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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

#801

Post by Mathnerd314 »

scoofy wrote: post #731
dionidium wrote: post #669

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…

If you want to feel some dissonance about this dissonance, you might note that a meta-analysis was done on the evidence that using a parachute is effective at saving your life when jumping from an aircraft. It's a real, but satirical approach to worshiping randomized controlled trials for things that should effectively be obvious. There are obvious limits to empiricism, and we shouldn't proudly flaunt lack of evidenc…

As the paper's title says, it's a randomized controlled trial, not a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis would likely exclude the RCT due to poor experimental design.

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

#803

Post by Teknoman117 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #759
wolverine876 wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate impact is significant. That's going to interfere with generations enjoying their lives.

We should then work on enabling people to fly with no climate impact. For example, using zero emissions energy to synthesize jet fuel. The goal should be to enable people, not to block them.

You don't even have to be zero emissions. You just need net zero. If you're putting carbon into the air, you need to sink an equivalent amount of it. If you use biofuels for instance, so long as you replant/regrow the same biomass as you convert to fuel, you're closing the loop.

Zero emissions technologies are great where they're practical. Aircraft are one of those places where the energy density and overall density of your fuel source is very, very important.

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

#805

Post by krrrh »

zdragnar wrote: post #708
mattmaroon wrote: post #682

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).

Regular consumption of nicotine also reduces Alzheimer's risk (and probably Parkinson's). This has been known for a long time. Few things are absolute.

1991: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC1670208/

> The risk of Alzheimer's disease decreased with increasing daily number of cigarettes smoked before onset of disease (relative risk 0.3 in those smoking greater than 21/day v 1 in non-smokers). In six families in which the disease was apparently inherited as an autosomal dominant disorder, the mean age of onset was 4.17 years later in smoking patients than in non-smoking patients from the same family (p = 0.03).

There is also ongoing research on this topic funded by the US government.

https://www.alzheimers.gov/clinical-trials/memory-improvemen...

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

#806

Post by HWR_14 »

pvarangot wrote: post #783
kaba0 wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, it depends on how much you smoke and how much you travel. Thing is if I smoke even one cigarette like as a digestive after a big dinner once every four months I have to pay 600 dollars of extra health insurance per year because of how all this bullshit messaging about how nicotine works. And of course it's to protect something like only 35% of the human population that will get addicted to it. I stopped smoking…

> Thing is if I smoke even one cigarette like as a digestive after a big dinner once every four months I have to pay 600 dollars of extra health insurance per year because of how all this bullshit messaging about how nicotine works.

Really? Where do you live? Because I'm not aware of any country that does this (other than with sin taxes on tobacco).

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

#807

Post by scoofy »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #801
scoofy wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to feel some dissonance about this dissonance, you might note that a meta-analysis was done on the evidence that using a parachute is effective at saving your life when jumping from an aircraft. It's a real, but satirical approach to worshiping randomized controlled trials for things that should effectively be obvious. There are obvious limits to empiricism, and we shouldn't proudly flaunt lack of evidenc…

As the paper's title says, it's a randomized controlled trial, not a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis would likely exclude the RCT due to poor experimental design.

You are correct, but a meta-analysis would still suggest that there is no evidence that parachutes protect people jumping out of airplanes, because we don’t have evidence because we can’t have evidence.

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

#808

Post by dahart »

dionidium wrote: post #669
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…

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…

There is no dissonance here, this is FUD. The language is wildly different because the actual risks are wildly different. One kills a lot of people and the other doesn’t.

How many people are actually dying from air travel radiation? The numbers are low enough that they’re hard to find evidence for. Here’s a study, for example, that attempted to answer the question for pilots, who obviously fly frequently. They weren’t even able to detect higher death rates at all. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14648170/ “Neither external and internal comparisons nor nested case-control analyses showed any substantially increased risks for cancer mortality due to ionizing radiation.” (Edit: of course there are some studies that demonstrate small amounts of increased cancer risk, and increased risk of pregnancy complications for airline crews. The numbers are small.)

On the other hand, “Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States” https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...

Even if you are skeptical of the CDC’s estimates for mortality rates by things like second hand smoke, there are pretty clear reasons to take smoking a lot more seriously as a risk than radiation exposure from air travel, the direct risk to smokers is orders of magnitude higher than the risk of air travel radiation.

The fact that the CDC’s language reflects the actual risks is a good reason to put more trust in what they say, not less. They’re not trying to hide something from you, they’re trying to help you understand the actual relative differences in risk, which are much, much higher for smoking.

Edit2: BTW, the WHO agrees with the CDC about there being no safe levels of smoke, and is backed by significant amounts of research and outcome statistics worldwide. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-(ou...

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

#809

Post by WalterBright »

nitrogen wrote: post #769
tomp wrote: 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).

there's no real positive benefit to society to frequent business flying I'm seeing a lot of communication and alignment issues because people can't get into one room and hash things out.

I've seen this firsthand many times, too. Having a meeting over beers and longstanding disagreements just melt away.

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

#810

Post by thinkling »

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…

Here's a paper that combined a 30 year study on intake with MRI data and came to similar conclusions (no safe level of consumption and no observed benefit from low-dosage consumption).

https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353

One thing to keep in mind when reading these papers is that a "unit" of alcohol in these studies is often equivalent to about half a standard drink in the US. So when they talk about 7 units a week, it's not 7 drinks, it's usually 3.5 drinks.

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