Alcohol is the root of 62 diseases and a partial cause of dozens more
http://hsph.harvard.edu/news/alcohol-is-the-root-of-62-diseases-and-a-partial-cause-of-dozens-more/Open linkView original on feddit.uk489
Comments161http://hsph.harvard.edu/news/alcohol-is-the-root-of-62-diseases-and-a-partial-cause-of-dozens-more/Open linkView original on feddit.uk
I've been working on fully cutting out alcohol from my diet. I tried for years but I think I am finally succeeding. Haven't had a drink in almost two months.
Great work dude, keep it up 💪
Hell ya! ✊🏻 for my sober homies! I quit consuming alcohol in February. Keep it going Lemmy friend!
nice
keep it up
Maybe we should criminalize more harmful drugs and make less harmful drugs legal?
What's that got to do with alcohol?
Alcohol is a drug that causes harm, more harm than most illegal substances. Alcohol is ranked between heroin and cocaine. Link
Although this UK study has it ranked above heroine and cocaine Link
Of course it being legal and available is a contributing factor, but there's just better substances we could choose to make the chosen legal recreational drug for society.
Like Canada. We just need to outlaw the alcohol. But, alcohol consumption is down considerably since legalization of cannabis, and even more so with younger of age generations.
Yeah legalizing less harmful drugs will definitely help. Unfortunately a lot of the world is still fully under the influence of 1960's propaganda.
Sorry, no. The saying is drugs and alcohol.
A drug is any chemical substance that alters the way your mind or body functions. This broad definition includes everyday items like caffeine and prescription medications, as well as over-the-counter remedies and illegal substances. Alcohol is a drug.
I don't know how someone who grew up around people who drinked could have any other perception of alcohol than as poison. I don't know a single person who drinks regularly who doesn't have health conditions directly linked to it.
They also found that drinking raises the risk of:
...sexually transmitted infections
This statement really made we wonder if they thought about actual causality at all.
From a summary:
Or from the review itself:
Lol I bet they just drunk fuck a lot. It's fine. Don't be a nerd.
Good point, highly likely the PhD students who authored this review were never taught about causation and correlation.
Stop. Fucking. Your. Beer. Bottles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFLu8_rEQL0
1984 calendar meme
I'm more partial to whisky bottles.
Now you're just bragging.
Cheers, dears.
My dad worked on a project that could have made him and his colleague probably very rich (at least, it was successfully done to great wealth by someone else many years later) but his colleague had problems with alcohol, drunk called the investors and whatever he said made them pull out such that they had to cancel the project.
His drinking got worse from there for him and he spent years in and out of prison. When I was about to go to college and my dad was meeting him after he got back out he took me aside and strictly warned me not to go crazy drinking in college. I truthfully told him that I don’t drink at all and I guess that was inconceivable to him because he started going, “You WILL drink. EVERYBODY drinks. Don’t lie and…” so on so forth.
It never seemed appealing to me what with seeing people ruin their lives and act foolish, the odor, all the money people spend on it etc. I’m sure the taste is fine if you push through and try it a bunch but from seeing the effects I never wanted to. Meanwhile visiting other people’s houses as a kid my friends would be doing stuff like asking his mom if he could sniff her wineglass at dinner. 💀
You know this already but yeah you are absolutely the rational one here. I drank a lot back in the day because i had a terrible home life as a child and exhibited a few other self destructive behaviors, but in the last ten years or so ill drink one beer or glass of champagne at a wedding or super bowl watch party, but 100% just to be polite and avoid people chiding me to drink. Yes, people will actually get upset and tell me to drink sometimes, work people wcyd. Idk it's like ethyl alcohol is exactly the stuff we used to sanitize surfaces at work because it kills everything and also dissolves the chemicals we work with. It's just madness to drink that stuff!!
There's a lot of social pressure to drink, particularly for folks over 40. My first year at my current company, it was very normal for the department head to take everyone down to the bar and buy them shots. We definitely had folks that declined. But those weren't the ones he got close with. Consequently, they weren't the ones who got fast tracked for promotions and raises and such.
Not saying it's a strict 1:1 correlation, because we definitely have a few teatoddlers in the upper wings of management. But it's the exception more than the rule.
There's also a lot of status in drinking - particularly expensive wines and liquors - such that having a nice bottle on hand when friends are over is considered normal. So I can see why it's frustrating to your dad, talking to someone who isn't in that lifestyle and culture, when he hears "Oh, I just don't do that". Particularly, when he's trying to hammer home how easy it is to go from "I don't drink" to "I drank too much".
