wine with food" is fairly rare culturally outside of Europe I believe; and even in Europe, it's uncommon in beer countries (UK, Belgium, …).

"Drinking every night" = "[at least] 1 beer / night" in the minds of people who associate drinking with beer. There's no such thing as consuming a small glass of beer as it's not really a beverage you savour.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#43

Post by Bartweiss »

pkaye wrote: post #13
laurencerowe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a cultural UK/US difference which I've noticed moving to the US. In the UK a glass of wine with food every night would be seen as part of a healthy mediterranean diet and health advice on alcohol was refocussed to discourage binge drinking, emphasizing daily rather than weekly consumption limits. In the US daily drinking seems to be seen as bad (perhaps a legacy of prohibition?) while binge drinking…

In the US its a pretty skewed distribution. 30% don't drink at all. Another 30% less than once per week. The top 10% drinks a crazy amount. https://drinksfeed.com/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will...

The data is also an unbelievable mess.

We can work towards drinking from two directions: self report consumption and alcohol sales ought to lead to the same number. Not perfectly of course - drinks get thrown away, saved as gifts, used to cook, and so on. But last I looked, the ratio of drinks sold to drinking reported in the US was two to one. (I'd love to see the same data for other countries.)

So either people understating their drinking by a huge amount, or the studies are undersampling groups that do a lot of drinking. Probably both. We can make some good guesses: minors probably don't admit to their drinking, teetotalers probably self-report more accurately than occasional drinkers, and so on. But it's a gap so big that it's hard to talk confidently about what people here are doing.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#44

Post by joshschultheiss »

maximente wrote: post #29
capkutay wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also have to factor in the opportunity cost of drinking...going for a drink after work instead of the gym? What comes next? Bar food with your beer and maybe a pizza? I'd rather have the work out, good meal, hydrate, and get good sleep. It's obvious that good habits snowball into more good habits, while bad habits snowball into more bad habits.

haha, this reads like some abstinence only sex education argument or something. don't let that one beer turn in to a good time! i think it's funny that having a good (if not optimally healthy) time would be so ridiculed, but maybe that's just me. FWIW i know a lot of people who work out at 4:30am in order to gain that time for after work social activities which often include alcohol, so not mutually exclusive.

Not the commenter you replied to, but I feel like you both have valid points.

> Bar food with your beer and maybe a pizza?

> don't let that one beer turn in to a good time!

Personally, I prefer to enjoy the social benefits of going out without the consequences of alcohol or "bar food." I accept people's drug habits - it's fine to consume drugs responsibly (alcohol included). For me, I am able to have a good time and "let loose" without being under the influence of drugs.

There's nothing wrong with being sober. You can still participate in the local economy, engage in social events, and live a healthy life without fitting the routine you described of going to the bar and hitting the gym.

Anyways, my point of saying this is that I wonder if alcohol for most people increases their life expectancy because it lets them socialize more. In the same way that people buy essential oils and it has a placebo effect on the that make them feel better, I think the bar scene has the same effect on many Americans.

My social experience is that people are mentally unable to "let loose" and socialize without the aide of drugs.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#45

Post by 52-6F-62 »

jimam wrote: post #39
lelf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite surprising for me too. Or rather, I don't understand the unit they mention. From the article linked: also collected alcoholic beverage consumption, including red and white wine separately (4 ounces, increasing to 5 ounces in 2006), beer (one glass, can, or bottle), and liquor (one drink or shot). We multiplied the amount of alcohol in grams per specified portion size by servings per day, determined the midpoint…

A bottle of beer (say 500ml) at 5% strength would be 2.5 units, so not as much as 4 bottles a day [1]. Also worth noting that alcohol you buy in shops in the UK has the number of units printed on the label, so it's fairly easy to keep track of. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_alcohol

A standard bottle of beer is 330ml to 375 ml. 500ml is closer to an imperial pint @ ~17 oz. That's roughly the size of an American "pint"

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#46

Post by TurkishPoptart »

realtalk_sp wrote: post #32
Someone1234 wrote: post #27

Living a long and healthy life is simple, but it isn't easy. Which is to say almost everybody knows this, very few people live it. The toughest battle isn't yet again telling people that 1+1=2, but rather figuring out ways to make it more accessible to people (read: cheap, low time commitment) and more sustainable as a lifestyle. That's why ideas like HIIT[0] and IM[1] are interesting, not because they're superior to…

I love the example of HIIT. I discovered it inadvertently 10 years ago when I switched to recreational sprinting as a primary form of exercise. It results in excellent physical conditioning with a minimal time investment (about one hour per week total). Establishing habits is difficult and complex. Finding highly efficient (in time, energy, drudgery, money, etc) ways to achieve a desired outcome is a critically impor…

Any way for lazy people to get started with HIIT without going to a gym?

