Do you think its to dangerous drinking in different countries other than the USA?

[jobo]

That study doesn't actually restrict to the direct effect of alcohol, though. The top 3 attributed causes are self-harm, tuberculosis, and vehicle injury. Of those, the tuberculosis is the only one we could reasonably attribute to a poisonous effect (direct effect on the body over time), rather than on cognitive and emotional impairment. I'd have to dig deeper into the text to see if they had enough information to suss out the direct bodily effect on LE.

well drinking is self harm and the effects of it on the nervous system and cognitive functions are very much part of the effects of being poisoned, similarly the emotional effects are a result of the cognitive effects and the dependanctpy it creates,

 

[Gerry Seymour]

well drinking is self harm and the effects of it on the nervous system and cognitive functions are very much part of the effects of being poisoned, similarly the emotional effects are a result of the cognitive effects and the dependanctpy it creates,

Yes, but the running into the tree isn't a direct effect of the alcohol. It's attributable to the effects.

Probably just splitting hairs on that, though.

 

[jobo]

Yes, but the running into the tree isn't a direct effect of the alcohol. It's attributable to the effects.

Probably just splitting hairs on that, though.

if you take LSD and think you can fly out of a 4 th floor window, is it the height or the lsd that killed you ?

 

[granfire]

if you take LSD and think you can fly out of a 4 th floor window, is it the height or the lsd that killed you ?

neither.
the impact.

 

[jobo]

neither.
the impact.

no , if your going to be silly, it's deceleration that does for you, which is prortional to velocity, which is, whixmch is proportional to potential energy, which is proportional to height, which is one of the options I gave,

 

[Gerry Seymour]

if you take LSD and think you can fly out of a 4 th floor window, is it the height or the lsd that killed you ?

The ground.

 

[JR 137]

neither.
the impact.

I didn’t know if I should’ve chosen funny, like or agree here.

 

[dvcochran]

Suss. I learned a new word.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Suss. I learned a new word.

It's one of my favorites, though not nearly as much fun as "defenestration".

 

[dvcochran]

Haha! That one I knew.

 

[Chrisinmd]

well drinking is self harm and the effects of it on the nervous system and cognitive functions are very much part of the effects of being poisoned, similarly the emotional effects are a result of the cognitive effects and the dependanctpy it creates,

Alcohol may have adverse health outcomes even at low levels of consumption, but so do other items. I'll just mention one: soft drinks. It wasn't hard to find relevant studies. The effects look comparable, perhaps even greater.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutriti...s/soft-drinks-...

"People who consume sugary drinks regularly— 1 to 2 cans a day or more —have a 26% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes than people who rarely have such drinks."

"A study that followed 40,000 men for two decades found that those who averaged one can of a sugary beverage per day had a 20% higher risk of having a heart attack or dying from a heart attack than men who rarely consumed sugary drinks. ... A related study in women found a similar sugary beverage–heart disease link."

So should I drink a Coke or a Coors Light?

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

So should I drink a Coke or a Coors Light?

Assuming your goal is to be healthy...why would you be drinking either? Neither is good if you're focused on avoiding unhealthy stuff, especially on a daily basis. Stick with water, maybe tea if waters too boring for you.

That aside, if you're okay being slightly unhealthy (probably not gonna kill you to cheat a bit), drink either one. Having a drink every once in a while isn't that bad, of either, it's when it's daily or almost daily that it's an issue.

As a side note, is people drinking soda every day a common thing? I used to do that in college, because it was free, but not before or after. I wouldn't consider daily soda drinking to be a low level of consumption-to me that's a huge level of consumption.

 

[Chrisinmd]

Assuming your goal is to be healthy...why would you be drinking either? Neither is good if you're focused on avoiding unhealthy stuff, especially on a daily basis. Stick with water, maybe tea if waters too boring for you.

That aside, if you're okay being slightly unhealthy (probably not gonna kill you to cheat a bit), drink either one. Having a drink every once in a while isn't that bad, of either, it's when it's daily or almost daily that it's an issue.

As a side note, is people drinking soda every day a common thing? I used to do that in college, because it was free, but not before or after. I wouldn't consider daily soda drinking to be a low level of consumption-to me that's a huge level of consumption.

Agree water or tea would be the best choice if your trying to be healthy.

I don't drink soda myself so not sure how common it is to drink soda daily. But I see a few people I work with drink multiple soda's per day. Or those fancy Starbucks drinks that are probably not to much better then soda.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Agree water or tea would be the best choice if your trying to be healthy.

I don't drink soda myself so not sure how common it is to drink soda daily. But I see a few people I work with drink multiple soda's per day. Or those fancy Starbucks drinks that are probably not to much better then soda.