It's a popular social lubricant for a reason. A glass of wine or beer is great at reducing social anxiety. I've got friends who insist on a drink at big events. It's that or pop a xanax.
I also know a few girls who go from dead fish to horny af after a few glasses. So, when they want to hook up, they will take a few shots first to get in the mood. And "odor" can be a plus (for me, anyway) when it's a petty scotch or rich cherry.
There's also an artistry to the craft of fermentation, such that it's as much a hobby as a habit. I know a guy who brews his own beer and loves to bring different casks to events to show off what he's made. And another who works in the industry. He loves to pull out bottles he picked up overseas and show off different styles, flavors, and techniques of manufacture.
Then there's just a general quality of pairing. My wife keeps a small wine collection, knows what pairs well, and regularly opens a bottle for cooking or to match with a particular meal.
So... YMMV. But there's definitely a big gray area between never drinking at all and being an alcoholic.
To be clear the guy with the drinking problem who was talking to me wasn’t my dad, he was a colleague and friend of my dad. My dad did drink from time to time but he wasn’t an alcoholic by any means and in recent years my dad gave up drinking entirely anyway whereas the other guy has unfortunately passed away some years back.
I don’t care if other people drink for some reason or other (at least as long as it’s not impacting me… wasn’t fun when a drunk roommate was waving my computer around in the air unsteadily), whatever floats their boat, I just don’t personally.
Yep, it sucks. But it turns out there's a non-stop drip of terrible fucking news, the planet continues to get hotter with more wildfires every year, my well-paying career in software might be soon over due to the advent of AI coding, I'm working for the worst company I have ever worked for and with one of the worst bosses I've ever seen, the president is getting shows critical of him cancelled in order to approve sales of all major media platforms to his fascist friends (and fail sons), the cost of everything is skyrocketing, social security looks likely to collapse before I can ever collect it, and there does not appear to be any relief in sight for any of this.
Maybe I don't need to go old and healthy at 80+.
It's obvious that drinking isn't good for you, but it was just as obvious that smoking isn't good for you and that didn't keep my grandparents from doing it until it killed them — and nicotine barely gives you any buzz at all. We all gotta go some time.
consider it this way: getting old may suck. getting old, sick and having strokes sucks way more and just makes you miserable and a burden to a bunch of people who didnt deserve it. you wont be taking it out your enemy. just hurting yourself and finding more reasons to hate yourself.
We have locked everything anyone needs to live a decent life behind a massive paywall, make a habit of eliminating any way besides debt to make it over the massive paywall, and then scientists do research on people's coping mechanisms so that others can use that as a way to feel righteous condemning a stranger's habits.
Notice how you didn't spend a moment discussing where relief for any of the very real problems I mentioned is coming from because you likely know it isn't.
Nope. And that's not why I didn't discuss it.
There are things you are definitely responsible to yourself for. Such as you're decisions of what you are doing to you're own body with what you are cognitively aware of consuming. Such as smoking or too much alcohol or food.
You're just talking about all things that seem impossible to control just to get the focus off yourself.
That's how an addict would speak. That's an old addict trick.
Nah, I wrote that and this sober dude, just as I spend the vast majority of my waking time.
The point is that these very real problems have no solutions but somehow the only thing we can do in these threads is handwring and concern troll people coping with them.
There is lots of online encouragement to live a long, sober life in an unaffordable, polluted hellscape.
I'm not attached to a bottle, but having a beer at the end of a long day provides a lot more relief than podcast bro pseudoscientific bullshit about meditation and wellness which is the only alternative on offer. (Because we live in a country where everything is purposely broken and the only way sold to fix it is for each of us individually to be perfect.)
Its either you get the diseases getting drunk or get the diseases sober but from unregulated food industry.
even casual drinking increases your risk of cancers by alot. also promotes heart disease, alochol related damage, blood pressure issues. and thats where omezpic steps in, to curb alcohol abuse, plus type 2 diabetes.
also besides alcohol is use to subdue a population from causing an uprising.
Not according to the CDC. Binge drinking carries a host of risks, even if done infrequently. Moderate (ie, less than 2 drinks a day) drinking is generally not associated with negative health impacts.
I've heard both sides of this. Beer as an intoxicant reducing the population to drunken louts, incapable of self-defense. And beer as a social lubricant, capable of bringing people together for collective action.
