51–60 of 233 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also completely unremarkable across much of Europe to drink that much.
That absolutely does not mean it's a healthy thing to do.
> Even moderate drinking, two or fewer drinks a day, accounted for an estimated 14%, or 103,000 cases, of alcohol-related cancers, according to the study. This is not a helpful statistic because it doesn't say what percent of people are in this category. I skimmed the actual paper [1] and it appears that there is no designation below "moderate drinking" so this literally captures everyone who drinks 2 drinks or less…
Exactly. I came here to ask whether anyone had read the paper carefully enough to say whether this information is actually missing or just absent from the summary.
I get the impression that there is a sort of culture war going on. Some seem to be so keen on stressing that there is no safe level of drinking that they avoid saying anything about where the risk curve really starts to bend upward more steeply, which is what most people will want to know.
Makes sense. I once read if humans were biologically immortal, everyone would basically get cancer if they lived to be 2,000 years old. It's just inevitable. Hopefully it comes later in life, rather than sooner.
It is frustrating that they lump in any amount of alcohol up to 2 drinks per day as moderate which honestly isn't all that moderate. Still another way to read that is that while alcohol represents a real risk to community health resources you can mitigate 86% of the risk by limiting yourself to ONLY 68 gallons (257 liters) of beer this year. I would not be terribly surprised if most of the issues with moderate drinke…
15 drinks per week is actually the limit here for commercial drivers. If you admit to drinking more than that during your annual/semi-annual DMV physical, you have essentially just admitted to alcoholism and can't keep driving class A/B vehicles unless you enter a substance abuse program.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While a randomized controlled trial is the golden standard when it comes to science, ones about cancer can be prohibitively expensive due to the durations involved. Who will accept a researcher-imposed dietary restriction for years? Who will follow it without requiring supervision? These cohort studies are the next best thing. The correlation is with alcohol consumption 10 years earlier, and they looked at the change…
That's fine. As long as you state clearly it's correlation and not proven causation and we don't know the exact mechanism and yadda. I'm trying to walk away from a completely ridiculous pile on from an excessive number of people here. This is not a productive conversation at all and I have no idea why it went so wildly sideways.
> Even moderate drinking, two or fewer drinks a day, accounted for an estimated 14%, or 103,000 cases, of alcohol-related cancers, according to the study. This is not a helpful statistic because it doesn't say what percent of people are in this category. I skimmed the actual paper [1] and it appears that there is no designation below "moderate drinking" so this literally captures everyone who drinks 2 drinks or less…
>This is not a helpful statistic because it doesn't say what percent of people are in this category. Exactly. I came here to ask whether anyone had read the paper carefully enough to say whether this information is actually missing or just absent from the summary. I get the impression that there is a sort of culture war going on. Some seem to be so keen on stressing that there is no safe level of drinking that they a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not where I was heading at. We have no simple way to assert that smoking causes lung cancer: no RCT is available for that. So we are left with the same level of evidence that we have for alcohol, which is observational studies. That knee jerk reaction that observational studies can't give us a relatively high level of confidence is why I mentioned the case of tobacco: if you really believe that, you should al…
Empirical evidence may not be there, what about theoretical formulation of the mechanism by which smoking affects the lung? Shouldn't we able to explain it only on the basis of theory?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it's not so clear cut. If you live your life according to a Mediterranean lifestyle and drink your glass of wine each day (mostly in a social setting, which is especially important when you grow older), you will be healthier than most other people.
If you live that same life and drink a glass of grape juice instead of wine everyday, you'll live even longer. Alcohol is a poisson and there is no "safe" level. Now, it's a personal decision how much risk is acceptable to you, but don't lie to yourself how "one glass a day is not going to make a difference".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it's not so clear cut. If you live your life according to a Mediterranean lifestyle and drink your glass of wine each day (mostly in a social setting, which is especially important when you grow older), you will be healthier than most other people.
If you live that same life and drink a glass of grape juice instead of wine everyday, you'll live even longer. Alcohol is a poisson and there is no "safe" level. Now, it's a personal decision how much risk is acceptable to you, but don't lie to yourself how "one glass a day is not going to make a difference".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it's not so clear cut. If you live your life according to a Mediterranean lifestyle and drink your glass of wine each day (mostly in a social setting, which is especially important when you grow older), you will be healthier than most other people.
If you live that same life and drink a glass of grape juice instead of wine everyday, you'll live even longer. Alcohol is a poisson and there is no "safe" level. Now, it's a personal decision how much risk is acceptable to you, but don't lie to yourself how "one glass a day is not going to make a difference".
I know it’s a typo, and it doesn’t invalidate anything you wrote; but it’s also the French word for "fish", which makes the whole thing quite hilarious to read.