Slashdot Mirror
Drinking Alcohol May Extend Your Life
Adolytsi writes "MSNBC has an interesting article on an Italian study on alcoholism. While the obvious notion of overconsumption of alcohol being detrimental to one's health is supported, apparently drinking it in moderation can actually extend your lifespan. A study on over 1 million drinkers and 94,000 deaths yielded the results: "According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol — up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women — reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent, the team reports in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
However, "things radically change" when consumption goes beyond these levels, study leader Dr. Augusto Di Castelnuovo, from Catholic University of Campobasso, said in a statement. Men who have more than four drinks per day and women who have more than two drinks per day not only lose the protection that alcohol affords, but they increase their risk of death, the data indicates.""
Four tumblers of middle-quality scotch?
FTA: However, "things radically change" when consumption goes beyond these levels
For starters, you wake up in bed with a stranger not knowing how either got there...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I still find it interesting that at 18 you're allowed join the military and die but you're not allowed to drink alcohol.
Or at least for a good million years or so...
aside: my captcha is "alcohols"
Is that four drinks every day? Or is that up to four drinks in a given 24-hour period, from time to time? - i.e. four drinks on Saturday night, then several more scattered throughout the week
Because I don't hink I'd consider four drinks every day to be "moderate" drinking.
Is that why beer bellies live so long?
I wondered if they remembered to take into account people who don't drink because of pre-existing health conditions that result in shorter life spans. That's a variable they tend to forget in these studies...
It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
The things I do for my health ... *hic*
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
Good moods will help prevent a cold and alcohol will extend my lifespan. Good thing alcohol puts me in a good mood.
Mark
I've heard this for years. Is this supposed to be new information?
Looks like I will reach my 100th birthday
It would be interesting to find out what types of drinks this included, and / or what types yielded different results. For some reason I'm sure consuming the same amount of alcohol found in Absinthe is a lot more different than the same amount in wine or beer.
I gotta have more cowbell.
The last study I remember said more than 4 drinks a week and you had a "drinking problem"
I'm off work tomorrow so I'll hit the gin tonight just to be safe.
To celebrate this study, I'm going to have a shot of Jameson Irish Whiskey!
Justification for drunken Quake!
Today's lucky number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Actually, if you join the military and are stationed in any Asian country, then you can drink. In the Philippines, bartenders dot no check the age of American soldiers.
So the original chance of death is 100%, this reduces it by 18%, so that means that 18 our of every 100 people who drink 4 drinks a day will be immortal?
I see how it started now. In the end there can be only one.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
I thought this was obvious given that Good Moods Prevent Colds
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I bottle of fine Fat Tire amber ale every week is enough to keep the gnomes away!
A new Columbian study on the use of cocaine concluded that apparently doing cocaine in moderation (4 times a day for men and 2 times a day for women) can actually extend your lifespan.
See your local cocaine dealer today!
and half-starve myself,
and stay out of the sunlight,
and smoke copious amounts of pot,
and drink lots of espresso and tea...
actually fuck it, I don't care how long I live, whatever time I have will be really goddammed fun.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Even car crashes..?
Check out the worldwide recommendations for drinking. Currenty (as far as this chart is concerned), the # of drinks men should consume is "no more than two drinks per day", and "no more than one drink per day" for women.
http://www.drinkingandyou.com/site/uk/biggy.htm
I gotta have more cowbell.
This is only the 10,000th study done (this year) on this subject stating some good can come from drinking in moderation!
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
A study on over 1 million drinkers and 94,000 deaths
That's 906,000 people who didn't die! Pretty much 9 out of 10. I like those odds!
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Oh good, another one of these studies. Alcohol can cause everything from nerve damage to throat cancer according to pretty much every other study there is. Hmm let's see, it kills bacteria on contact, burns when put on your membranes or other unprotected tissue because it basically destroys organic material, and is flammable yet indigestible and a cup of it pure will kill you...yup sounds perfectly safe, even GOOD FOR YOU! Total bullshit. It's like taking sleeping pills every single day for the rest of your life. It's horrible for you in the long run and will cause massive damage through nickle and diming your body to death. If you had four drinks a day like it said, not only would your liver would be toast but you'd be a stupid, idiotic, and probably abusive person to live with, everyone would hate you, you'd lose your job, get arrested, not remember any of that, and have severe brain and nerve damage. Just google "alcohol related problems" or "alcohol damage study" and you'll find about 10 articles telling the truth for every 1 of these BS ones. Btw the real most dangerous thing about drinking is doing it around me cuz you'll get hurt.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
But unfortunately the correlation may not imply causation. i.e. people who live longer drink more, but not vice-versa.
