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No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

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Re: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

#231

Post by hackandthink »

nordsieck wrote: post #84
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is ironic, because, while most people use the "Linear no-threshold" model for radiation, we know that small amounts of radiation are actually beneficial. How could ionizing radiation be beneficial? Unless the argument is exposure to ultraviolet in order to get Vitamin D, I can’t imagine ionizing radiation to be beneficial in any way. Edit: > The good includes abundant evidence showing increased 1) physiologic…

> How could ionizing radiation be beneficial? I'm not going to pretend that I understand the reasons. But there have been a lot of studies. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477686/

I think before the atomic bomb radioactivity was widely considered as healthy.

(maybe it was not as crazy as I thought)

This is wild stuff:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180306-a-spa-where-pati...

Re: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

#232

Post by lr4444lr »

jannyfer wrote: post #130
lr4444lr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driving isn't hazardous to your health. Crashing is. That's like saying eating is unhealthy to your health because you might choke.

That’s like saying smoking is not hazardous to your health, getting cancer is. Jumping off a building is not hazardous to your health, hitting the ground is.

Smoking is the intake of carcinogens, a direct health risk. Jumping off a building is the result of unhealthy depression, i.e. a symptomatic behavior.

A vehicular accident as a driver is not a direct cause of driving any more than a pedestrian accident by a vehicle is the direct cause of walking.

Re: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

#233

Post by bamboozled »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #202
bamboozled wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I know a lot of really old people who still drink. Maybe I'd know more if they didn't drink. I know one guy who is ~90, survived cancer 3 times and attributes his survival to daily doses of Japanese Shochu. You might be able to argue that alcohol was the cause of the cancer but I guess we'll never know. Disclaimer: Currently not drinking even a drop. Edit: Maybe I'd know more if they didn't drink. ...is a…

The thing they have in common is that they still have social connections, including with you. People who are alone for stretches of time have a lot more risk from falls, etc

Sometimes I drink with that person, and they might socially drink with others, so it might even be fair to say in this case, it's a positive then?

I just have a real problem with talking in absolutes.

Re: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

#236

Post by skeeter2020 »

P_I_Staker wrote: post #195
paiute wrote: post #15

The thinking is backwards on this. They state there is no scientific safe drinking level. They even compare it to radiation. The goal is to establish an unsafe level. it's like saying there is no safe speed to drive a car - sure that's technically true, but worthless to say.

They don't give a safe number of cigarettes, do they? There probably is a number that's minimally harmful, that lowers with age. Alcohol has numerically similar numbers of cancer cases, and cancer is just one aspect. Now it is less, and we can argue about how widespread the use is ect. However, it cases 1/3 of the cases, heart disease, mental health problems. Are you a drinker? Especially since quitting, I've noticed…

as a continued social drinker, or more general doer of anything, i've noticed that anyone who no longer does that thing is typically quite vocal and negative towards said thing.

Set aside alcohol for a minute; this article is saying that because the absolute risk of an activity is not zero, the activity is inheriently unsafe. That's not true, not an appropriate strategy for decision making, and most importantly not an effective way to influence behaviours. This is the definition of perfect as the enemy of better.

Re: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

#237

Post by bamboozled »

andsoitis wrote: post #137
bamboozled wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I know a lot of really old people who still drink. Maybe I'd know more if they didn't drink. I know one guy who is ~90, survived cancer 3 times and attributes his survival to daily doses of Japanese Shochu. You might be able to argue that alcohol was the cause of the cancer but I guess we'll never know. Disclaimer: Currently not drinking even a drop. Edit: Maybe I'd know more if they didn't drink. ...is a…

don’t let anecdata bamboozle you

Don't let andsoitis bamboozle you...

Re: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

#238

Post by makeitdouble »

P_I_Staker wrote: post #207
makeitdouble wrote: post #178

> To identify a “safe” level of alcohol consumption, valid scientific evidence would need to demonstrate that at and below a certain level, there is no risk of illness or injury associated with alcohol consumption. The premise of this “no level of consumption is safe” is this requirement to prove 0 risk. If for instance drinking one glass everyday increases your cancer chances by 0.0000000001%, bringing it to 0. 0000…

Should we be establishing safe amounts of cigarette smoking? Safe amounts of gasoline to drink? Alcohol users really don't like people pointing out that their habit isn't safe.

Actually, yes.

Because there is such thing as occasional smokers, and having a curve of how much it affects them depending on how much they smoke would be helpful, instead of the generic “just don’t smoke” advice that they are already not following.

If you drank a spoonful of gasoline thinking it was something else, you wouldn’t want your generalist to tell you “that was bad for you” and keep it at that. How bad was it ? what effect should you expect at that dose ?

The real point I think is, a binary safe/unsafe is of no help in this discussion where people have wildly different drinking habits. I mean, even kids will ingest traces of alcohol in cakes, should we ban it from pound cakes ?

Re: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

#239

Post by VLM »

barbazoo wrote: post #160
VLM wrote: post #72

Cool now do this with refined sugars or high carb diets in general. It'll be the same discussion, addicts trying to rationalize away the science and statistics.

> It'll be the same discussion, addicts trying to rationalize away the science and statistics. Pretty shocking to see this much denialism going on in a forum that's often much more rational and objective.

Compartmentalization. Plenty of stimulant and H and other drug abusers in tech.

Sugar and alcohol are addictive and addictions are irrational and you can't use rational objective thought to get out of a situation that is inherently irrational and subjective, like addiction.

Essentially zero H users, for example, have never heard the news that H is bad for them. Can't just concentrate hard enough to get out of an addiction, they don't work that way. So it is with alcohol, sugar, carb binging in general, etc.

Re: No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health

#240

Post by acidburnNSA »

jp57 wrote: post #224

> Alcohol ... has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco. But as I understand it we do have a notion of "safe" dosages of radiation. Isn't this statement then like saying "no level of exposure to radiation is safe for our health?" Maybe I'm wrong but I would think that…

The linear no threshold model of harm for radiation is debated but is the foundation of all nuclear protection policies. To policy, zero radiation is considered best and all increments above that, regardless of size or relative comparison to natural background radiation are bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model

It's extremely hard to scientifically back this or challenge it due to the noise. Some people try to show that low dose radiation is measurably harmful while others try to show that it is beneficial (hormesis).

The best science suggests that measurable, statistically significant harm (in the form of increased risk of lifetime cancer) begins around 100 mSv acute or 300 mSv over a period of time. If you get that, your lifetime risk of cancer goes from 42% baseline up to 43%.

Natural background is about 3 mSv per year on average.

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/11340/beir_vii_fi...

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