21–30 of 77 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? I have plenty of friends who have a glass of wine (or scotch) a night; Are you saying that strikes you as an uncommon phenomenon?
Are you sure it's just a glass? I started like that and atleast in my case, I very much progressed far beyond moderate amounts in the span of 3 years.
My purely observational take on this: moderate drinking itself is the myth: most people who drink daily do not drink in anything resembling moderate amounts, especially as the years go by.
My observation is that my drinking habits match my food habits. Both require careful attention although alcohol unlike food has a built-in negative feedback mechanism. I do a dry week without alcohol every once in a while just to make sure I can. I find doing a dry week without alcohol the same difficulty as dry week without diet Coke. Which is to say I like diet Coke a lot and both require effort. You get things lik…
This is similarly true for me. I can abstain from alcohol, but I miss it when I do. The effort is similar to abstaining from, say, ice cream or cookies. I would eat ice cream every night if it didn't feel so unhealthy.
I also find that when abstaining from alcohol, I crave ice cream and other sweets far more. Alcohol and sweets seem to satisfy a common underlying craving in me. It's far easier to give up one than both.
In France, we have a strong belief that one glass of wine per day is something sane and you should actually do it. There is no scientific study behind it and every other tests seem in fact to tend to show that alcohol is harmful for the body. But because it makes everyone happy to believe so (myself included!), we root for it.
TL;DR: Among light and moderate drinkers as a group, 27 of the 30 factors were correlated with drinking levels, and in the direction that could create a false appearance of moderate drinking leading to better health. For example, as people enter old age, they drink less and become more likely to die. ... In light of these facts, Occam’s Razor argues for a simple theory: the net marginal impact of drinking on health i…
argues for a simple theory: the net marginal impact of drinking on health is negative at all levels; and moderate drinking is a marker for relative youth, affluence, and healthy habits rather than a cause of good health
This is not an area where I have much more than a passing interest, so much of this is over my head, so to speak. I was first introduced to the idea of healthy moderate drinking in Walter Willett's Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy . Here is a link to one of the studies he cites: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12519921 Does this study not constitute a randomized trial on the benefit of moderate drinking?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? I have plenty of friends who have a glass of wine (or scotch) a night; Are you saying that strikes you as an uncommon phenomenon?
Are you sure it's just a glass? I started like that and atleast in my case, I very much progressed far beyond moderate amounts in the span of 3 years.
In France, we have a strong belief that one glass of wine per day is something sane and you should actually do it. There is no scientific study behind it and every other tests seem in fact to tend to show that alcohol is harmful for the body. But because it makes everyone happy to believe so (myself included!), we root for it.
There was a recent large study, mentioned in the article, that said that drinking up to 6 drinks a day was healthier than being teetotal. It got a lot of publicity. And it's probably not true, so it's good that articles like this one are appearing.
Conversely, if you are a recluse, perhaps taking up drinking on your own won't be too beneficial, if at all.
In France, we have a strong belief that one glass of wine per day is something sane and you should actually do it. There is no scientific study behind it and every other tests seem in fact to tend to show that alcohol is harmful for the body. But because it makes everyone happy to believe so (myself included!), we root for it.
Actually there are tons of studies behind it. Whether they are accurate or not (as lots of studies contradict each other and are reported before peer review), it's another matter, but popular foods and drinks like wine, coffee, sugar, etc have tons of research done into them. E.g:
http://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/17801_ENG_HTML.php
http://www.coloradocancerblogs.org/study-red-wine-prevents-c...
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/18104/20141018/red-wine-ca...
TL;DR: Among light and moderate drinkers as a group, 27 of the 30 factors were correlated with drinking levels, and in the direction that could create a false appearance of moderate drinking leading to better health. For example, as people enter old age, they drink less and become more likely to die. ... In light of these facts, Occam’s Razor argues for a simple theory: the net marginal impact of drinking on health i…
That would be true only if all studies failed to control for such parameters, which sounds BS.
According to Occam’s Razor it's more probably that the author is yielding Occam's Razor wrongly, than that all those researchers are wrong and fail at such basic research methodology as controlling for age and those other parameters...
Every time some statistical "studies" come out I think of which industry is going to benefit from it.
On the other hand, most epidemiological and medical studies, if not all, are statistical in one way or another, so it shouldn't be an indicator of anything. I recommend Bad Pharma [1], a very interesting book whose primary goal is to get rid of the many kinds of bias present in the current medical science. Among many interesting things, it describes a few different ways to perform medical studies, all of which are in some way statistical.
[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3D...