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

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

#221

Post by sidlls »

ipaddr wrote: post #209
sidlls wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Techies especially are a gullible lot, susceptible to new age nonsense, anti-vax style pseudoscience, and a glut of other anti-science things. At least in the Bay Area. It’s ridiculous to see how quickly they take to any fad.

Probably because they think for themselves instead of appointing someone else to do the critical thinking for them. They think the ones who are gullible are the ones that hear something on the news and repeat it as fact without ever thinking about it. Anti-science is anti-politics around science not anti-evidence. Things like questioning the Covid bat theory. Glad to see the news is coming around on the lab theory.

It’s more like they think too highly of their own critical thinking skills and aren’t knowledgeable enough about the science to credibly judge the evidence, then pat themselves on the back for “independent thinking.”

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

#222

Post by TaupeRanger »

ImaCake wrote: post #167
TaupeRanger wrote: post #144

This is complete bunk, like most nutrition epidemiological studies. They start by assuming a causal relationship that we simply don't know actually exists, using biologically "plausible" pathways that are, again, unproven. And even then, they don't seem to account for the reduction of cancer risk that many wine and beer studies have shown (though, again, from equally spurious epi studies). And here again we have news…

>They start by assuming a causal relationship that we simply don't know actually exists They assume this causal relationship based on decades of randomised controlled trials (the only ethical way to get this information in humans). Their estimate for the risk of cancer based on alcohol consumption comes from previous work which would have carefully summarised the data from these trials and conservatively estimated th…

It's really not so simple, even for sunscreen: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/sunscreen-sun-...

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

#223

Post by WalterBright »

mhh__ wrote: post #76
WalterBright wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They were probably thinking less strategically at the time

It's a biological imperative, not a rational thought process.

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

#224

Post by ashtonkem »

bscphil wrote: post #215
ashtonkem wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The UK has defined its standard drink as 10ml of pure ethanol This is interesting. In the US a standard drink [1] is often considered roughly equivalent to one can of 5% ABV beer, or a 1.5 fl oz shot of 80 proof liquor. That comes out to about ~17.5 ml of alcohol. I not-infrequently have beers that are 9% ABV. Maybe I should rethink how many servings of alcohol I have a week by international standards... [1] https:…

I think the difference in a standard drink is driven by customary units which tend to be smaller in the UK. A British shot is either 25 or 35ml, while the standard American shot is typically 44ml (1.5oz). British beer is also sold in pint (20 oz) and half pint (10 oz) units, while an American pint will be 16oz across the board.

This layout seems to point towards smaller units, with the smallest British unit being 10ml of ethanol (25ml at 40ABV), while the smallest possible American equivalent would be 17.6ml for a 1.5 oz shot. Thus if we’re using a single shot as our measure of a “standard drink”, then Americans will be consuming about 70% more pure ethanol than their British equivalent per drink.

Also, health authorities have begun rethinking how much drinking is too much, hence the downward deviation of what the international standards say.

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

#225

Post by archagon »

If anyone is interested in reducing their alcohol intake, I developed a free and open source iOS app called Good Spirits that lets you set your weekly alcohol quota and syncs down check-ins from Untappd: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/good-spirits/id1434237439

The repo is here: https://github.com/archagon/good-spirits

I've set the default to 10 standard (US) drinks per week for men, which (at the time the app was developed) seemed to be the upper bound for low-ish risk drinking as established by a large number of health ministries around the world. (Obviously, it's best to drink as little as possible, but I made this app with myself as the target audience: a craft beer enthusiast who doesn't want to get too carried away.)

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

#226

Post by archagon »

taneq wrote: post #155
fuzxi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A restaurant-pour of wine would be about 5oz, wouldn't it? Assuming 14% ABV, I think that would be more like 8 drinks a week.

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

#227

Post by eurasiantiger »

taurath wrote: post #212
eurasiantiger wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why do you think such a culture exists? Did it always exist? What is it influenced and kept up by?

Machismo is a really big area of study.

Really? You’re ready to ascribe the entirety of problematic alcohol consumption patterns simply to ”man-drinking”?

That is intellectual dishonesty at its prime.

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

#228

Post by taurath »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #227
taurath wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machismo is a really big area of study.

Really? You’re ready to ascribe the entirety of problematic alcohol consumption patterns simply to ”man-drinking”? That is intellectual dishonesty at its prime.

Your theory is big booze and government corruption creates a problem of alcohol. Mine is that culturally many people really like to drink as an emotional salve. I didn’t ascribe the entire problem to it, just offering an additional or alternative cause, of which there can and must be more than one.

Throwing around accusations like intellectual dishonesty sorta doesn’t help conversation.

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

#229

Post by eurasiantiger »

taurath wrote: post #228
eurasiantiger wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? You’re ready to ascribe the entirety of problematic alcohol consumption patterns simply to ”man-drinking”? That is intellectual dishonesty at its prime.

Your theory is big booze and government corruption creates a problem of alcohol. Mine is that culturally many people really like to drink as an emotional salve. I didn’t ascribe the entire problem to it, just offering an additional or alternative cause, of which there can and must be more than one. Throwing around accusations like intellectual dishonesty sorta doesn’t help conversation.

Let’s review this a bit more clearly.

I agree with you that many people like to drink to suppress or bring forth their emotions. This could be generalized: many people like to heavily alter their state of consciousness.

Now, mostly because of Big Booze and government corruption, we are stuck in a system where the only legal way to heavily alter one’s consciousness is alcohol.

Culture revolves around this. Counterculture then naturally involves illegal ways to alter one’s consciousness. Since counterculture exists defined through culture as an avantgarde-like necessity - a forefront of cultural innovation - it is again natural that the makers of mainstream culture are actually counterculturalists. It is also why mainstream art - music, books, movies, TV - contains so many examples of ”promoting” drug use.

It is thus obvious that the legality of alcohol and illegality of drugs are more significant drivers of behaviour than ”alcohol culture”.

We have hundreds of mainstream idols from Willie Nelson to Snoop Dogg openly promoting cannabis use, yet cannabis culture is literally cracked down on wherever it is illegal.

Ultimately, the law trumps culture.

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

#230

Post by amanaplanacanal »

Unfortunately this breathless reporting makes it impossible to determine the actual risk. On average, how much of my lifespan am I losing by drinking? If it's several years, I might decide it's not worth it. If it's several days, I'm not sure I care that much. Is the data available to calculate this?
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