Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year • Hacker News Board

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#61

Post by mnahkies » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:25 AM UTC

yarcob wrote: post #47

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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" If one glass a day only slightly increases your risk (Say a few % points), then it will effectively make no difference.

That is your personal decision, not a fact. I mean, you could say the same about riding a motorcycle. Riding a motorcycle only slightly increases your risk of dying in a horrible traffic accident, but for a lot of people the risk is big enough that they stop riding once they have kids.

I don't know the actual stats, but the danger of motorcycle riding is something that you are constantly aware of when on a bike.

You're constantly scanning for that one car that won't see you and plow into the side of you, and if you're in the hills a lapse in concentration or patch of gravel can throw you off.

What I mean by that is it's much easier to identify it as a high risk activity compared to alcohol or cigarettes since the risk is an in your face might end you today, rather than an abstract idea of this will hurt you in the long run

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#62

Post by synquid » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:30 AM UTC

yarcob wrote: post #36

davnn wrote: post #32

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".

This is a very uneducated comment, considering available research. While some doubt can be cast on the J-shaped curve, we have a lot of evidence for all-cause mortality either decreasing or at least not increasing with low levels of consumption.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#63

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:30 AM UTC

jbigelow76 wrote: post #45

hrh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had friends that had to have 4-6 beers to chill out every night and had been doing that for 20 years. I feel fucking terrible the day after drinking a six-pack; I can't imagine what that does to the body (a lot of the same stuff as sugar). You're slowly killing yourself. Having not known a grandfather due to alcoholism (don't be so hard on the boomers, their fuckups are the fuckups of a generation that went through w…

(don't be so hard on the boomers, their fuckups are the fuckups of a generation that went through ww2) Pretty sure the boomers are the ones that came after WW2, the aforementioned "boom" of their namesake being progeny of those that didn't die during the blitz, Normandy, Stalingrad, and everywhere in between.

The boom comes from "baby boom" which means a sudden increase in the birth rate. This happens normally after wars end that have high casualty rates.

I recall reading that the day WW1 was declared over, people were copulating in the streets of London.

People have an urge to rebuild the population.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#64

Post by 2Gkashmiri » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:32 AM UTC

geesh. how about doing a generalized survey similar to this on a country level, like there are "muslim majority" countries where alcohol is either banned or is present to a level that it doesnt matter. do those countries see less cancers than say france or any european country or the usa which does have an extensive alcohol use?

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#65

Post by Broken_Hippo » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:33 AM UTC

nradov wrote: post #59

yarcob wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Grape juice is extremely high in sugar. I'm skeptical that it's net healthier than wine.

I came to say the same thing. It seems to me that grape juice would simply make for a different set of problems.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#66

Post by danuker » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:34 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #48

danuker wrote: post #44

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.

> completely ridiculous pile on

I believe people reacted because you downplayed the importance of the study (at least I did). Just because it doesn't outright prove causation, doesn't mean we should not pay attention.

In the past decades, public health suffered immensely due to "benefit of the doubt" given to smoking.

Cigarette companies used the same arguments as you: “Sure there are statistics associating lung cancer and cigarettes. There are statistics associating lung cancer with divorce, and even with lack of sleep. But no scientist has produced clinical or biological proof that cigarettes cause the diseases they are accused of causing.”

https://nutritionfacts.org/2019/04/04/the-disconnect-between...

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#67

Post by synquid » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #16

My sister works as a nurse in a geriatric department her attitude is “if I make it to 70 I’m going to start smoking”. She’s seen plenty of people with healthy bodies and destroyed minds to know she’s rather avoid that kind of fate.

Lowering your expected lifetime probably also lowers your expected time until disease.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#68

Post by IndySun » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

Switch it. Are people, on average, who have never drank alcohol living longer and healthier lives than even those on the lowest level of consumption?

This is far more relevant and the answer is likely to be 'depends' due to an average human life being a colossal confluence of many 'stuff'. This 'average' reporting can be dangerously misleading.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#69

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:36 AM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #5

avalys wrote: post #3

740,000 cases out of 7.8 billion people, or less than 1 case per 7,800 people. That’s not all that surprising to me.

That's just in one year, and a lot of people don't drink at all. So it's still pretty high.

Yeah about 2/3 either don't drink or drink very rarely.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#70

Post by synquid » Sat, Jul 17, 2021, 8:38 AM UTC

lovecg wrote: post #8

qqtt wrote: post #2

See also: https://www.forbes.com/sites/elvaramirez/2021/06/01/study-no...

Yep. The old meme that “moderate drinking is better than no drinking at all” needs to die: these studies included people who didn’t drink for medical reasons, skewing the average health of the nondrinking cohort down.

https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2017.06.054

What do you make of studies such as this? Their baseline was strictly lifetime abstainers, absolutely no people who stopped drinking for medical reasons. Still, moderate drinking results in lower all-cause mortality.