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

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

#371

Post by pixl97 »

dkarl wrote: post #232
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?

No two situations are the same, and demanding consistency at an arbitrary level of reasoning means disregarding everything you would see when looking closer. For example, banning something that has been legal for a long time is difficult because of the economic aftershocks and cultural resistance. If something new was invented that was just as harmful as alcohol, it might be best to ban it and leave alcohol legal. FW…

Also attempting to ban things that are both desirable and very easy to make is a great way to create an enormous criminal black market like we did with prohibition in the US.

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

#372

Post by lonecom »

jdlyga wrote: post #22

Interesting how there's a major shift in the knowledge about risks of things like sugar, cigarettes, alcohol, etc. And it usually turns out there was an industry group involved in sort of a coverup. The lesson here is to take any health claims or dismissal or risks with a grain of salt when there's a big industry behind it.

> major shift in the knowledge about risks of things like sugar, cigarettes, alcohol...

In each of these case, the medical and scientific community didn't have a vested interests in these entities. I mean, the medical community didn't come up with smoking or alcohol consumption...

Now imagine some entity or procedure that the medical/scientific community came up with and the big business found way to make huge money off of, such that there is a natural alignment of incentives for the scientific community and big business to keep this thing propped up. Such a thing, even if doing great harm, is sure to go on for a vastly longer period of time, if not perpetually....

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

#373

Post by dragonwriter »

bumby wrote: post #356
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.

> to at least be consistent. Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an impractical solution. So I don't think "we allow one bad thing and we can't get rid of it, so let's allow all bad things" makes a particularly compelling argument. (FWIW, I'm generally not against legalization nor do I think all drugs are net-negative. I just find the argument a…

> Also worth noting that consistency could be achieved by outlawing alcohol. In the U.S. at least, that proved an impractical solution.

It was recognized as impractical fairly quickly, despite having fairly similar concrete outcomes to the drug war, for which a similar recognition has been much slower and less complete. But, again, that's just another layer of inconsistency in the same direction, not a mitigation of it.

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

#374

Post by roughly »

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…

> I wonder what happened.

Among other things, alcohol became legal to drink. Adults take more road trips than babies and teenagers too, I wonder why they can’t have fun at home anymore.

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

#376

Post by kritiko »

tryptophan wrote: post #230
parasubvert wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is ample evidence that saturated fats are not bad for you, or at least no where near as bad as previous science led us to believe.

It would be more accurate to say that there is no strong evidence that saturated fats are bad for you. Lots of the previous science was bad science that did not account for confounding factors, such as not taking into account that lots of fast food has lots of saturated fats(and made up for a large portion of saturated fat consumption) and adjusting for that. ie the difference between "do sat fats make people unhealt…

You raise several nutritional theories here.

Dietary Cholesterol / Blood Cholesterol - cholesterol restriction has been removed from dietary guidelines in the US, so people have taken that seriously.

Increased saturated fat is pretty well associated with LDL levels, which is associated with cardiovascular disease risk. Not sure that I've ever seen any contrary studies recently - I would be interested if you could link any you are aware of... I guess the questions I have seen are around carb intake and fat intake, but that's kind of a separate issue

Salt is definitely more questionable, but seems like if you are avoiding hyperprocessed foods, you are going to intake less salt, so maybe a non-issue...

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

#377

Post by zelphirkalt »

allturtles wrote: post #358
slothtrop wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, for this particular bit of research that I read a couple of months ago, more precisely it states there is no clear discernible level of consumption that could be deemed "safe". That's not really a surprise if you look at the data because it's such a mess. You also can't pin a point at which consumption is a high risk. What does that tell us? You can however surmise that low / moderate consumption is not…

Exactly. I find the claim "no level of alcohol consumption is safe" hyperbolic. You could claim with far more justification that "no amount of driving is safe" since you could be killed pulling out of your driveway but I think most people who drive on a daily basis would find this claim odd. "safety" is a relative, not an absolute condition, since in some sense being alive is unsafe.

That is a weird comparison. No one is forcing you to drink alcohol, but you might be forced to drive to the office. One is avoidable, the other one is not. Or if you want to be even more precise: One is easily avoidable and the other might cost you your job.

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

#378

Post by gatorvh »

maskil wrote: post #28

I know of a man who had a shot of 96 percent alcohol (192 proof) every single day and died at the age of 96.

The statement is only interesting when you consider a sizeable population who regularly drank the % alcohol and lived to 96. It’s a classic case of selection bias

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

#379

Post by f38zf5vdt »

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #333
solox3 wrote: post #202

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…

To point 1. In the brief I find at the red download link [1] contains the line “ Based on recent evidence, it has been concluded that there is “no safe level of alcohol consumption”(5).” The reference points to an article from The Lancet [2] [1] https://world-heart-federation.org/wp-content/uploads/WHF-Po... [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Another article from The Lancet from around the same time reported a whopping... 6 months of life expectancy reduction when consuming 100-200g of alcohol a week versus 0-100g of alcohol a week. [1, Figure 4] A drink is 14 grams of alcohol, so that means that your risk from consuming 150 grams, or over 10 drinks a week, is still relatively low in terms of all-cause mortality. Figure 1 also shows that consumption of 0-100g per week has virtually no consequence on all-cause mortality.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736...

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

#380

Post by tshaddox »

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…

I don’t really get this jump from “I enjoy drinking alcohol with friends” to someone accusing me of “being unable to enjoy myself without alcohol.” You could throw the same accusations at anyone for literally everything they enjoy doing. You can’t enjoy yourself without going out to see a movie! You can’t enjoy yourself without camping! You can’t enjoy yourself without listening to music!
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