I don't think the alcohol is the proximate cause, either way. Certainly, there have been a multitude of hard-drinking Revolutionaries and Reactionaries alike (Hoffbrau's were popular with both Lenin and Hitler). Meanwhile, Prohibition as a public policy was largely used to harass the working poor and monopolize production/imports into the hands of well-positioned political insiders.
Makes you wonder why weed got such pushpback then. Alcohol subdues a lot of people but aggravates a lot too, but hard to stir an uprising of stoners unless they are storming capitol hill's taco bell
Eh, I quit a few years ago. When you have to have conversations with yourself about it, it’s time. So cold turkey I went, luckily NBD for me. The only time I miss it is after a really trying, long day; or I’m just craving flavors that aren’t sugary drinks like soda. I don’t like sweet drinks very much. Alcohol lends an intensity to flavors that’s impossible to replicate.
Looking back at it I’m really glad I quit.
Anyway, hopefully added years/stopped shaving years off my life. We’ll see.
kombucha is really good for that, it may contain small amounts of alcohol but its really difficult to get it as potent before it turns more like vinegar. but the carbonation and even variations with hops are out there and are great.
I used to do edibles every once in a while when they became legal here and found that alcohol was terrible when high because Id just get dizzy so i started drinking kombucha and it was amazing
I like flavored seltzer water.
I destroy those since going sober. I think it's that carbonation itself has a flavor, and in cheap beer that carbonation was actually the majority of the feel/flavor. Occasionally I'll feel silly buying so much, but then I remember how much I used to spend on booze without batting an eye and grab another 12 pack for $2.85.
We also picked up a carbonation setup so we can make our own sodas and mineral water. Just to reduce plastic waste, I don’t think it’s cheaper than what you’re buying, though.
That’s good, and just fizzy mineral water too. Luckily the NA market for more interesting adult drinks is growing, so things like fake Moscow mules, Hop Tea, or other mocktails that have interesting flavors are starting to become more widely available and have zero alcohol. Not the same as the real thing, but generally pretty good and better than soda or other sugary stuff.
What is the intensity that can’t be replicated, burn of the alcohol?
Depends. Alcohol dissolves things that normally are only fat soluble so you can get an entirely different flavour from common foods (wine and beer tastings/pairings for example)
For fermented beverages the yeast and malt make a pretty unique flavour. Same with hops in a good pale ale or IPA. There's also the body and mouth feel that's hard to replicate without making alcohol. Residual sugars after fermentation are also kind of unique to alcohol since you always have normal sugars mixed in with other foods.
This is right. Alcohol is almost a flavor multiplier and also holds flavors that might be more volatile and disappear. That’s why if you were to completely remove the alcohol from a drink like gin or something it would taste wildly different and probably very flat even though the rest of the beverage is the same.
While all of this is true and concerning, now is not the time to raw dog reality.
Doing weed is also bad for me. It got me quite severe health effects that I'm dealing with right now.
I'm not regretting it for a second and the second my issues are under control I'll use weed again (in much lower doses) because living in the raw reality right now just makes you depressed and suicidal. I'm m neither, and I'll contribute that happily to pot, it made life nice again for a few years
Right? What's to stop one from interpreting these results as "alcohol will get you off of this dogshit timeline sooner"?
Marijuana. None of that shit, only good stuffs!!
Not legal everywhere unfortunately. Alcohol is because it must be "safer" right? RIght?
Most drugs were scheduled to incriminate the lower income groups (i.e. mostly not white folks) They tried to ban alcohol once too. It didn't go very well. Marijuana is less addictive and far less destructive, plus anyone can grow it, it's like a fucking weed. Also, hops and Mary Jane are from the same family of plants.
Life is the number one cause of death.
Its the worse sexual transmissive disease.
The only cure is death.
"Poison is bad for you."
Dose makes the poison. Water can kill you. There's nothing wrong with alcohol.
As a nurse, yeah no, you can't really compare those. Water is essential for the human body. Alcohol has no benefits for the human body, quite the opposite.
As far as I know, medicine came to the conclusion that there is no amount higher than 0 that won't harm your body.
In theory, cocaine, opiates, etc. too. It's just that our culture does not fearmonger about "ethanol addiction", does not call "drinking" a slang term of junkies, and you cannot go to the shop to buy "Wallstreet Rush Hour", "Businessmen's salad", or "Charlie's Home-made Snowstorm".
