Oh I know, Iām just joking. C diff is found in a significant number of surgical patients requiring repeat or revisions to orthopedic procedures where chronic osteomyelitis is a factor. Long term Vancomycin often appears in the history.
Yes, small, but non-existent. Depending on which studies you choose to trust, it can be a small benefit to longevity and overall health or a small detriment. Either way, a small impact.
There's some debate about the reliability and value of observational studies, but there is most certainly a difference between a controlled, randomized, clinical trial and an observational study.
Yes, but if many people say they drink 2 drinks a day (moderate drinking according to the CDC) and in truth they drink 4 drinks a day (well over the line into heavy drinking according to the CDC), and you look at those blood tests and say those results apply to moderate drinking (as defined by the CDC) you're coming to inaccurate conclusions. If people who say they are drinking 3-4 drinks a day are actually having 8, then you also have skewed data for what you're labeling as heavy drinking as well. The blood test will tell you what their liver health looks like, but not how many drinks caused it.
I'm not saying that hepatologists are bad at their job, I'm saying that if your job is to take care of people with liver problems you're going to see a lot of people with liver problems and you're going to care about things that damage the liver. You may be blinded to the overall impact of alcohol on your patients' heart health or risk of stroke or cancer or whatever. If the data doesn't support the idea that those who consume alcohol are dying younger than those who don't, then either the data is wrong or insufficient, the damage to the liver is minimal enough to be irrelevant to overall longevity, or while the damage to the liver may be significant alcohol has some beneficial impact on other health conditions that outweighs this negative impact (on the general population - individual risk is of course, individual).
Lots of medications are also toxic, so the fact that alcohol is a "metabolic āpoisonā" doesn't guarantee that it can't be of benefit, or of no significant impact, to overall health. As the old saying goes, "The difference between poison and medicine is in the dose". Even water is toxic if you drink too much too quickly. Lots of things can be bad for your health. Sugar is bad for your health and fructose consumption is also correlated with fatty liver disease. I'm still not sure that a strict ketogenic diet is necessary for health. Similarly, I really doubt that we have enough information to say that a couple of drinks a day, much less a handful of drinks a month, is likely to have a measurable, detrimental impact on the average person.
So what does unsafe in any amount mean?
I donāt know, actually. Iām curious though.
Me too. It sounds serious.
Well yeah. Who woulda thunk it.?
Anything to avoid the poo enema, except quitting drinking! I figure I will just get drunk while they gimme the cure. Last hurrah ?
poo enema? What even is that? Iām so confused right now.
Fecal transplant. It has been used to normalize the gut biome in humans.
If youāre really bad, the put sand in the tubeās lube š³
Iāll try!
But an impact, supporting the āno safe limitā suggestion by the experts.
Ah, weāre at odds here. I meant that looking at data is observational. I think you mean āself-reported dataā. Yes, people lie about their alcohol, food, drug intake because they are often shameful of it! š When my other half is taking a medical history from a new patient, she often doubles the self-reported amounts of alcohol in the notes (in pencil) and refers to liver function blood tests to verify or otherwise. Have you noticed that when a doctor wants to know how much you weigh, they confirm your reported weight by putting you on scales! š
But the deleterious effects on the liver ( negative changes in liver function) are what are important, not the absolute amount of alcohol consumed. One pint of strong lager has a bigger negative affect on my liver than it would on a 6 foot 9 inch fat bloke!
Or the factors involved are extremely complex, show individual variation and non-linear. I think this is the case and you canāt be sure until you do the research. Small amounts of alcohol might be fine for me, but terrible for that the 6ā9ā bloke, but we donāt know until we see what alcohol does to us. Thus the safest thing to advise, for the whole population is āthere is no safe limitā.
Interestingly, the experts expanded on their research findings by saying, the small benefits of drinking alcohol are obliterated by the deleterious effects of alcohol.
See above. I take medication that have terrible potential side effects, but they are better than the potential effects of my medical condition. My doctor and I have made an informed decision that Iām better off taking the medication, than not. Taking alcohol is a lifestyle choice.
I think claims like this tend to come from the variance in human response, and the speaker's risk aversion. So for some people there may be no safe level of consumption. I can't find any evidence that this is a fair statement for people in general, especially given there have been studies that suggest some possible health benefits for some people from light consumption.
As someone pointed out, there are also sometimes small benefits listed. If there's a small chance of a small negative impact, and a small chance of a small positive impact, "safe" would appear to be hard to define.
It doesn't. Hence the name. But NAFLD has a habit of progressing to cirrhosis. Consuming alcohol with NAFLD can accelerate this process.
I wonder if thatās just the way he has to record it in your notes for legal reasons? Have you asked him?
People are generally very defensive about their alcohol consumption and I donāt know why. Is it because it hints at being unable to control oneself? I suppose itās the same for overeating with the blame going on easy availability of cheap calorific food, invasive advertising, heavy bones and hormonal issues! My bones are very heavy, by the way.š
I remember an interview with Ozzy Osbourne in which he recounted how he managed to give up alcohol and drugs like heroine and cocaine with some serious effort, but cigarettes were the hardest of all of them to give up with frequent relapses! Astonishing, so well done Bill Mattocks!
Does alcohol-free beer not suit you Bill? I quite like it as it has a nice hoppy finish to it. I noticed Christmas advertising of Gordonās gin showing they now do a alcohol-free versionā¦the first āfreeā spirit of which Iāve become aware.