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#47

Post by yodsanklai »

Someone1234 wrote: post #27

Living a long and healthy life is simple, but it isn't easy. Which is to say almost everybody knows this, very few people live it. The toughest battle isn't yet again telling people that 1+1=2, but rather figuring out ways to make it more accessible to people (read: cheap, low time commitment) and more sustainable as a lifestyle. That's why ideas like HIIT[0] and IM[1] are interesting, not because they're superior to…

> because people actually do them and stick to them

Do you have data to back this up? I would have thought the exact opposite. That HIIT and IM are techniques that people try after having seen a Ted talk or something like that and don't make a life discipline out of them.

I also think plenty of people have some "common sense discipline" such as cycling/walking to work, and not eating junk food and sodas, and trying to eat fruits and vegetables. I feel this is very sustainable with a high ratio benefit/cost.

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#48

Post by codingmess »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #46
realtalk_sp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the example of HIIT. I discovered it inadvertently 10 years ago when I switched to recreational sprinting as a primary form of exercise. It results in excellent physical conditioning with a minimal time investment (about one hour per week total). Establishing habits is difficult and complex. Finding highly efficient (in time, energy, drudgery, money, etc) ways to achieve a desired outcome is a critically impor…

Any way for lazy people to get started with HIIT without going to a gym?

There is an app by the people who invented it, afaik. And other apps, too. (7 Minute Workout, I think that's the same thing?)

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#49

Post by 52-6F-62 »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #46
realtalk_sp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the example of HIIT. I discovered it inadvertently 10 years ago when I switched to recreational sprinting as a primary form of exercise. It results in excellent physical conditioning with a minimal time investment (about one hour per week total). Establishing habits is difficult and complex. Finding highly efficient (in time, energy, drudgery, money, etc) ways to achieve a desired outcome is a critically impor…

Any way for lazy people to get started with HIIT without going to a gym?

There is so much information available these days!

Try this on—all you need is a little space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q20pLhdoEoY

Re: Healthy habits add up to 10 disease-free years to your life, study reveals

#50

Post by mortenjorck »

lelf wrote: post #10
_Microft wrote: post #2

Surprising: one of the healthy habits mentioned is drinking alcohol only in moderation (defined in this study as just under 2 units for women and 4 units for men daily) . If I drank any alcohol on a daily basis, I would be scared that it would go downhill from there. Habits are hard to change, so better do not pick up bad ones at all. I'm convinced that just avoiding to do stupid things is half the battle already.

Quite surprising for me too. Or rather, I don't understand the unit they mention. From the article linked: also collected alcoholic beverage consumption, including red and white wine separately (4 ounces, increasing to 5 ounces in 2006), beer (one glass, can, or bottle), and liquor (one drink or shot). We multiplied the amount of alcohol in grams per specified portion size by servings per day, determined the midpoint…

This left me confused as well. This NHS article on alcohol abuse cleared it up, though: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alcohol-misuse/

> A unit of alcohol is 8g or 10ml of pure alcohol, which is about:

> half a pint of lower to normal-strength lager/beer/cider (ABV 3.6%) > a single small shot measure (25ml) of spirits (25ml, ABV 40%)

So a 12oz bottle (.75 pint) of 3.6% beer would be 1.5 NHS units. A bottle of 7.2% stout would be 3 units. A full 4 units per day would require a bottle of strong 9.6% beer, or two bottles of a 4.8%.

While less eye-popping than four bottles a day, that still seems like a lot of drinking to me, especially if concentrated around a few days. That's 14 bottles of 4.8% beer per week, so imagine four beers on a Wednesday, seven on Friday night, and another three over the weekend after the hangover's worn off – week after week. That seems like it would have to have a health impact, and it's surprising to see it as the limit for "moderate" drinking.

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