Science says otherwise
Depends on what the alternative is. I'd prefer a beer to the water water of Flint i.e.
Actually it doesn't depend. Acknowledging alcohol is bad for you makes no claim that other things are better or worse.
As someone who enjoys drinking alcohol: there's no beneficial or harmless amount of alcohol.
Yeah I'm sober a year now due to drinking myself into severe heart failure (ejection fraction of 17%, up to 47% now) and this is correct. If you can enjoy it great, but the second people start making excuses it's over, it's just a matter of how long the slide takes.
I say this as someone who deeply enjoys the occasional drink: there is no known minimum safe dose of alcohol. Every drink shortens your potential lifespan.
Whoever this "Dose" person is we need to stop them.
I’ll drink to that
On the other hand, why do you think we gave up the hunter/gatherer life style?
Cultivating grapes for wine and grain for beer was the origin of civilization!
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2501758-did-ancient-humans-start-farming-so-they-could-drink-more-beer/
The oldest recipe we have found was a recipe for beer.
I hate that alcohol, such an obvious health detriment, is so ingrained in culture that people don't even question it... Your link makes it worse!
Like the link points out, we were drinking before we had written language.
It's a matter of dealing with life on life's terms. The reality is that people like drinking. Sometimes people drink too much, and a few unlucky folks can't drink anything without risking death.
I ocne read a story about a Vietnam era war correspondent. He was a pacifist before going to cover combat and seeing combat up close made him hate war even more.
At one point a publisher asks him to contribute an article that 'deglamorizes war.'
He wrote back that deglamorizing war would be as easy as deglamorizing sex.
Let's fire up a peace pipe with tobacco then!
/j
Cool, let's. /nj
I hate that existence, such an obvious health detriment, is so ingrained in culture that people don't even question it...
Thankfully we haven't progressed since then!
With one important difference: Wine was often diluted back then and beer was not as strong as it is today, so it was much less dangerous on the whole, and it was so weak that even children drank it instead of the terrible water of the time. Though they also drank water when it was good.
Less strong, but since they drank beer instead of water overall consumption was higher. Lots of people should still drink less though.
Yeah! It was seen as an everyday good feeling healthy thing back then and not just something to get wasted on, though that happened a lot too. I'd take the ancient mindset of moderation over today's alcohol addicted society anyday.
Not sure it was so much about good feeling. From what I read it was more about booze being less likely to grant you a plague debuff than water back in the days.
It's almost certainly both. It's not like alcohol is the only drug humans have used. Most do not have that justification, yet they're still used.
So you're telling me without alcohol I could have spent my life picking berries before I died of a toothache at 25? And instead I'm reading excel sheets and will die a prolonged death after years of chemo at 85?
Damn alcohol really is the cause of all my problems...
The "dying at 25" thing is the result of a common misrepresentation of data. Infant mortality rates were significantly higher in the past, so the average gets thrown off. But, if you remove those data points (to reflect post-infancy mortality), you'd be living roughly the same amount of time.
No one is forcing you to brush your teeth.
True, but its illegal for me to wander my neighborhood and pick berries from "private property"
Realistically, if you eat out of trash cans you'll have the same experience, and if you're quiet and neat, no one will report you.
Found the racoon
We prefer “opportunistic omnivore” but yes
Good thing someone else did the work long ago, so I don't need to keep drinking it.
Back when life expectancy was 45.
Popular misconception.
There were a lot of people who never made it out of childhood, which skews the average down.
But if you made it to adulthood, you had a pretty good chance of making it to 65 or so.
That's how averages work. Math.
That's also why averages aren't a good measure of a lot of things and are misleading.
Damn, glad I quit drinking.
(Hits vape pen.)
(/s, just in case it wasn't clear.)
Glad I quit drinking and am currently quitting the vape pens.
Right on, it took some doing but I'm glad I quit nicotine. It's worth it!
Had to do a double take with that image, the last time I saw it was in the instructions for how to use a menstrual cup. 😳
Left: wine glass with broken off foot.
Right: chess piece reveal party.
A cup? I usually just drink straight from the bottle
Gotta go sometime and I’d rather do it having enjoyed a little bit of wine
Yeah if it's going allow me to relax enough to have a good time on the weekends then it is what it is. No point in living anyway if I'm not able to have a good time.
It's the cause of 100% of my arguments and misunderstandings, haha.
