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The Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking Is Healthy

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

#31

Post by Spooky23 »

jnbiche wrote: post #25
Tiksi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet opiates are both approved by the FDA, and widely prescribed by doctors. As far as I know they carry a much higher addiction risk and increase mortality quite a bit more than alcohol does. Benzos, amphetamines, SSRIs, etc etc. There are plenty of pills both approved and prescribed that have a worse effect and/or affect a higher percentage of people.

Opiates, benzos, and amphetamines are all highly controlled substances -- and most physicians only prescribe them long-term under very rare circumstances. And actually, long-term opiate abuse is much less likely to result in organ failure and other chronic health conditions than alcohol is. That's not the case with benzos or amphetamines, but I don't see anyone this side of Hunter S. Thomson arguing that more people…

Opiate abuse doesn't, but the bundled acetaminophen kills livers.

I think the previous posters' point was that becoming dependent on opiates happens more often than dependency on alcohol. I agree -- except in cases where there is genetic predisposition to alcoholism.

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

#32

Post by Tiksi »

jnbiche wrote: post #25
Tiksi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet opiates are both approved by the FDA, and widely prescribed by doctors. As far as I know they carry a much higher addiction risk and increase mortality quite a bit more than alcohol does. Benzos, amphetamines, SSRIs, etc etc. There are plenty of pills both approved and prescribed that have a worse effect and/or affect a higher percentage of people.

Opiates, benzos, and amphetamines are all highly controlled substances -- and most physicians only prescribe them long-term under very rare circumstances. And actually, long-term opiate abuse is much less likely to result in organ failure and other chronic health conditions than alcohol is. That's not the case with benzos or amphetamines, but I don't see anyone this side of Hunter S. Thomson arguing that more people…

Opioid[1] and Amphetamine[2] over-prescription is certainly not rare. Anecdotally, I know plenty of people that got sent home with a bottle of hydrocodone after dental surgery, which is not a rare case. There is an entire market based on prescribing these "highly controlled" substances to people who don't actually need them.[3][4][5]

While long term use of opiates isn't in itself harmful, long term abuse carries a high risk of overdose due to tolerance.

By "and/or affect a higher percentage of people", I mean that a higher percentage of people who take certain prescribed substances (like amphetamines or opioids) are at risk for addiction to those substances than those who drink alcohol.[6]

Edit: All of which is ultimately irrelevant, as your argument was "Do you think the FDA would approve that pill? Do you think any sane doctor would prescribe that pill to his/her patients?" and we both seem to agree that pills that have fewer benefits and just as bad if not worse consequences that your hypothetical drug are both approved by the FDA and prescribed by doctors.

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22786464

[2] http://www.gwlr.org/2014/02/03/cohen-2/

[3] http://www.northjersey.com/news/north-jersey-pill-mills-cash...

[4] http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/stateroundup/after-pil...

[5] http://fox8.com/2013/04/18/doctor-pleads-guilty-to-running-p...

[6] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_ass...

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

#33

Post by kbenson »

jnbiche wrote: post #27
csomar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really sure about that? Do you know Isotretinoin? You may want to do a little search about it. Look at the serious adverse effects and harms it cause [0]. Despite that, a huge numbers of doctors (in many countries around the world) do administer it. Why? Because it makes money for the pharmaceutical industry. So the answer: Yes, the FDA will approve that magical pill. *[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotre…

>Do you know Isotretinoin? You may want to do a little search about it Yes, I know all about Isotretinoin. I took 3 courses of it as a teenager with severe, painful scarring acne. It improved my life a great deal, both from a health and social perspective. Want to make any more assumptions about me?

If you know all about Isotretinoin, then we don't you speak to that instead of some perceived personal attack?

I think it's perfectly acceptable to assume someone may not know about something when it may heavily affect their argument and they haven't mentioned it.

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

#35

Post by Scoundreller »

stretchwithme wrote: post #34

Gingivitis is associated with heart disease. Is it possible alcohol could just be killing bacteria enough to reduce the effect? Instead of taking up alcohol, consider hitting those gums with an electric toothbrush at least once a day.

