Because those countries are either under the fiscal control of Big Booze (taxes), or they are under control of criminal enterprises (usually from neighboring country)
Or the culture is such that people regularly use alcohol both for pleasure and to avoid their emotional issues. Real men don’t have emotions, and if you’re feeling them then it’s better to knock back a few glasses then to express them.
And why do you think such a culture exists? Did it always exist? What is it influenced and kept up by?
People are aware of motorcycle risks upfront: They go fast. Wrecks are spectacular, and you don't go far to meet someone that has been affected by such an accident. You have safety gear, after all. Alcohol isn't like that. Alcohol is more akin to something like going up stairs or showering or heck, a little similar to smoking. None of these things seem all that dangerous while you do them. But as it turns out, shower…
> Alcohol isn't like that. Alcohol is more akin to something like going up stairs or showering or heck, a little similar to smoking. Most people I know have someone in their family or friends who has died because of alcohol related diseases or accidents.
Yeah, and you are usually dead to your family twenty years before alcohol finally stops your body.
The number I see frequently as the threshold of "heavy drinking" is 15 drinks per week, so I certainly agree that it's not accurate to call 14 drinks per week "moderate". 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 unl…
What would you call the level below "heavy"? I'd imagine if you asked most people the scale would go something like "nondrinker", "light drinker", "moderate drinker", "heavy drinker", "full blown alcoholic". If so then 14 drinks per week is the upper end of "moderate". I'd expect it also depends on how you drink it. One restaurant-pour glass of wine with dinner every day adds up to 14 drinks a week but no reasonable…
>One restaurant-pour glass of wine with dinner every day adds up to 14 drinks a week but no reasonable person would call it "heavy drinking".
What's the difference between a glass of wine after dinner and 700ml of beer (which is what GP's calculations work out to)? They both have the same amount of alcohol.
What is “drink” here? How many milliliters, what percentage of alcohol? 40%? 15%? 50ml or 200ml?
I’m starting to see “drinks” measured in terms of volume of pure ethanol. The UK has defined its standard drink as 10ml of pure ethanol, which conveniently comes out to a single 25ml shot of liquor. Based on the Netflix documentary I watched, it seems like they’re starting to standardize the labels of alcoholic drinks in the UK to inform consumers how many units of alcohol it represents, and also encouraging people t…
Alcoholic drinks are all labelled now and have been for about a decade. It is useful to know how much you are drinking
> Our study highlights the contribution of even relatively low levels of alcohol to the risk of new cancer cases, "relatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I'm always amazed when filling out health surveys where it considers one alcoholic drink every single day a "low level".
The biggest difference is if alcohol is part of your routine or just for special occasions. If it's part of your routine you might have a glass or two of wine with dinner most nights. Or a couple of pints in the pub after work. Maybe you never really get drunk, but you're drinking a lot of alcohol. I used to drink pretty infrequently. Sure, I'd have a six pack a party every now and then but most of the time I was bus…
But it seems that a small number (ie 10-20ml of ethanol) a day is less dangerous than binge drinking occasionally.
> 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…
Yeah, sounds like I would fall under 'moderate drinker', when I only have about 3-4 drinks per month, and sometimes less than that (I went about eight months last year without drinking any alcohol at all, for example).
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.
It’s certainly interesting. My initial reaction is that “lifetime abstainers” is still a sufficiently distinct group from the continuum of moderate to heavy drinkers so there might be other confounders. I wonder if a study like that exists? I personally know only a handful of people who never drink, and it’s either for religious reasons or, in one case, the person just likes to put themselves at odds with society in various ways, including never drinking.
What would you call the level below "heavy"? I'd imagine if you asked most people the scale would go something like "nondrinker", "light drinker", "moderate drinker", "heavy drinker", "full blown alcoholic". If so then 14 drinks per week is the upper end of "moderate". I'd expect it also depends on how you drink it. One restaurant-pour glass of wine with dinner every day adds up to 14 drinks a week but no reasonable…
>One restaurant-pour glass of wine with dinner every day adds up to 14 drinks a week but no reasonable person would call it "heavy drinking". What's the difference between a glass of wine after dinner and 700ml of beer (which is what GP's calculations work out to)? They both have the same amount of alcohol.
None really, although it'd be more like a 500mL beer if it's full strength beer (~4.8%). I don't think I know anyone who would consider a single pint to be "heavy drinking".
There are people that drink what the study says to drink, every day? What else would 'controlled' mean in this context?
>There are people that drink what the study says to drink, every day? Not sure, honestly. They seem to pull this data from a WHO database on health statistics [0]. In stricter terms, you are asking if their estimate of what people drink reflects what they really drink in real life. That is, is the estimate biased? I would expect it to be biased in this case. I am not sure how much it really matters unless you are in…
You plainly stated that evidence about alcohol use comes from randomized controlled trials. It doesn't, it all comes from observational studies.
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".
It's not only a poison though, it also has medicinal properties. Helps with relaxation, anxiety and even acts as a short term antidepressant. With that in mind, there is a safe level, just as there is with paracetamol. Of course, having better medication is, well, better. But not everyone has access to it. That said I have been struggling with it ever since I can remember and I wish I never tried it. It's very hard t…
“ acts as a short term antidepressant”
No, it’s very definitely a depressant. Some might get ecstatic momentarily, but they’re likely to be crying within minutes, or maybe even trying to commit murder or rape — one of the worse side effects of alcohol is criminal behavior.