Lotsa possible ways to spoil things.
To quote the comedian/heavy drinker, W.C. Fields, someone once asked him why he doesn't drink more water...his reply was "Because fish fuck in it."
This is my signature. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Where I live, people still make their own moonshine in their basement. My manager told me that when she starts feeling a cold coming on, she'll take a shot or two of that nasty stuff at night and then wake up feeling great. But I guess when you're drinking stuff that is used for sterilization it's not surprising. :) However, I'm curious as to whether or not the "healing effects" are lessened if you don't manage to drink every day, sort of like when you stop taking antibiotics prematurely. Chock one up to good old fashioned redneck ingenuity. :P
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
Does drinking more reduce my chances of dying from drinking and driving by 18%? Practice makes perfect!
Homer: "To alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems"
Monstar L
Correlation does not imply causation. All we can say is that "people who drink a bit of alcohol tend to live longer," not that alcohol prolongs their lives. It could be that these individuals take the time to socialize and de-stress, which causes them to live longer. Or perhaps there are financial factors at play: someone who can afford to drink three or four bottles of wine a week is not likely to be living in abject poverty. Of course, it could also be that anti-oxidant properties of the beverages have a positive effect as well.
There's a lot in the study that's vague.
What is "risk of death"? As was pointed out in a previous comment, it's unlikely that 18% of alcohol drinkers are immortal. Is this "risk of death" averaged over the course of a person's lifetime? Is a college student, who drinks socially on weekends, less likely to die than a parent of young children, who stays home on weekends and doesn't drink. What about socioeconomic factors? If you can afford a glass of wine with your lunch does that also mean that you can afford preventative health care?
And what about the "death from any cause"? I could see how alcohol might affect lipid metabolism which might affect heart disease. But does drinking alcohol lower one's risk of getting struck by lightening? I'm not seeing a direct mechanism there. And what about individual variation? Does drinking alcohol increase the risk of certain types of death while decreasing the risk of other types of death? In that case, whether drinking alcohol was beneficial might depend on what types of death a specific person was most at risk for.
Why aren't 18-20 year olds voting as a block to change the drinking laws?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
If I would drink while reading Slashdot.. would it improve my immune system and .. would JavaScript get more respect ?
Normally I have one or two a week... Time for me to play catch up.
I had a flame... but she had a fire.
Plus your wrong.
This study has been "revealed" too many times lately. Nonetheless it is completely true. Many things considered poison can be good for health in the correct quantities and vice-versa. Try technical scuba diving; oxygen becomes poisonous. A small amount of cayenne pepper every day is great for your circulation, doesn't mean I want to drink an entire bottle in one sitting.
Plus alcohol helps LOTS of people relax; something you probably should consider..
Belive it.
How many times do they have to announce this?
The drinking age was raised to 21 because of an increased risk from young people drinking and driving. For
some reason Congress decided to raise the drinking age to 21, and do nothing with the driving age. (Yes I know it was state legislatures that did it, but it was essentially a MAJOR push by the US Congress by removing highway funds if they didn't).
Frankly I think this was backwards. Peoples first experience with alcohol tends to be underage drinking (away from the protection of parents), or after they're adults (same deal). A lot of people tend to go overboard when they either first start drinking, legal age or otherwise. They also tend to have drivers licenses at the time, since the driving age is 16, and even lower at 14 in some states. That combination is not particularly smart.
Personally I think we should lower the drinking age to 16, so first drinking experiences can be under the protection of parents, and raise the driving age to 18. I doubt it'll ever happen since the religious right will cry foul about letting children drink (even beer and wine let's say), and middle america will cry foul because they don't want to drive their kids around because they can't get a license.
AccountKiller
Once lived in a dorm that was co-ed by door, and was awakened one night by a drunken female staggering in my door and flopping down next to me in bed...She'd gotten off on the wrong floor from the elevator, and had mistaken my room for her room. I don't know who the hell she thought I was...Anyway...Being a chivalrous geek, I just rolled over and went back to sleep...I assumed that she would understand the nature of her mistake upon awakening, and maybe, I don't know, invite me to breakfast or something.