Owning a gun makes you 12-times more likely to die from a gunshot.
Yep, and having a pool in your backyard makes you 12-times more likely to die from drowning.
The amount of alcoholics in comment sections like this is crazy.
Half of the people are basically saying "I'd rather die that stop alcohol", the other half tries to cope by saying that all of these things about the dangers of alcohol are either false or exaggerated.
Even the crazy meat lovers are not that extreme.
Are you referring to the comments ITT or the comments on the linked post? I read through all of the comments here and only saw one or two comments that seemed to line up with your implications.
I see a bunch. It's possible that ml got blocked by them or the comments haven't yet federated
Ohhh, that makes sense.
This isn't surprising given how rooted alcohol is in our culture. A social lubricant they often call it. I think peer pressure was the hardest thing I had to deal with when I quit.
You rang? We don't love meat - we love being healthy.
There are many parallels between the addiction of alcohol and carbohydrates, we are very sympathetic to anyone who struggles with addiction.
Cancer is rarely healthy but sure. And I'm not sure why carbs are suddenly in the middle.
Also I'm pretty sure the animals that produce the meat would say that it's not all about health, but well...
Cancer is not a result of meat consumption - https://discuss.online/post/41701240
Carbohydrate consumption has skyrocketed in the last 100 years, along with the rises in chronic diseases
Yeah you're typically the kind of case that I was referencing.
You're denying a scientific consensus based on a couple isolated "studies". Cherrypicking is not going to lead to any reasonable result.
And then you just start doing some dietary whataboutism, which is something I had yet to witness. Carbs could be deadly, it wouldn't change the fact that meat is bad for health.
You're typically in the second category of what I was mentioning about alcoholics here, the category that refuses to face reality and goes to delude themselves into even believing the opposite of reality, that their addiction is actually good for health.
And on top of that, you conveniently ignored the part where I mention that murdering sentient beings for your personal health and comfort is a pretty immoral take. Once again, not surprised.
because alcohol is the basis of society itself
Crazy meat lovers most certainly are that extreme. Addicts are at least a bit more likely to admit they have a problem.
A review of the relationship between dimensions of alcohol consumption and the burden of disease: 2026 update including Mendelian randomisation studies https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.70435
The problem with meta analysis of epidemiology is that so much epidemiology is shit, by flunkee MDs, that meta analysis just concludes data is mostly shit.
Of course it's a toxin. Even a few drinks induces ataxia by toxifying the cerebellum.
I'm just linkin' the paper, Homie. Makes it easier for people access. Have a nice day.
Welp. cracks open another one
Alcohol’s a helluva drug.
Slow motion suicide.
Alcohol is a hard drug.
Alcohol causes more death and destruction than hard drugs.
FTFY
Nah. If hard drugs were done at the same rate as alcohol, it’d be chaos.
What a strange hypothetical, but I will take it
A heroin user with a consistent supply can live to old age.
A meth user that eats three meals a day and still sleeps can live to old age
A person who drinks alcohol their whole life to the point of intoxication like hards drugs will most certainly die of cirrhoses of the liver before old age.
Most people don't consume alcohol to the same level of intoxication that hard drugs provide.
Thank goodness. I took care of a guy who went through half of a half gallon a day of R&R. It was a nightmare dealing with a severe alcoholic.
What now?
Yup, cause implies mechanism, of which there is very little here, seems a lot more like correlation. Also, it's Harvard
nutritionpublic health, which is, problematic.No level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health
That analysis statistically was terrible and the title is disingenuous and misrepresents the data set.
Well, I was thinking of dropping alcohol anyways.
Did it on New year's eve. I'm enjoying it so far..
Social life changes a lot. Luckily I didn't have one to begin with.
I've found 0% beer is good for having a drink in your hand during a social event. They're not really that good in and of themselves that you can drink them to appreciate them like a real beer, and of course they don't get you drunk at all. But it's better than having water or nothing.
I'm doomed. I got a new GP last month. I told her (in front of my partner) that I don't believe we have a future and I'm going to enjoy the time I've got, not make changes I don't want to make. She didn't like it, but I think she appreciated that I wasn't full of bs.
Older males in my family were all diabetic by my age. The main difference between us? I don't drink wine with my meals. Idk if that's a coincidence, but it makes me wonder.
