Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 1001 posts

Re: No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

#201

Post by avgcorrection »

sokoloff wrote: post #69
lotsofpulp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistency in legal matters seems like a good and necessary thing for ensuring fairness. What is the basis for Emerson’s quote to apply here?

I’m generally pro-legalization, but there are many things that we hypothesize are safe but do not know the long-term effects of and, within living memory, have discovered that many things initially thought safe were not. People were taking X-ray images of shoe fit in department stores, we used thalidomide to treat morning sickness, etc. What society says is legal has an effect on how it is perceived and how frequentl…

> What society says is legal has an effect on how it is perceived and how frequently it’s accessed by minors, teens, young adults, and adults. Exercising a modicum of conservatism in approving all things that we think are safer than alcohol seems appropriate to me.

Considering that we are talking about alcohol, this argument could just as well be used in favor of liberalization.

Re: No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

#202

Post by solox3 »

I am fine with abstinence as a general recommendation, but critical thinking pointed out two issues with the WHF Policy Brief, which I suppose I have read in sufficient depth:

1. There is no citation on the sentence, "Recent evidence has found that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for health." This is really the only line we are interested in.

2. There is no comparison on the effects of alcohol on the body by dosage (and frequency), which is, again, what is required from the brief to make that claim.

Again, while I don't necessarily disagree with what's in the report, and that it is already established that drinking too much is not good for the heart, considering many otherwise toxic substances have a hormetic zone, it is critical that a study like this rules out the its existence for ethanol.

Re: No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

#203

Post by endisneigh »

asdf_snar wrote: post #170
endisneigh wrote: post #42

Of course it isn’t. Drink water. Unfortunately some people believe they can’t enjoy themselves without alcohol. It’s curious: - babies have fun without drinking - kids have fun without drinking - some teens have fun without drinking Then at some point some people, as adults, feel like they have to drink to enjoy themselves? I wonder what happened. Edit: explicitly clarifying that I’m only talking about some people he…

> Then at some point people, as adults, feel like they have to drink to enjoy themselves? I wonder what happened. It feels like this question is disingenuous. You don't need fire starter to start a fire either, but wouldn't it be silly to conclude fire starter doesn't make starting a fire easier? Moderate alcohol consumption in an intimate environment is a lot of fun. Put differently, if alcohol didn't present such s…

I don’t understand your comparison with a fire.

Your claim that moderate alcohol consumption makes things more fun is part of the point of my post. Is this actually true, or just a rationalization of people who already drink?

No judgement for those who do drink, by the way.

Re: No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

#204

Post by lenzm »

nradov wrote: post #2

The problem with articles like this is that they lack context on the relative risks of various activities. Is drinking a daily glass of wine more or less bad for your heart than skipping your daily aerobic exercise? Surely we can put some numbers on that.

I think a good measuring stick would be the distance you'd need to drive in a car to generate the same level of risk to your life. Driving is seemingly mundane but I think one of the riskiest things we do on a daily basis in the US.

Re: No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

#205

Post by acomjean »

flippyhead wrote: post #82

I've heard this more lately and can't square it with what I had understood about those super long-lived cultures; like in Italy or Japan, where supposedly they drink moderate amounts of alcohol approximately daily.

There are so many factors that effect health its really hard to isolate one. I think moderation is key to preventing one of these things from having an undue large effect. grandmother (Irish/English) drank and smoked a lot, she lived to her mid-nineties. She had a relatively stress free existence though. But she's one person and without an identical twin control, its hard to tell how much better she might have been had she abstained.

Re: No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

#207

Post by gwd »

lostgame wrote: post #158
funklute wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but “worse things are legal” is not a good reason. It's a very good reason to at least change one of the two. Either make the worse thing legal, or criminalise the "better" thing. Arbitrary rules are never a good thing.

>> Arbitrary rules are never a good thing. Any parent, ever - will be able to tell you this is a fact. If you think arbitrary rules can stick, wait until your kid hits the 'why'/'how come' phase. In this case, the government is the parent making an arbitrary rule and the people represent the 5-year-old kid asking why. Parent: 'You can drink, but you can't do cocaine.' Kid: 'Why?' Parent: 'Because cocaine is bad for y…

> Parent: 'You can drink, but you can't do cocaine.'

> Kid: 'Why?'

Parent: 'Because alcohol is legal and cocaine isn't; that has several consequences.

'Governmental regulations provide some confidence that alcohol is safe and as-advertised; there is no regulation of the manufacturing quality of cocaine.

'Buying alcohol brings you into close proximity to the liquor supply chain, all of whom can settle disputes by using the court system. Buying cocaine brings you in close proximity to the cocaine supply chain, all of whom can only settle disputes using violence.

'And of course there are no legal repercussions for the possession of alcohol; there are legal repercussions for the possession of cocaine.'

Re: No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

#208

Post by RobertRoberts »

haroldp wrote: post #181
RobertRoberts wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slippery slope. What happens when a drug addict looking his next fix attacks someone? This is why we have drug laws to start with, was to protect people. There are no simple answers here.

What you are thinking of as the side effects of drug addiction are mainly the side effects of prohibition. Alcohol addiction is a serious problem, with serious negative consequences. So we made it illegal. And then we had two problems instead of one. Drug laws do not decrease addiction rates. They do make drugs unnecessarily expensive, and force addicts to interact with violent criminal gangs to get them. The negativ…

Which drug will do more harm if freely available to all children? Alcohol, meth, heroin or crack?

I will pick alcohol every time over the others.

Re: No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation

#210

Post by perardi »

caeril wrote: post #162
mmastrac wrote: post #11

Alcohol is one of the worst "drugs" on a personal/societal harm scale - if we're going to tolerate this at large, we should probably consider legalizing everything else that's less harmful to at least be consistent. While we're at it, let's de-stigmatize the abuse of substances and treat it like a real mental health issue.

Counterpoint: alcohol is one of the best drugs on the planet for anyone on the spectrum of introversion to crippling social anxiety. In all my (many) years, I have found no better path to becoming socially acceptable (even likable) to neurotypicals/extroverts than 3-4 shots of vodka. This is an unfortunate, but very real fact for many of us. I've heard good things about Phenibut, but (1) it's very difficult to obtain…

Oh-ho, no, not in my experience.

I used to be devastatingly introverted. Alcohol helped, but it’s nothing compared to GHB or MDMA. Ecstasy will give you the gift of gab like you can’t believe.

minor edit: I should say I am ignoring the context of where it’s acceptable to do such things. You probably shouldn’t do G at Christmas with the in-laws. (Though our quarantine Christmas this year with friends…) I’m just making a bit of a pedantic bit that there are club drugs out there that are pretty wild in how they can open you up socially.

Post reply on HN