Three hours later I was standing in the hall with no shirt, after being thrown out of my own room by a still-drunk girl who was convinced that I'd sneaked into her room in the night! One of my floormates called campus security (probably for their own amusement), and the whole thing ended up being written up (in garbled form) as a security report in the campus paper.
Not only did I not get breakfast, poor girl was so humiliated by the whole incident that she avoided me until I transferred 18 months later.
I think the moral is either: Don't drink the punch, or Let sleeping geeks lie.
Isn't the "risk of death from any cause" pretty much always 100%?
.. and Causation. Apparently the two are not the same, despite the wording on the MSNBC page.
/ 166/22/2437
It's entirely likely that the conditions that would result in someone drinking moderatly every day would also result in better health DESPITE the alcohol. For example, poor people without health care probably can't afford to drink wine with meals. They might live shorter lives, but to say it's because they aren't getting the alcohol is a huge leap of faith.
This is not to disparage any real health effects of alcohol or some alcoholic beverages... it's just to say that to draw any conclusions from such an uncontrolled experiement is stupid and unscientific.
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract
If this is the study referenced, it doesn't look like any of those factors were addressed... I don't know HOW they can say that such correlations prove anything.
It is amazing(troubling) the number of studies that leave out the reason for not drinking. To read the article and not see any mention of controls on reason for abstaining raises BIG question marks in my mind.
This would not just apply to alcohol. If there was a study on Caffine, I would want the abstainers not to have chosen to refrain. Why? if the caffine leaves them feeling bad enough to quit they are already tangebly different than the average person.
You have been drinking too much . . . or not enough. I am not really sure. The point is: you have not been drinking the right amount.
Ok, so what about people in my case? I typically do not during the week at all but I do go out with friends about once, maybe twice a week, on the weekend to yuk it up and we can put away anywhere from six to a dozen drinks (usually hard alcohol) in a 5-6 hour period. And judging by some of the bars we go to, some of those drinks have more than the 1.5 oz shot that quantifies a drink.
I'd say this has been my pattern for the past 4-5 years (I'm 29).
So I guess my question is, is what I'm doing worse for my health than drinking a steady 3-4 drinks a day, every day? The every day thing I think is key. The warnings on Tylenol have alcohol warnings but they mention people who drink 3+ drinks EVERY day - not the person who binge drinks once a week or so.
My own experiments have shown that drinking moderatly is directly proportional to fun. It is no surprise to me that having fun leads to longer life.
I knew I didn't have a problem... In your face AA!!
What's funny is the article never states how or why it increases the chance of survival, just that it does.
Similes are like metaphors
For example Merriam-Webster says that alcoholism is "continued excessive or compulsive use of alcoholic drinks" and I belive most of us would agree. So the study isn't about alcoholism unless you want to be someone who makes specious arguments. And it's not like it's really new findings that wine consumption could be benefitial.
The one thing that these types of articles always seem to do is to lump all types of alcohol together although there are several different types of alcohol sources. I'm not a connoisseur by any stretch, but I've heard from people who are in the medical profession that the body reacts very differently to different types of alcohol and that different types have different health benefits.
;)
As I understand it, and I have full confidence in the Slashdot crowd to let me know if I'm wrong, red wine alcohol comes from the sugar fermentation of red grapes and contains quite a bit of healthy anti-oxidants. White wine, on the other hand, contains far fewer anti-oxidants and therefore does not have the health benefits of red wine. In fact, the anti-oxidants entry on Wikipedia also makes this claim. Conversely, the alcohol in harder drinks like whiskey is grain-based alcohol that generally has little health benefits, not including its ability to wipe out the weaker brain cells.
Friends of mine who are very much into drinking and partying have said from their own experience that the alcohol buzz from sources like grapes is vastly different and impacts them differently than the grain alcohol in harder drinks. (Yes, I'm aware that the smart-ass responses to that almost write themselves.)
But even a friend's mom who is a registered nurse got on his case one time when he got plastered from a combination of wine and spirits, claiming that, "Mixing those types of alcohol together is incredibly dangerous!"