Nah, no way those are better. Either way general advice is not to drink any of that daily. No reason to figure out the least of the evils.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Assuming your goal is to be healthy...why would you be drinking either? Neither is good if you're focused on avoiding unhealthy stuff, especially on a daily basis. Stick with water, maybe tea if waters too boring for you.

That aside, if you're okay being slightly unhealthy (probably not gonna kill you to cheat a bit), drink either one. Having a drink every once in a while isn't that bad, of either, it's when it's daily or almost daily that it's an issue.

As a side note, is people drinking soda every day a common thing? I used to do that in college, because it was free, but not before or after. I wouldn't consider daily soda drinking to be a low level of consumption-to me that's a huge level of consumption.

I know folks who drink a soda every morning (instead of coffee). And that's just their starting point.

 

[jobo]

Alcohol may have adverse health outcomes even at low levels of consumption, but so do other items. I'll just mention one: soft drinks. It wasn't hard to find relevant studies. The effects look comparable, perhaps even greater.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutriti...s/soft-drinks-...

"People who consume sugary drinks regularly— 1 to 2 cans a day or more —have a 26% greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes than people who rarely have such drinks."

"A study that followed 40,000 men for two decades found that those who averaged one can of a sugary beverage per day had a 20% higher risk of having a heart attack or dying from a heart attack than men who rarely consumed sugary drinks. ... A related study in women found a similar sugary beverage–heart disease link."

So should I drink a Coke or a Coors Light?

I'm not telling you you shoudon't drink, your an adult, I'm telling you it's poisoning you. I was ,alcohol dependentl most of my adult life, not a great deal at once, except fridays but a modest amount nearly every day.

I gave up as I had been made redundant and couldnt afford it, when I got back on my feet, I tried to start drinking again and couldnt, I didn't like the taist and my tolerance to alcohol was very low and I didn't like the effect it had on me. it was hard to believe I used to go out of my way to fell like that.

during this break I notice that my health and sence of well being had increased greatly, I've also learnt to relax and enjoy myself in company who drink, with out drinking myself, which is possibly the hardest thing, and adicts try and get you to have a drink or two, as it makes them feel less bad about themserlves

but I have an Irish coffee on chrismass day and thats, because it's chrismass and you have to let your hair downdown it's.

finding things that you could do instead that are less healthy is just a mental trick you do to justify something, drink water with a piece of lemon in, that what I do and it's generally free,

 

[Chrisinmd]

Thats horrible logic. First, just because a country does one thing more than another doesn't mean that is the cause of their life expectancy. That would be like saying the reason for the difference is the popuparity of ketchup.

For fun, i decided to compare drinking per capita and life expectancy. Life expectancy =LE, drinks per capita =DC

#1 for Le was Japan, they're #71 on DC

#2 for LE was Switzerland, they're #34 DC

#3 for LE was Singapore, they're #152 DC

#1 for DC was Belarus, they're #98 LE

#2 for DC was Moldova, they're #99 LE

#3 for DC was lithuania, they're #103 LE.

Not really seeing the relationship there.

Thanks for the data you looked up. What website are these numbers from? Like to take a look myself.

One thing occurred to me was you have to take the quality of the health care system in the particular nation into account with these numbers. If you have a high drinks per capita nation with a low life expectancy is that do to the drinking or simply a crappy health care system as a whole. Not sure the quality of health care in Belarus or Moldova but im sure its not up to par with the USA

 

[Chrisinmd]

I'm not telling you you shoudon't drink, your an adult, I'm telling you it's poisoning you. I was ,alcohol dependentl most of my adult life, not a great deal at once, except fridays but a modest amount nearly every day.

I gave up as I had been made redundant and couldnt afford it, when I got back on my feet, I tried to start drinking again and couldnt, I didn't like the taist and my tolerance to alcohol was very low and I didn't like the effect it had on me. it was hard to believe I used to go out of my way to fell like that.

during this break I notice that my health and sence of well being had increased greatly, I've also learnt to relax and enjoy myself in company who drink, with out drinking myself, which is possibly the hardest thing, and adicts try and get you to have a drink or two, as it makes them feel less bad about themserlves

but I have an Irish coffee on chrismass day and thats, because it's chrismass and you have to let your hair downdown it's.

finding things that you could do instead that are less healthy is just a mental trick you do to justify something, drink water with a piece of lemon in, that what I do and it's generally free,

When all's said and done, alcohol affects your chance of dying by precisely 0%.
Postponing death is a good idea, but don't forget to live while you're doing it.

 

[jobo]

Thanks for the data you looked up. What website are these numbers from? Like to take a look myself.

