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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

#721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get it. When I think of weed, my first mental image is still of someone passing a joint or bong around. I was surprised at how many measured dose options there were, though. Want a bag of watermelon gummy candies with X mg of THC? They’ve got you covered. I do wonder how much variance there is in those. Is that 5.0 mg += .1mg, or “eh, about 5 on average”. It’s easy to dose alcohol as you know how much alcohol is in…

Worth noting, for many people there is a significant difference in experience with edibles vs smoked/vaped weed. My recommendation is to not overthink it. If you're curious at all, go spend $7 on a single pre-roll, light it up, and try it out. There's plenty of unpleasant-ness in it for a first timer, but if you like being high, then you'll probably want to do it again. Dosing for smoking is pretty easy; take a few p…

This dosing suggestion is probably good for a lot of people, but for some, that initial "take a few puffs" could be way too much.

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

#722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC has been unfortunately hopelessly politicized. It happened long before the pandemic. OTOH, I would make the differentiating point that air travel has positive benefits to society and costs and one has to weigh those against each other. You can’t make the blanket statement “earth would be better off if air travel went away completely.” It’s hard to find any benefit to smoking, first hand or second, so it’s eas…

>> It's hard to find any benefit to smoking... Ritualistically, as an exercise in getting out of one's 'normal' consciousness, it can present useful information for self study. In habitual form, it is of course very destructive.

So the "getting out of consciousness" that is the relaxation experience many "habitual" smokers have is worthless, while changing your state for ritualistic purposes is helpful?

Both are very tiny self-reported effects that are close to non-observable for outsiders. Why would one outweigh the other, if you allow self-reported epsilon effects at all?

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

#723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that most health recommendations like these do not have any evidence associated with them, or a description of the actual risks. It seems that the doctors and health officials who write them have the evidence, but don't believe that the public needs to see it and rather should just go with whatever they say.

Having recently become pregnant, a lot of the guidance for expectant mothers echos these blanket recommendations (sushi, deli meats, hot baths etc). On the topic of alcohol, FASD is a massive concern, but it's known that it's correlated to how much you drink and how frequently you drink (enjoying a glass of wine once a month is very different than binge drinking multiple times throughout your pregnancy). The thing is…

The "no amount proven safe" mantra is refuted by epidemiological studies on the subject. There's no evidence that modern drinking is something to worry about.

It's well known that pregnant women become more risk avarse, and humans being bad at risk assessment in general they tend to channel those worries in relatively unproductive ways.

E.g. worry about obscure food safety issues, as opposed to something like traffic risk, or just focusing on staying generally healthy and anxiety free.

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

#724
post #717
post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s hard to find any benefit to smoking, first hand or second. The same is true about recreational travel. People expose themselves to high levels of radiation and travel risk purely for recreational purposes. Smokers inhale carcinogenic substances for recreational purposes.

Is the risk for the two even remotely in the same ballpark?

No, but the problem is that a scientifically informed (evidence based) public health site communicating risks should be consistent and shouldn't use inconsistent absolutist language.

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

#725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media reporting is the literal worst way to learn about scientific reporting and studies

What's a good way? Certainly not reading individual scientific studies yourself.

Textbooks, meta-analyses, asking researchers personally (multiples of them), and individual studies (also multiple, never rely on a single one)

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

#726
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…

If you want to feel some dissonance about this, you might note that this is the exact language the CDC uses for things like secondhand smoke -- "There is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke" -- which everybody nods along to and accepts without much scrutiny. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/seco... Meanwhile, when it's something like, say, cosmic radiation exposure from c…

I think the difference is that there is something to be gained in exchange for the risk posed by cosmic rays during air travel, so people are more interested in taking a nuanced approach to it. Meanwhile second hand smoke is a nuisance at best and a legitimate health concern at worse. Most people (myself included) are happy to ban smoking on airplanes or in restaurants even if the health benefits are negligible at best.

I do agree though, studies like this should always include useful context rather than just making absolutist statements. Perhaps alcohol and tobacco smoke need something similar to the banana equivalent dose used when talking about radiation exposure.

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

#727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to feel some dissonance about this, you might note that this is the exact language the CDC uses for things like secondhand smoke -- "There is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke" -- which everybody nods along to and accepts without much scrutiny. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/seco... Meanwhile, when it's something like, say, cosmic radiation exposure from c…

I think the difference is that there is something to be gained in exchange for the risk posed by cosmic rays during air travel, so people are more interested in taking a nuanced approach to it. Meanwhile second hand smoke is a nuisance at best and a legitimate health concern at worse. Most people (myself included) are happy to ban smoking on airplanes or in restaurants even if the health benefits are negligible at be…

> Nobody gains anything from an activity that fundamentally requires exposure to tobacco smoke.

Except smokers, of course.

Smoking isn't just addictive and deadly, like alcohol, it has its own appeal to users.

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

#728
post #717
post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s hard to find any benefit to smoking, first hand or second. The same is true about recreational travel. People expose themselves to high levels of radiation and travel risk purely for recreational purposes. Smokers inhale carcinogenic substances for recreational purposes.

Is the risk for the two even remotely in the same ballpark?

[deleted]

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

#729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC has been unfortunately hopelessly politicized. It happened long before the pandemic. OTOH, I would make the differentiating point that air travel has positive benefits to society and costs and one has to weigh those against each other. You can’t make the blanket statement “earth would be better off if air travel went away completely.” It’s hard to find any benefit to smoking, first hand or second, so it’s eas…

Nicotine (especially when consumed via smoking) has some negative side effects, but is also a neurotrophic and can be quite beneficial. Addiction and blood pressure are really the only downsides if you were to consume it in the form of, say, gum (and boy does the addiction suck).

The addiction is one of the most difficult to quit. With repeated use the nice feelings stop as well. There's no benefit to it, you're hijacking some neural circuitry until it hijacks your life

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

#730
post #707
post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we've seen in the past 2 years, there's no real positive benefit to society to frequent business flying (at pre-pandemic levels). Like smoking, we don't need to completely ban air travel. The equivalent would be severely limiting it (for example, prohibiting business flying).

> The equivalent would be severely limiting it (for example, prohibiting business flying). People fly to go on holiday and experience cultures other than their own which is something we should be encouraging rather than discouraging. I strongly agree with reducing needless business travel but if doing so also limited vacation travel I think it'd be a net negative.

We should be discouraging all air travel. All of it.
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