Surprisingly little alcohol can affect heart rate variability

Having a hard time figuring out the implications of this.

We know HRV is "good" as a general matter, as orderliness of heart-rate variation is predictive of mortality post-infarction [sorry no cite; read some papers in the 90's w/ convincing plots of instantaneous heart rate vs ihr 10 beats ago].

The linked research shows an increase in power of the middle part of the spectrum (fft of intrabeat heart rate), which is usually linked to respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA, or the change in chest cavity pressure while breathing changes your heart rate).

Anyway, it's interesting, but maybe the value is in the pathway discussion rather than any specific end-effects on health. Would love to hear from people closer to this topic , or OP's specific interest in the matter.

Epidemiology strikes again! I watch a lot of videos on nutrition and researchers often say that randomized control trials are too expensive so we need to rely on epidemiology despite its flaws.

What I find crazy is that nations around the world collaborate and spend billions of dollars building a particle accelerator and yet we can't seem to find money to research something that affects every human every day of their lives.

> The optimal level of alcohol intake for health and longevity is zero

The whole "little alcohol can actually be healthy" meme is a good example of corporate sponsored research combined with publication bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias It went on 15-20 years before better and larger studies debunked it.

Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

>Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero. These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population-level consumption.

That seems like a non sequitur ("The optimal level of alcohol intake for health and longevity is zero"). All I see in the article you referred (or the original article above) are several (valid) questions about the J shaped association, like confounding factors and survival bias. But these aren't evidence that the optimal level is zero. Merely challenging/speculating about the opposite view is not evidence.

Also, as the paper itself admits, drinking small amounts of alcohol has low risks, and while it argues against causation, it doesn't even discuss possible causational factors. E.g., consider the fact that alcohol can reduce stress, which we know has detrimental effects on health. Couldn't small amounts of alcohol be causally responsible then in improving longevity?

Not to be cynical, but I feel the medical community finds this positive low-alcohol/longevity J association rather inconvenient and take every opportunity to debunk it. May be they're right, but if we're to discredit the massive epidemiological evidence, we need more direct evidence and be objective about it.

I have stopped drinking alcohol completely for a few years and the benefits are noticeable. Good sleep patterns, higher energy levels, better concentration and emotional stability among the more obvious benefits.