One thing occurred to me was you have to take the quality of the health care system in the particular nation into account with these numbers. If you have a high drinks per capita nation with a low life expectancy is that do to the drinking or simply a crappy health care system as a whole. Not sure the quality of health care in Belarus or Moldova but im sure its not up to par with the USA

your rather missing the point, alcohol kills you very slowly, its effects are cumulative and to the most part irreversible, average life expectancy in a country of say 80 includes all the none drinkers who lived to 90 and all the heavy drinkers who died at 50, you can't take just basic figures and come to the conclusion it has no effect on life expectancyc in any individual case and it has quality of life issues, not just fatality issues. it's not fun if you have alcohol induced brain damage and can't remember your grand kids .

if you need to drink to have fun, then there's is something fundamentally wrong with your life

When all's said and done, alcohol affects your chance of dying by precisely 0%.
Postponing death is a good idea, but don't forget to live while you're doing it.

 

[Chrisinmd]

As with many things, it seems to depend what you look at in the study. It appears almost any amount of alcohol increases cancer risk marginally. But there are beneficial effects found in other studies. I'm hoping soon someone will do a meta-study, to pull all this data together.

Potential problems with study

The Journal and the Authors Hyped this Study

The study's findings were not terribly remarkable. In fact, there is reason to be skeptical of them.

Problem #1. The study did not properly adjust for all confounders. A confounder is any factor that is associated with both the exposure (in this case, alcohol) and the outcome (in this case, various types of cardiovascular disease and death). One of the most famous examples of confounding occurred when a study concluded that coffee caused pancreatic cancer. The authors did not adjust for smoking, which was associated with both drinking coffee and pancreatic cancer. As it turned out, coffee drinkers were also likelier to smoke, and it was the smoking that killed people, not the coffee.

In this alcohol study, the authors adjusted for age, sex, smoking, and diabetes. That's good, but it's not sufficient. There are other confounding factors that are associated with drinking and cardiovascular disease or death, such as profession, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, diet, and exercise frequency. It is entirely plausible that people who drink every day also have other lifestyle factors that are associated with cardiovascular disease, such as a poor diet or lack of exercise. Maybe heavy drinkers have stressful jobs.

The point is that the alcohol may not be to blame. However, we can't determine this from the study because the authors didn't even bother to collect data on it.

Problem #2. People who drank 100 grams of alcohol per week had a lower risk of all cardiovascular diseases. It's only when cardiovascular disease (CVD) is broken down into various subtypes that the data show higher risk for one type of CVD and lower risk for another type of CVD. For example, the risk of stroke increases, but the risk of myocardial infarction (heart attack) decreases. Overall, people who drank 100 grams of alcohol per week did not have a higher risk of death. It's not until a person consumes two drinks per day (~200 grams per week) that the data suggest an impact on mortality. (See figure.)

That means that the authors purposefully highlighted the scary data (i.e., each additional 100 grams of alcohol increases some types of CVD) and downplayed the bigger picture -- namely, that 100 grams of alcohol isn't dangerous. Why? The authors have a specific mission in mind, and they admit it in their paper: "These data support limits for alcohol consumption that are lower than those recommended in most current guidelines."

Problem #3. Scientific studies need to make sense within the context of what else is known about the topic. Europeans drink more alcohol than Americans, yet they (Western Europeans, anyway) have longer life expectancies. How do the authors explain that?

Problem #4. Because the authors didn't find any damning data for people who consume 100 grams of alcohol per week (again, that is roughly one drink per day), they shifted their focus to people who drank more than that. They concluded that people who drank 200 grams per week (about two drinks per day) had a shorter life expectancy of six months. Not only is this finding subject to the same confounding problems mentioned earlier, it's not a clinically meaningful result. If a person expects to live to be 85 and instead dies at age 84.5, who cares?

The only clinically meaningful data was for people who had roughly 2 to 3.5 drinks per day or roughly 3.5+ drinks per day. Those groups had shorter life expectancies by 1-2 years and 4-5 years, respectively. Of course, that's not a surprise. These people are alcoholics.

Problem #5. The Guardian's coverage was particularly atrocious. They quoted one professor (not associated with the study) who said, "This study makes clear that on balance there are no health benefits from drinking alcohol." That's not at all what the study showed. In fact, it showed the opposite: 100 grams of alcohol per week was linked to less overall cardiovascular disease.

Problem #6. I e-mailed the lead author, asking about many of the problems I cited above. She did not respond. I will be charitable and assume it's because she was too busy to respond, but she wasn't too busy to respond to either the BBC or The Guardian, both of which sensationalized the study. That makes me think that this media frenzy was precisely what the authors wanted.

Problem #7. The Lancet also ran an editorial that said, "The drinking levels recommended in this study will no doubt be described as implausible and impracticable by the alcohol industry." The implication is clear: Anyone who disagrees with the paper is a paid shill for Big Alcohol. That's not science; that's propaganda.