Again, as one not involved in the medical profession I can only make suppositions on all of this. But it does bother me how reports like this have a tendency of throwing around the generic term "alcohol" as though it encompasses all drinks when that should not necessarily be the case.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I think you'll find that Finland disagrees with this study.
Not that I want to make an argument against drinking, I mean what would my best friend Jack D. think of me? BUT, couldn't this data also be interpreted to read 82% of those studied studied drank less? Or more than 18% of all studied suffered from clinical alcoholism - which is roughly defined as continued excessive or compulsive use of alcoholic drinks - and clinically defined as not being able to go without an alcoholic beverage for longer than a day? I could, then, possibly infer that 18% of those studied could just possibly be luckier than the rest of the population, and that it as nothing to do with the alcohol.
The article didn't go into great detail on exactly how this was measured, only that it comprised of 34 larger studies. Personally, I think it's junk science, or a failing attempt to make or influence those prone to alcoholism become full blown alcoholics.
I'll still continue to drink at my normal pace of getting piss drunk before my wife's family comes over, but pretty much not drinking at any other time. Just my 2 cents.
http://www.accelerateglobalwarming.com
Finding out who paid for these studies and the publicizing of their results, is another story... With alcohol and wine lobbies strongly rooted in the french political life, and recently getting into academic funding, you should always follow the money before you make your mind about these studies...
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Things radically change a couple times a week for me.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
That same bottle contains 0.6 fluid ounces of "pure" alcohol at 5%, the same as a 1.5 fluid ounce "shot" at 80 proof (40%).
That means your (I'm assuming) European bottle of beer is actually 1.69 "drinks", at least how I understand it.
I wish I could say I was only having 2 beers a day when it's closer to 3.4!
With the first link, the chain is forged.
anything that we enjoy in moderation is good for us. I think that we live longer if we have fun and enjoy ourselves.
Having a healthy outlook on life and enjoying good food, good drink and good times with others all help to contribute to this, whether it is over a drink, a meal or doing some activity; it does not really matter. The objective is to have a sense of achievement in our work and enjoy time with friends and family.
I imagine that drowning your daily woes with a lonely depressed drink everyday would actually shorten your life. However, sitting out in the sun enjoying a glass of wine or a beer with your wife or your friends and just generally relaxing, enjoying life will help you live longer.
My math says: Hard work + Fun (both in moderation...this is important)= Decrease stress = Joyful life = Live longer
Hard work is just an accumulation of the easy things that you didn't do when you should have.
...I'm immortal!
I used to do stupid, copious ammounts of drink & drugs during dark times in my life; this isn't good promotion! I can't believe alcohol is legal & mushrooms aren't??!
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
Yes pure alcohol is dangerous but MANY substances we depend upon are dangerous when consumed pure or in a too large a dose. You can even be poisoned by drinking to much water.
The simple fact is that living kills you. The entire process of living is killing you. The oxygen intake burns up your cells, but without it they would simply die as well.
Living is the balance between dying now and dying some point in the future. Yes you can stop yourselve from being slowly damaged by oxygen but the side effects will be rather severe.
Same with all these alcohol and other studies that say a dangerous substance is somehow also beneficial. The trick lies in finding the balance where the positive effects are stronger then the negative effects.
This is offcourse very hard because there are so many effects to take into consideration. Worse they also change. Say X extends your life by 10 years. That would also give the sideffects ten more years in wich to manifest itself. Put it like this, say that taking my new drug is guarenteed to make your heart explode. Bad right? At some point past your 600th birthday. Ah, not so bad now right?
Could alcohol induced cancer only manifest itself in people who would have been death anyway if they hadn't taken alcohol? It is not just a case of what disease alcohol causes but also wether you would have even been alive to get them in the first place without alcohol. Except offcourse it is not about YOU but about Mr Statistic, you know the dude, the one with 2.6 childeren.
ACLU is a wider-focus group that decides to not deal with the 2nd ammendment because the narrow-focus NRA is taking care of it.
Instead of having a gun, I suggest that you study harder in school and move to a less crappy neighborhood.
Blar.
Counterexamples: Drinking alcohol => Rich drink more alcohol => Rich can afford better circumstances => Rich live longer Drinking alcohol => 'Relax' people drink more alcohol => Relax people have lower blood pressure => Relax people live longer etc.