Just check your HRV the day after you... alcohol is bad for you, but still fun 😅
Yeahhhh. My overnight RHR and HRV go absolutely wacky even with a single drink the night before. That's not to say I don't still have a drink sometimes, but watching my vitals has really made me aware of exactly how much impact it has. If I have 3-4 drinks in a night on a special occasion it will take days before my HRV and RHR return to normal, even if I don't feel any physical effects at all. Still fun, but I'm definitely aware it's not good for me 😂
It is just the alcohol telling you heart to chill, no biggie.
Is Aplastic Anemia on the list?
This is just silly. Every single thing they list can be caused by something other than alcohol except for fetal alcohol syndrome. From from the "root."
By that logic, is it silly to say that the root issue of someone's heart stopping was the bullet that passed through it, because a knife through the heart was the root issue that caused someone else's heart to stop?
There's different ways to get dementia. Alcohol consumption is the root cause of one of them, as well as 61 other diseases. If you get dementia and they run tests, they might find that the root cause of your dementia is alcohol consumption. They might find it's a different toxic substance you were exposed to, or they might find it was genetic. That's the root cause of your dementia. The study and article obviously aren't saying that alcohol is the root cause of everyone's dementia, or the 61 other diseases it causes.
It is saying that someone who wouldn't have otherwise dealt with dementia or 61 other diseases could get them purely due to alcohol consumption, making it the root cause of their disease.
« Could » is the word. It literally means: we don’t know. It stays an assumption.
BTW, was Paracelsus considered in the study?
If you get a disease that you wouldn't have gotten had you not consumed alcohol, then the alcohol consumption is the root cause of your disease. The study found 61 diseases for which this is the case for different people
As I said, the root cause of many people's heart stopping has been a bullet passing through it - those people's hearts wouldn't have otherwise developed massive holes and would have gone on ticking had it not been for the bullet - but that doesn't mean that bullets piercing hearts is the exclusive reason that hearts stop.
I'm not sure if the point you're trying to make is that not everyone who consumes alcohol gets these diseases or that alcohol consumption isn't the only cause of these diseases. Both of those statements are correct but neither are contrary to the study's conclusion.
You cannot compare a bullet passing through a heart - an entirely physical process - with diseases from cancer - complex biochemical processes. This is statistically and logically wrong - like comparing apples and oranges, although your example is even more wrong. Apples and oranges are at least fruits, but heart and cancer?
The entire field of ontology is complex in itself. I agree that alcohol CAN (!) increase the chance to get cancer, but - again - Paracelsus plays an imminent role, which is even not considered! Also possible interactions with all the other environmental, psychological etc variables are missing. This diminishes considerably the value of this study.
If I have time and the motivation, I could dig deeper into the design. But it seems to have remarkable flaws and thus makes it in the context of medicine and science a pub, which should be considered with caution!
I can't compare causes of death with different root causes because of different mechanisms of malady? It's done all the time and I just did it successfully. You don't like it because it disproves your (still unknown) argument concluding in the "diminished value of the study" which you never read, as evidenced by you asking if they considered Paracelsus.
Occam's Razor would suggest that when the highly knowledgeable and trained people performing the study, in conjunction with all the people (at least in this thread) who seem to similarly understand what "root cause" means vs the 1 person who doubles down but hasn't read the study, that you are the issue and not everyone else. And this is "statistically and logically" the case. And honestly, your psuedo-scientific half-understanding zeal and intensity just come off as a drinker who refuses to accept that their actions might result in 61 known diseases that they wouldn't otherwise encounter if they choose not to drink.
You're obviously intent on continuing to double down on what amounts to your own personal definition of what "root cause" means as you've refused to address what the study authors and everyone else in this thread seen to understand clearly - that getting a disease that you wouldn't have otherwise gotten had you not been a drinker means that drinking is the root cause of that disease for you. When you get one of these diseases, be sure to argue with your doctor that drinking definitely was NOT the root cause as you have rejected the title of a post on Lemmy that asserts the opposite. Use the word Paraclesus a bunch too.
I think you blew the lid right off this thing, champion
The more you write about science, statistics, and causality, the more obvious it becomes that your confidence is doing the heavy lifting where methodological understanding should be.
It has to be discouraging for you to know that you don't know what you're talking about while continuing to double down, to know that you didn't read the study and that you're responding to a post title with a gut feeling, to know that all of your "arguments" amount to, "nuh uh, you're illogical and wrong so I won't even try to make a single reasoned point" while being completely unwilling and unable to address actual points because you can't, to know that the likelihood that your gut feeling is actually correct despite the conclusion of a robust study is pretty tiny, and to know that it all played out in a public forum.
