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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

#61

Post by Scoundreller »

Scoundreller wrote: post #40
chriskanan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I wanted to clarify that alcohol does hit many receptors, but not only one or two which would make studying it a lot easier.

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

#62

Post by 3pt14159 »

grizzkill wrote: post #10

What if the people in the 'none' group can't drink because of a medical condition? Many medical conditions are already associated with shortened life spans, and alcohol often interferes with medication.

That was addressed in the article. They remove those people from the study!

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

#63

Post by DanBC »

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…

Two glasses of wine per day is not a healthy amount to drink. You get the cardio vascular benefits from much smaller amounts than that.

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

#64

Post by DanBC »

spikels wrote: post #47
readerrrr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, pure comedy. Here are the facts; alcohol is among the largest preventable causes of deaths, is connected to half of all violent crimes and about a third of car related deaths. http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...

The problem with those "connected" results is that alcohol is very popular so a large fraction of any group has consummed alcohol recently. This is yet another example of the divergence of causation and correlation. If it is actually responsible for preventable deaths, why are they not being prevented? Because they are probably very, very hard to actually prevent. Even prohibition did little to reduce death rates and…

Compare France and UK.

France banned alcohol advertising; introduced minimum pricing and introduced stricter drink drive limits. They've seen reductions in deaths from cirrhosis.

England does not have minimum pricing[1]; does have alcohol advertising, and has seen significant increases in deaths from cirrhosis.

[1] this was a shoddy U-Turn, where evidence based choice was rejected based on lies pushed by the alcohol industry. Minimum unit pricing of 50 pence per unit would affect very few drinks. (One unit of alcohol is 10 ml of alcohol, so you multiply the amount of drink by the ABV then divide by 1000. 175 ml * 13.5 / 1000 is about 2.4 units.)

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

#65

Post by clavalle »

spacehome wrote: post #51
clavalle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that you would find significant mental health benefits, as well.

I wouldn't guess. I would look at research.

Oh? With what would you start your inquiry into the existing research? Would that be a guess, would you suppose? Or is it hard data all the way down?

Even inquiries into research can contain bias. But your pithy attitude is noted.

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

#66

Post by Stronico »

Retric wrote: post #38
Stronico wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of people with drinking problems don't drink every day - alcoholics, which I would define as people addicted to alcohol do. If a person is addicted to alcohol they will have pretty immediate adverse affects, i.e. the DTs, which include shaking, hallucinations and seizures pretty rapidly with no alcohol in their system.

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

#67

Post by Retric »

Stronico wrote: post #66
Retric wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of people with drinking problems don't drink every day - alcoholics, which I would define as people addicted to alcohol do. If a person is addicted to alcohol they will have pretty immediate adverse affects, i.e. the DTs, which include shaking, hallucinations and seizures pretty rapidly with no alcohol in their system.

Physical dependence != addiciton.

http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/principles-drug-addict...

Addiction often leads to physical dependence, but you can for example be a light smoker that's addicted to nicotine. However, you generally need to be a fairly heavy smoker before withdraw symptoms show up when you stop. On the other hand people without addiction to caffeine will often display withdrawal symptoms if they stop. This is vary common in people who enjoy soda or tea, but don't use it to stay adjust alertness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_dependence

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

#68

Post by jnbiche »

kbenson wrote: post #33
jnbiche wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The reason I was pissed off was the patronizing "you may want to do a little research". Not that he/she didn't know I had been on Isotreninoin.

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

#69

Post by jnbiche »

DanBC wrote: post #63
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…

Two glasses of wine per day is not a healthy amount to drink. You get the cardio vascular benefits from much smaller amounts than that.

That depends entirely on body mass since the effect is dose dependent (one of the few things we understand well about the positive effects of alcohol).

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

#70

Post by kbenson »

jnbiche wrote: post #68
kbenson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The reason I was pissed off was the patronizing "you may want to do a little research". Not that he/she didn't know I had been on Isotreninoin.

I still think you are interpreting the statement as being far more condescending than it possibly is. You didn't mention it, it seemed relevant, so someone pointed it out, assumed you didn't know about it because you didn't mention it, and suggested you look it up.

I read it as trying to be informative, not condescending. More than a few upvotes on my response leads me to believe others interpreted it similarly. Maybe the subject is charged enough for you to create a bias for how you interpreted the response?

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