Slashdot is such a troll. *sighs*
... whereas if you stop at that 4th beer, it shows some measure of self-control.
I guarantee you this has nothing to do with any "medical benefits" of alcohol, and everything to do with who knows when to stop drinking and who doesn't.
Think about it. You've had your fourth beer, you're feeling good, what do you do? Go for more pleasure at the risk of being sick, or stop where you're at?
If you're the kind of person who will keep going, you're more likely to drive too fast off a cliff, skydive every weekend, do as many kinds of drugs as you can find, put yourself into fights,
Self-control will keep you alive a lot better than 4 beers a day. I promise.
Note the emphasis on the word 'may'.
I'm sure your mileage may vary, and you might even die I suppose. But that still doesn't rule out that your life just may get extended.
Studies whose conclusions are 'doing X may result in Y' are so meaningless.
Sam has one liberty, which he sacrifices for one security. Can you tell me what Sam has now?
IMHO, there is a puritanical fear in the Federal and the majority of State Governments over Alcohol.
Just look at Prohibition. Fine idea, Shame about the implementaion.
Now you have to be 21 to drink legally.
The US is the laughing stock of many countries in this respect. Ironically, they are supported by some hard line Islamic Countries ( you know who I mean here).
Many years ago ( circa 1977), I travelled from Canada into the US. I was carrying some proper Beer (not brewed with rice like some popular US Beers) to my friends in Upstate NY for a Labor Day Party. US Customs confiscated the lot stating some law passed in the prohibition era.
The final straw came 10 years ago at a bar in NYC. I have a head of grey hair and am visiby in middle age. I was asked for ID before they would sell me a beer. Then to top it all, they would not accept my passport as valid id. The reason was that they could not understand the format of my Date of Birth. (dd-mm-yyyy)
Is it a wonder that the US is getting more uncompetitive by the day. There are to many people gazing up their own backsides.
And it'd be 18 if 18 year olds mattered in elections. If you approached, say, the DNC with a block of about 150,000 18-to-21 year olds in Florida or Ohio and told them that the block would vote their way if they promised to lower the drinking age, by God it would go down. Unfortunately for 18-to-21 year olds they're not very organized either.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
First off I should note that IANAD (Doctor). I am not involved in the fields of biology or medicine. This is all just speculation.
Obviously drinking alcohol stimulates the liver into working more than it would have worked had a person not been drinking alcohol. Could this stimulation cause the liver to work more in its filtering duties for the immune system at the same time?
There are other examples of stimulation producing positive effects in the body. Probably the most obvious of these is exercise and its effect on the muscular system. Regular use of a given muscle will cause it to increase in strength. Similarly, could regular use of the liver cause it to increase its ability to filter harmful virii and bacteria?
We college students have known about this for years!
This sig is false.
Whenever I read something like this, I always wonder what drinks people were having. I could easily imagine different health effects from wine and vodka, with further differences depending on the specific type.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
...goesh wif my scotch & latte at Shtarbucksh. Dean Margle sinnging whi...whi.. chr ...wunnerful noosh.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
How a "drink" translates to actual *ammounts* (like 10grams of pure alcohol)?
;)
Also most civilisations I know usually have fair tradition of drinking so it should not be bad after all.
"I am invincible! Invincible!! I *CRASH* Yeoooooow!"
It makes sense to me that a person who practices moderation in drinking also practices moderation in other things. That would explain longer life, I think.
"reduces the risk of death from any cause"
sweet. I am so going to see if that 18% lower death rate applies the next time I'm drunk and in a fight...after all, any cause is reduced, right?
This study is probably a direct understanding of how a couple of drinks at the end of the day help deal with the general stresses of life. A couple of drinks can help anyone unwind and let some of the issues go. What was that song, I'd Rather Have A Bottle In Front Of Me Than A Frontal Lobotomy?
I thought a similar conclusion was published in The Lancet years ago. It said that "one unit" a day for women and "two units" for men was beneficial for the life expectancy. I forgot what the definition of one "unit" was, so feel free to define it yourself ;)
So I can walk up to girls now and say, "How would you like to have a longer, healther life?" and if they say yes it means "Yes, you may buy me a drink."