I know that last part is ironically what drives you to be rude and condescending when it only hurts your credibility as a thoughtful person. Your fragile ego was challenged and you got mad and attacked the person instead of the idea, hoping no one noticed that saying, "oh man, you don't know anything" would move the spotlight off of you, who happens to carry all the burden to prove that the study is "silly," as you put it. And you know that's true, too, and I bet its transparency doesn't help that ego of yours.
Send this to Doug Ford, who has an agenda to keep everyone drunk, while he does not drink.
Scientific report states that a 10oz daily drink results in a larger penis.
They didn't report what the drink was.
Or who's penis
Especially when you don't have one to begin with
guess what.
it's
But, "Everything in moderation.", and "The dose makes the poison."
Go ahead and counter with this ancient "wisdom", then continue to drink. It's your body, you don't need to justify how you abuse it to anyone.
The important thing is that you found a way to feel superior.
You're not wrong. From the study:
The way I read it, the commenter does not believe moderation prevents harm. Hence the "wisdom" in quotes. But they're for the freedom to self-"abuse."
I am still waiting for someone to refudate this analysis. So far, I have yet to see one even close. It's one of the best I have seen.
https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2007.04.089
The most important statistic mentioned is light drinkers have a reduction in all-cause mortality compared to non-drinkers. While heavy drinkers or binge drinkers have an increase.
It's a critical statistic that all of these sensationalist headlines fail to account for or even analyze.
IIRC that effect is more a result of bad categorization rather than light alcohol use actually being correlated with lower mortality.
People who used to be heavy drinkers and who have since quit get put in the "non drinkere" category, but because they used to drink heavily their mortality is still impacted even after they stop. You don't suddenly get a good liver after 10 years of tearing it apart after all.
So the "non-drinkers" category has an artificially worse mortality than the light drinkers.
At the end of the day the body breaks alcohol down into some carcinogens. No amount of that is good for you.
It's a decent argument but it's not supported in the data.
Now I am going to have to dig up that study from China. They had a sample size of over 1 million people with repeated blood draws, medical history and a full alcohol use history. It showed the same all-mortality curve for non-drinkers (never consumed) versus light drinkers.
What's interesting is heavy drinkers who quit reverted back close to the never consumed level after like 5 years.
I swear I had it saved to my zotero account but I can't find it. I will keep looking.
Bottom line: ethanol under the right dosage reduces cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The amount of reduction more than compensates for its risks of creating other diseases like cancer. However the negative effects of over-consumption make it unethical for any medical professional to recommend non-drinkers to start drinking. If you choose to drink, 1-2 drinks per day depending on sex and weight is the hard limit.
2 drinks a day is a heavy drinker.
The blood thinning effect of alcohol has been dismissed by several studies, it's a cause of many types of heart disease. The problem is people lie about intake, and the teetotlers and typically ex alcoholics.
Ethanol is a toxin, it effects mitochondrial efficiency at incredibly low levels. Huge risk factor for dementia.
Also be careful of regional studies like the large Chinese cohort because a lot of effects are due to genetics. Bad epidemiology had people convinced fish oil would would prevent heart disease because of one study in inuit that failed to consider genetics.
There is no safe amount of alcohol.
https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health
Speaking of terrible studies. The one you linked is absolutely terrible.
Have you read of the actual paper. Their conclusions are absolutely not supported by the evidence and their methodology is statistically invalid.
I think that's not because of alcohol - I am a light drinker (3 a week, or less) now and it's because my life is better and I am healthier and not as stressed or poor. I can drink not daily because I'm not an addictive sort of person. Yeah my health is better now than the years I didn't drink but it's because I have more money, can get medical care, have time to exercise too, all the benefits of the easier lifestyle we finally reached.
I don't think it's so harmful, nor helpful, always take July & December as dry months and see no difference in how I feel.
I know that's anecdotal, but unless they are controlling for income and overall lifestyle, my guess is that light drinking is an indication of a healthy moderate sort of lifestyle not an actual healthy factor in one.
Heavy drinkers is not what you think it is. The effect of "light" drinkers is due to poor sampling effect of non drinkers, who are both rare and often have other health issues. Repeated studies show no amount of intake is beneficial.
that's just it, they always meddle with what you do with your own body.
The same way bible thumpers just can't be satisfied with how others live their lives