No amount of alcohol is good for the heart, says World Heart Federation • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by P_I_Staker » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

tharne wrote: post #485

nradov wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While smoking is harmful overall and I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to smoke, the nicotine it delivers does have some merits. So there is some nuance to the issue. https://peterattiamd.com/ama23/ The dose makes the poison. For some poisons there is a minimum threshold dose below which there is no detectible harm. For others that threshold is zero.

> The dose makes the poison Exactly. The concept of dose-dependency is one of those things that earlier generations had an intuitive understanding of, but something we have an increasingly fragile grip on in the modern era.

I don't think anyone is having trouble understanding dose-dependency. There's just a separate question regarding whether some substances should have no acceptable dose, and when we should make that distinction.

Things like nicotine are thought to be pretty much not worth consuming in any situation. Things like lead have no "allowable dose". Maybe alcohol should be treated similarly to cigs. This is a totally defensible position, that's worth discussing.

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

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Post by tatrajim » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #9

as someone who grew up i a community that has for many reasons, religious, social, economic that no one really does alcohol. when there is nobody who is drunk, we have 0 drunk driving cases, 0 cases of people ending up in wrong places, 0 cases of alcoholism, 0 cases of "well we will just mix a drink with something more recreational", no need for AA among a host of other things including not having to budget alcohol i…

Alcohol use around the world over the centuries is a vast topic, but coming from a US religious community that prohibited all alcohol, I was duly impressed while serving in the peace corps in rural South Korea with the social utility of drinking to moderate the rigid hierarchies of local culture there and to provide a place for blunt truth telling otherwise impossible.

The costs of alcoholism were readily visible as well, but I do believe drinking culture in South Korea is a hidden partner to its vaulting economic and cultural success from the ruins of the Korean War.

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

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Post by jcadam » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #349

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…

Would any non-trivial substance be deemed "safe" under these criteria?

There's a very small chance you'll choke to death every time you eat something.

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

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Post by kwhitefoot » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

> The Eurasian Economic Union’s technical regulation mandates provision of an ingredients list, health information, and an additional message of “recommendatory nature” to be put on all types of alcoholic beverages intended for human use.

Eurasian Economic Union?

Have I slipped down the wrong trousers of time?

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

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Post by asow92 » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

alex_young wrote: post #323

asow92 wrote: post #119

No amount of walking outside can guarantee not being hit by a car.

Seems like 0 could? Not at all recommended of course.

What if the car goes through your window? :)

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

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Post by iooi » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

Anyone else interested by the wording here?

"No amount of alcohol is good for the heart" is not exactly the same as saying "Any amount of alcohol is bad for the heart".

The former statement is hardly a surprise, but I think it will be harder to prove the latter statement.

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

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Post by jcadam » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #218

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.

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. I've never understood the arguments like yours, which I used to hear a half-century ago in high school, and now see presented online. They distill down to "We allow this one bad thing, so we should allow…

Banning alcohol didn't work out so well the last time we tried it and I seriously doubt it would go any better if we tried it again now.

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

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Post by tdeck » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #304

nabla9 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of studies showing benefits. Yes. And these studies are being exposed as the product of alcohol lobby. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/21/17139036/he... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6055701/

I am perfectly aware of p-hackng. I still don’t believe it without actual evidence, I get strong vibes of people wanting this to be true which would take more than a little evidence to overcome.

Many of these studies purporting to show a benefit from drinking included a sizable sample of people in the non-drinking group who had stopped for health reasons. In other words, they were probably told at some time in the past that they'd destroy their liver if they kept it up, indicating some level of damage to the body. In a society where some level of drinking alcohol is the norm, the non-drinking group has an overrepresentation of these people which skews the results.

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

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Post by clpm4j » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #379

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

Queue the Winston Churchill quote "I've taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me". I believe he died at age 91. Although it seems crazy that we could have ever believed alcohol is healthy in any way.

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

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Post by stronglikedan » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

Swenrekcah wrote: post #332

colechristensen wrote: post #225

Question one: what is the world heart federation? I have never heard of it before today. Two: > The evidence is clear: any level of alcohol consumption can lead to loss of healthy life. The evidence is not clear. There are plenty of studies showing benefits. “Any level” “can” makes the statement technically true but meaningless, you could replace alcohol with anything and that would also be true. If you want to back…

Let me offer some food for thought: How many athletes report drinking a bit before competing? The answer is none because it negatively affects all physical ability. So would you say it’s likely that in aggregate drinking would be healthy? Edit: Wow, I guess people really don't like to think about this. To respond to both comments below, yes sure, sometimes it helps to relax just a bit and alcohol can help with that,…

I used to have a beer before the gym, so I could get my heart rate up faster (thinner blood), and lift more (less pain response). If I were competing with an otherwise equally matched opponent at the gym, a beer would give me an edge.