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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

#521

I've completely cut my drinking down to "only on holidays where I'm expected to", and even then I don't get "drunk". While I never got to a point of drinking where anyone would call it a "problem", I realized that any amount of alcohol probably isn't great for my depression, and I also realized that I actually didn't enjoy being drunk all that much. I don't really miss it much, though it was a little difficult to qui…

You're expected to drink? For religious reasons? I've found it incredibly easy to stop drinking entirely. Nobody has ever questioned why I don't drink alcohol let alone expect me to drink. I figure there are enough people who don't do for religious/cultural reasons that it would be silly to ask and offensive to expect. Even though I probably don't look like someone who abstains for religious/cultural reasons and only…

> You're expected to drink? For religious reasons?

Nah, I won't even say "peer pressure" either, but more of a "fuck it it's New Years" attitude. Not uncommon (at least amongst my friend group) to have a shot of whisky or something at midnight on NYE.

Again though, it's on the order of 1-2 shots, and I'm a pretty tall guy, so it's certainly not enough to get me intoxicated or anything like that.

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

#522
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

For comparaison, smoking is ~10 years of life expectancy reduction https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal... . Surprisingly obesity seems to only replace some of your last years with years with diabetes, without decreasing your longevity https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4951120/ . I think I didn't read that study correctly, or didn't find a good one. Air pollution might be aroun…

> obesity seems to only replace some of your last years with years with diabetes, without decreasing your longevity

That's probably only because we can generally manage diabetes pretty well, though it does impose a lot of cost on society to do so.

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

#523
post #4

Don't worry, in 5-10 years it will be good for you again. I still remember being lectured in school on the food pyramid and the importance of getting your 8-10 servings of grains a day.

Yep. You don't have to go that far. A decade back it was thought that red meat causes cancer, specifically intestinal cancer. Lots of health guidelines reflected that. It has all fallen apart in the last 2-3 years.

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

#524
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren’t we looking into the merits of a daily or weekly cigarette? At a certain point it really looks like it’s just poison and wet should knock it off.

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.

Probably not going to get a chance to RTFA, but yeah, I know there's some stuff. I think it was looking like nicotine could be helpful in regulating some mood problems and similar stuff. Kinda like ADHD meds or anti-depressants. There may be some stress relieving effects, although I wouldn't be surprised if there's more stress in the long term (from constantly managing withdrawl)

Anyway, we're at the point with nicotine where virtually no one is willing to entertain the idea of recommending people consume "just a little". Maybe we should be that way with alcohol, too.

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

#525
post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of those things is not like the others. I don't think sex is linked to many bad health outcomes.

> I don't think sex is linked to many bad health outcomes. Sure it is. STDs, risk of injury, etc.

Bad comparison. Too much of the other stuff will harm you regardless of how careful you are. No amount of sex will harm you, if you're careful.

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

#526
Aside from the still dubious "certainty" of this clinical conclusion, there are far too man y puritans on this comment threat hoping to optimize every last possible, squeezable ounce of supposed health from life by railing against alcohol as well. Quite simply, some things have social, personal and emotional benefits that might just be worth a bit more in the long run than being an absolutist who weighs the most minimal uncertainties of pleasurable acts at all times. To each their own, but what a terrible way to live a life, and especially with the full knowledge that many previous health studies by many large organizations have frequently fucked up in their claims that X or Y is bad or good, only to later change their tunes with new evidence.

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

#528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arsenic is in all kinds of foods, if you made the claim "no amount of arsenic consumption is safe", you would be arguing that basically everyone's diet is unsafe. What does that even mean? To take the claim "no amount of alcohol consumption is safe" seriously would mean you shouldn't eat bread, which contains a small amount of alcohol.

What about: 'No amount of smoke inhalation is safe for the lungs'? Obviously, if you live in a city, you're going to find yourself inhaling smoke from time to time, but it's still the case that it should be avoided. It's not extreme to think of alcohol as 'always negative' but also to accept it's a common and basically unavoidable toxin.

That's a hard argument to make. "2nd hand smoke" is (for now) unavoidable (though has decreased dramatically over the last decade or two). "2nd hand alcohol" is not really a thing at all. We choose to drink it, or we choose not to (ignoring heinous acts of coerced drinking).

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

#529
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

For comparaison, smoking is ~10 years of life expectancy reduction https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal... . Surprisingly obesity seems to only replace some of your last years with years with diabetes, without decreasing your longevity https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4951120/ . I think I didn't read that study correctly, or didn't find a good one. Air pollution might be aroun…

"Nevertheless, men with obesity aged 55 y and older lived 2.8 (95% CI −6.1 to −0.1) fewer y without diabetes than normal weight individuals, whereas, for women, the difference between obese and normal weight counterparts was 4.7 (95% CI −9.0 to −0.6) y. Men and women with obesity lived 2.8 (95% CI 0.6 to 6.2) and 5.3 (95% CI 1.6 to 9.3) y longer with diabetes, respectively, compared to their normal weight counterparts."

Is this study suggesting that obese people with diabetes lived longer than obese people without diabetes? I suppose that diabetes as a condition is not harmful in and of itself and perhaps leads to a healthier lifestyle?

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