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

#571

Post by tomtheelder » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

tarboreus wrote: post #506

zelphirkalt wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> […] So what? That doesn't mean it's significant. It is the question, how significant it is. Then there is the question, what level of significance will make a person reconsider their consumption. However, the statement that no amount is truly safe, if it is correct, means, that in general alcohol is an unnecessary risk. There is no need to drink it and no good for ones heart comes of it in terms of biology. What so…

This is only true if you assume or demonstrate that alcohol has no benefits to individuals that outweigh the downside risk to health. As the downside appears to be relatively small, this seems like a fairly difficult bar to clear.

No, their statement is correct regardless of the benefits. This brief isn't a cost benefit analysis. It's not a dietary guideline. It's a statement of medical fact (based on current research, anyway): that no amount of alcohol is safe for cardiovascular health.

There may well be benefits to alcohol consumption, but those are entirely irrelevant here.

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

#572

Post by azth » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

> They ask you about wine (khamr) and gambling. Say, "In them is great sin and [yet, some] benefit for people. But their sin is greater than their benefit."

https://quran.com/2/219

> O you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants (khamr), gambling, [sacrificing on] stone altars [to other than God], and divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid it that you may be successful.

https://quran.com/5/90

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

#573

Post by kekebo » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:39 PM UTC

deltaonefour wrote: post #548

clpm4j wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anecdotal accounts could be one offs. We need data for a full picture and even than the data could be biased. It may very well be Churchill could have survived longer were it not for alcohol. This recent post seems to imply that they now have more accurate and more unbiased data leading them to this new conclusion. I think a lot of people at the WHF drink some amount of alcohol as do most people in the world. However…

There's some data on scholar, for instance a suggested health difference between wine vs beers or spirits, based on ~28k participants monitored over 2-19 years[0].

From my understanding the narrative of moderate alcohol consumption (specifically wine, via resveritrol) being beneficial comes from epidemiological studies of people living in the Mediterranean, an area with relatively long median life spans[1]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC31093/

[1] https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/emiddt/2014/00000...

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

#574

Post by tomtheelder » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:45 PM UTC

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…

I think you've got the politics of this backwards. There is overwhelming cultural pressure to support some level of alcohol consumption. A host of shoddy (and largely alcohol industry funded) studies tried to demonstrate that it was beneficial.

It's not. It's harmful no matter the quantity. Study after study demonstrates this now. I say this as someone who drinks regularly, by the way. I have no desire for it to be demonstrated that alcohol is harmful; it's a part of my life and has been for decades.

If you want evidence, go open the actual brief and check out the dozens of references, including multiple meta analyses.

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

#575

Post by tomtheelder » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:47 PM UTC

steelstraw wrote: post #57

Everything is a balance though, isn't it? If a little alcohol reduces one's stress and increases socialization, then they may be better off with the alcohol on net.

Yes, and the takeaway from this brief should not be "reduce your alcohol consumption to zero." It is instead, "know when you consume alcohol that there is no quantity that will produce no harm." That's a big departure from the previously accepted, and now thoroughly debunked, conventional wisdom that a small quantity is harmless or even beneficial.

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

#576

Post by allturtles » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

tomtheelder wrote: post #567

allturtles wrote: post #474

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.

> 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. No, it doesn't mean this. What they mean is that any amount of alcohol consumption causes some amount of harm. From the research I have seen it seems to be more or less linear. Minuscule consumption means minimal harm. The implication isn't that you or anyone else shou…

> any amount of alcohol consumption causes some amount of harm

There is no guarantee that you will suffer harm from a single drink. What it really means is that any amount of alcohol consumption carries some (possibly minute) risk of harm. This is not, IMO, equivalent to "unsafe", which generally means something well outside the bounds of normal risks that most people already take on in their everyday lives.

If we accepted that "some risk of harm" = unsafe, we would have to describe using the stairs as unsafe, taking a shower as unsafe, putting up Christmas lights as unsafe, etc.

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

#577

Post by tomtheelder » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

iooi wrote: post #516

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.

They mostly do make the stronger version of the claim:

> The evidence is clear: any level of alcohol consumption can lead to loss of healthy life. Studies have shown that even small amounts of alcohol can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease, including coronary disease, stroke, heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation, and aneurysm.

It's honestly pretty clear that this is true if you dig into the research a bit. I say this as a regular drinker, by the way. I don't think the takeaway should be to drink zero, just that we (and doctors particularly!) should not be fooled into believing that there is a quantity of alcohol consumption that is entirely risk free, or even beneficial.

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

#578

Post by throwaway0a5e » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #570

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't getting it. Who does the bare risk itself victimize? Where is the damage? The risk is just that, a risk. There's a chance it may go bad and a chance that it may not. The risk produces no damage, no victim. But in sufficient quantity the bad outcome will happen enough to be worth making the activity is not allowed. Normally we prohibit the bad outcome but for some highly subjective cases we have to just dra…

Risk victimizes those who are exposed to it. When it is trivial to identify a single person who is exposed to the risk, we don't call it "victimless", we call it "endangerment". Why, when an act exposes multiple unnamed people to a risk, do some call it a "victimless" crime? Just because it's difficult to identify those exposed to a risk doesn't mean that people haven't been placed at risk.

>Risk victimizes those who are exposed to it.

If you share the road with a drunk driver but they crash into someone else are you a victim? Does their insurer compensate you?

Being exposed to risk does not make you a victim. You need to actually be harmed.

If your brother takes opiods but stops you are not a victim. If your bother takes opiods, gets addicted and ruins your family then you are.

Shooting a gun in the air, speeding, all sorts of unsafe things can have no victim, or they can have a victim depending on how things go.

We don't criminalize these things because they have victims when you do them right. They are usually victimless. We criminalize them because there's too much luck involved and we don't like the odds.

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

#579

Post by devoutsalsa » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

stronglikedan wrote: post #525

jcadam wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"Futurama - Death By Snu Snu" => https://youtu.be/3f8sjzETQ5o

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

#580

Post by helloworld11 » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

helloworld11 wrote: post #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 mini…

Instead of downvoting, why not someone justify with a decent counterargument that goes beyond simply "alcohol is unsafe!"? Life comes with risk, many pleasurable activities come with risk. It's possible to balance between enjoying oneself and moderating one's behavior without sinking into a morass of absolutist, puritanical and medically ambiguous health "optimization".