Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking Is Healthy

psmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 71 posts

Re: The Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking Is Healthy

#6

Post by _delirium »

> If you don’t distinguish binge drinking from daily moderate drinking, that would be due to Americans’ addiction-phobia, which causes them to interpret any daily drinking as addictive.

This is a quite common attitude in northern Europe as well, or at least in the Nordic countries. In Denmark it's highly suspicious to drink alcohol on a weekday (especially at lunch), unless it's a holiday, and will lead people to worry about alcoholism. But it's completely normal to have 6+ drinks on a weekend evening. Maybe even every weekend evening. You can binge-drink as much as you want, as long as it's only Fri-Sat (sometimes Thu). In fact it's even sort of expected; not doing so might raise suspicions that you're some kind of weird religious person (Mormon? Muslim?). Not sure how this arose, but it seems to be the cultural norm: 14 drinks/wk spread out as 1 each with lunch/dinner every day is seen as alcoholic, but the same 14 drinks/wk spread out as 7 each on Fri/Sat evenings is culturally normal. Whereas in southern Europe the opposite is more often true, at least traditionally, with weekend binge-drinking seen as more questionable than moderate daily drinking.

Re: The Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking Is Healthy

#8

Post by michaelbuddy »

mprny wrote: post #3
gdonelli wrote: post #2

Everything in moderation is good my grandma used to say...

Smoking? :)

For cigarettes, if you dial back what you consider moderation to say, maybe a cig or two socially every couple weeks, that would not likely be the thing that killed you. there are smokers like that, they just have a couple at a party, not very often. It's not something most people would do but there are some out there that do.

Re: The Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking Is Healthy

#9

Post by jnbiche »

What if a pharmaceutical company invented a pill that resulted in a modest but significant reduction in the risk of heart disease in 90% of the population, but resulted massive increase in the risk of premature mortality in 10% of the population, easily shaving off 10-40 years in life expectancy in that 10%, depending on the severity of their reaction to the drug.

The company could find absolutely no way to tell the two populations apart prior to administering the pill. Most critically, once the 10% took the pill for a short period of time, they almost always ended up suffering the adverse effects.

Do you think the FDA would approve that pill? Do you think any sane doctor would prescribe that pill to his/her patients?

So absolutely, if you are sure you don't have any alcoholic tendencies (and if you have to ask, you aren't sure), then drink a glass or two of red wine a day (depending on your body mass). It will almost certainly improve your cardiovascular health.

But don't expect medical or public health professionals to go singing its praises from the rooftops to a partially at-risk population.

Post reply on HN