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Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

jamanetwork.com

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Re: Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

#41

Post by subtypefiddler »

jmclnx wrote: post #26

Who funded this study ? I do not mean the direct fund provider, but who the top-level funder is. I am willing to bet it was funded by some alcohol company(s) or a trade Group funded by some alcohol related group.

"Funding/Support: This study was partly funded by the CCSA as a subcontract for a Health Canada grant to develop guidance for Canadians on alcohol and health."

BUT

"Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Stockwell reported receiving personal fees from Ontario Public Servants Employees Union for expert witness testimony and personal fees from Alko outside the submitted work. Dr Sherk reported receiving grants from Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported."

Where "Alko Inc is the national alcoholic beverage retailing monopoly in Finland."

Re: Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

#42

Post by bnralt »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #4

Everyone on this topic seems to have their own studies to back polar opposite conclusions. Canada is going the opposite direction[0], taking the position that "no amount of alcohol is safe to consume". [0] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/what-you-should-know-about-can...

One thing that gets neglected as well is that normalizing low level drinking encourages high level drinking, and that high level drinking not only has a negative impact on the individual but on society at large. It’s much easier for people who are susceptible to overindulge when going out drinking is considered to be the default social activity, and when events are expected to have alcohol.

One of the reasons why the fight against cigarettes has been so successful is because smoking has mostly disappeared from public and social settings.

Re: Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

#43

Post by eloff »

brianwawok wrote: post #5

It's very weird how the conclusion of many of these studies are "Men with 1 drink a day, we see no difference. Women with 1 drink a day die sooner". What makes the effect so different?

Two main things. One is that women are smaller and body mass matters a lot to alcohol metabolism. The second thing is many women lack an enzyme that helps metabolize alcohol, which makes them even slower to metabolize it.

Re: Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

#44

Post by eloff »

epistasis wrote: post #31
brianwawok wrote: post #5

It's very weird how the conclusion of many of these studies are "Men with 1 drink a day, we see no difference. Women with 1 drink a day die sooner". What makes the effect so different?

That's a very good question that we likely can't answer right now. "Woman" and "man" encompass a very wide range of bodies, with different averages, but whose distribution overlaps immensely on nearly every metric. These gender categories are standins for some subset of differences that are actually causal, but we don't have the measurements and experiments settings to pull out what is actually causal from this.

We have a clear understanding of why the difference matters here, see my other comment in this thread.

Re: Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

#45

Post by yourusername »

timerol wrote: post #28

Is the consumption measured in studies like this a long-term average? I am not a heavy drinker, but there are plenty of days where I am over 2, or even 4, drinks in a day. Recently I have been averaging less than 1 a day, since I only drink 1 or 2 nights in the week. These studies always seems to categorize people into X per day buckets, but I don't know many people who drink every day, and I worry about those people…

More than 5 drinks is considered binge drinking which is considered especially harmful. My view would be the opposite of yours. Someone who drinks 2 glasses of wine with dinner every night is not a problem* but people who drink to the point where they should be drunk 2 nights in a row every week are probably doing more harm to their body.

E: * = Probably also a problem, but less of a problem than getting drunk twice a week.

Re: Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

#46

Post by clnq »

loeg wrote: post #7

> There was a significantly increased risk of all-cause mortality among female drinkers who drank 25 or more grams [of ethanol] per day and among male drinkers who drank 45 or more grams per day. 25 g is about 32 mL; 45 g => 57 mL. At 80 proof (40% ABV), that's 80 mL (2.7 US fl oz) or 143 mL (4.8 US fl oz) of liquor. A shot glass is ~1.5 US fl oz. (Or 640-1140mL => 22-39 fl oz of 5% beer, for women and men respective…

14-21 units of alcohol a week really sounds like that would increase mortality. I'm surprised they didn't find that mortality increases remarkably before then.

Re: Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

#48

Post by clnq »

GalenErso wrote: post #15
luckman212 wrote: post #8

So which one is it then? a) low volume alcohol consumption does not INCREASE all-cause mortality rate b) low volume alcohol consumption does not DECREASE all-cause mortality rate c) both A & B

d) Schrödinger's malt: the effect of low volume alcohol on all-cause mortality rates cannot be predicted and must be observed upon the death of the subject

e) it doesn't matter in the post-information age, what matters is how it's spun

Re: Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

#49

Post by User23 »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #34
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #4

Everyone on this topic seems to have their own studies to back polar opposite conclusions. Canada is going the opposite direction[0], taking the position that "no amount of alcohol is safe to consume". [0] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/what-you-should-know-about-can...

I might be mixing up my jargon here, but I was under the impression that "no safe amount" and similar phrases refer to a standard of categorization that is scientifically meaningful but usually offers little practical guidance relative to common lifestyle patterns (e.g. by this standard there's also no safe amount of wood dust to inhale and no safe amount of cured meat to eat). My understanding is that the risks of a…

Given that yeast leavened bread is around 1.5% alcohol and food can naturally ferment in your gut, it’s nearly certain that there is in fact some safe amount of regular alcohol intake that’s well within the bounds of homeostasis and thus as safe as anything can be.

But that’s not how people drink is it? People use alcohol to intentionally disrupt homeostasis. It’s certainly plausible that there is no safe regularly taken psychoactive dose. And it’s incontrovertible that seeking the psychoactive effects of alcohol can have unfortunate side effects.

Re: Low and moderate alcohol consumption not associated with increased mortality

#50

Post by giraffe_lady »

graderjs wrote: post #17

Ethanol has been part of human culture for...ever...so would it hard for us so greatly if we did a massive study like: "Province Alphaville" in the High French Speaking part of Canada, has a vote and decides to go "alcohol free" for the next 30 years. Province consents to cross-sectionally divide itself for controls into sub-cohorts, where: Cohort A - has legal access to psychedelics, B - to marijuana, C - to somethi…

There's like two billion muslims and most don't drink at all.
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