Associations don't imply causations. We don't know if gingivitis causes heart disease, nor do we know if heart disease causes gingivitis. Or maybe each has a minimal direct effect on the other (I'd never say none at all).

Likely, individuals that have/do things that prevent gingivitis, like affording a dentist, also have/do things that prevent heart disease, like affording blood pressure medications.

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

#36

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

jnbiche wrote: post #9

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…

> drink a glass or two of red wine a day

The red wine thing is bullshit, as mentioned in the article. Wine and beer actually have problematic amounts of estrogen. If you're going to drink, quality clear spirits are best.

If there's anything special about red wine it's probably the small dose of salicylate. Might as well just take a baby aspirin if you buy into that.

I don't buy the idea that alcohol itself is particularly biologically medicinal; I think the benefits are entirely by way of psycho-social well being. At a simple biological level alcohol, at even pretty high amounts, is merely benign. That said, problems like fatty liver disease appear to be often be the result of the interaction between alcohol metabolism and stored polyunsaturated fats. So if you're going to drink a lot, eat a low PUFA diet.

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

#37

Post by spacehome »

> In fact, the evidence that abstinence from alcohol is a cause of heart disease and early death is irrefutable

I'm sorry, but the author drastically overstates the certainty of our current knowledge. Every single piece of evidence he marshals is a study, not an experiment, so who knows what the confounding factors are. And even worse, the studies necessarily depend on self-reported alcohol consumption, which, as any doctor knows, is basically just a bunch of lies.

There's a huge history of scientific consensuses being wrong, particularly surrounding health in the last 30 years. I think we should be cautious about jumping to conclusions of what these studies actually mean. That he calls his hypothesis "irrefutable" is downright appalling.

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

#38

Post by Retric »

Stronico wrote: post #12
_delirium wrote: post #6

> 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 wo…

Well, daily drinking is a good predictor - 100% of practicing alcoholics drink every day after all.

Plenty of alcoholics don't drink every day. It's a question of compulsive and uncontrolled drinking not simply the frequency of drinking. A collage student may destroy their health and social life though binge drinking while not being able to afford drinking every day.

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

#39

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

stretchwithme wrote: post #34

Gingivitis is associated with heart disease. Is it possible alcohol could just be killing bacteria enough to reduce the effect? Instead of taking up alcohol, consider hitting those gums with an electric toothbrush at least once a day.

Rat experiments show that adding a small amount of alcohol to their drinking water makes them live longer. The reason is thought to be the alcohol helps kill off undesirable gut bacteria, which produce LPS endotoxins. Rats on antibiotics also live longer for the same reason.

I don't think gingivitis is caused by bacteria per se. Cavities and gingivitis manifest as a consequence of lousy overall health and problems such as mineral deficiencies, not a lack of listerine. The phrase "look a gift horse in the mouth" exists because lousy teeth indicate a bunch of other health problems. It's not about horse oral hygiene.

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

#40

Post by Scoundreller »

chriskanan wrote: post #11
js2 wrote: post #5

I don't know a site that collects more research on the topic than http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/AlcoholAndHealth.html

The evidence definitely seems to be converging on non-drinking as less healthy than light or moderate drinking. My question is, why does alcohol have these health benefits? Some earlier work pointed to resveratrol in wine, but there is a lot of doubt that's been cast on that hypothesis and the general benefits of alcohol seem to be agnostic regarding the particular form of beverage.

A whole pile of the studies are observational and not placebo-controlled, nor randomized.

Therefore, other factors beyond the consumption itself can't be ruled out, such as differences in education, religious beliefs, non-religious beliefs, open-mindedness, etc.

Trying to answer the question of why alcohol clinically has the effects that it does is a hard battle. The molecule has wide-ranging effects, it doesn't by any means hit any particular receptor. It goes wherever water goes in the body and disrupts every cell membrane in the body, among other effects.

And that's if the health benefits have anything to do with the clinical effects at all.

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