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Truth is that people's lives are a combination of so many factors that singling out one factor is pretty pointless.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
A former work buddy who used marijuana (and also other crap so he's not the perfect example) told me that while living in USA it was easier for a minor to acquire marijuana than booze. That strikes me as odd. One is an illegal substance, the other is not. Oh well. Catholics.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
You're just a fear-sponge. Grow up and look at actual crime statistics. Are you really afraid of home invasions and car-jackings? You're far more likely to die on the road, but I bet you don't support 55MPH speedlimits, do you? Stop believing what the media tells you to be afraid of.
Blar.
>Please don't kill Douglas Adams for me, and others.
Too late.
*ducks*
Four drinks in one day is fairly unremarkable for an average adult male (for example, this might be 2 glasses of wine with lunch and 2 with dinner, which is essentially nothing but flavor). And don't get me wrong, I'm all for responsible drinking. But strangely, 4 drinks for a man in one day is technically regarded in some social science circles in the US as one drink shy of binge drinking: "According to the 5/4 definition, a binge drinker is a man who consumes five or more alcoholic drinks on an occasion of unspecified duration and is a woman who consumes four or more drinks on an occasion of unspecified length." Obviously the idea of "a binge" is meant to evoke the image of 5 wanton shots of whisky in 10 minutes on the hour every hour all day. However, for research purposes, it seems crazy to call 5 drinks over an "unspecified time" a "binge", yet these are the kind of statistics used in the US to highlight college and high school drinking epidemics in recent years.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
This is great news, I'll remeber to drink more regularly from now on. What I would really like to see are some studies on marijuana done with all the purported but impossible to study health benefit because the DEA are jerks. It would be awesome for the legalization movement if you could take x bong hits and acheive the same effect. Combine that with 4 drinks a day and I, for one will be welcoming myself into Senoir Citizen overlord-ecy.
Is this news to just e.g. the US or what? Because it has been quite established that moderate alcohol may not be enough to cause the ill effects, while preserving the good ones, like reduced blood pressure.
m
t m :-)
http://www.webmd.com/content/article/94/102702.ht
http://www.webmd.com/content/article/104/107515.h
^-- Just included for the fun factor when comparing with the above from the same site
(note that it also claims it's healthy in "moderate amounts" though)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
...drinking a moderate amount of alcohol -- up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women -- reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent... Yet we are told that 100% of humans eventually die from something. If the risk of every cause of death (which by definition must include alcohol related ones) is reduced by 18%, that difference must go somewhere.Must be reincarnation......
Was it the alcohol cartel to make their product sound healthful and not as harmful to society as it really is? Other studies like this tend to group the folks that abused alcohol - to the point they are dying from it - and then quit with the non-drinkers.
"Drinking moderately, and only during meals" which the study recommends, is linked in our culture to upper-class status, which in turn is linked to long life as a result of having money to pay for life-extending medical miracles. Correlation is not causation, and any study of this type that does not check for other correlated factors (such as income) is likely to mislead the public. Fine wine, Jaguars, genuine Rolexes, and nice golf clubs could easily be linked to long life and good health, but drinking moderately with meals while driving a Jaguar with a genuine Rolex on your wrist and some nice golf clubs in the trunk won't make you wealthy enough to live a long and healthy life. In fact, for many of us, it would lead to some nasty credit-card debt which could take years off our lives!
My truck is like a series of tubes.
A little bit of stress reduction goes a long way. Stress ages you, stress will kill you. Alcohol reduces stress, QED.
"The day is wasted if you're not." - Sewanee Bumper Sticker
> up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in
> women -- reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly
> 18 percent,
How can that be? 100% of all persons die. Death is a statistical certainty.
Haven't you noticed these studies come and go. One minute they are saying alcohol is bad for you, the next they are saying it is good. This is a lot like the "Great Chocolate Debate." One day the news reports chocolate as being good, the next day the same reporter says to avoid it. Junk science, anyone?
Many different people have been trying to prove this for years. Many experiments have been performed under closely scrutinized conditions where animals are given a supplement of alcohol and only alcohol (as opposed to beer or wine) and these animals always die sooner, when compared to the control.
The problem with these studies is that they are observations studies not experiments. They is no control neither are their conditions imposed upon the group being studied. The researchers only observe a correlation between two variables.
I am afraid that the results of this study are confounded by the fact that wine contains grape skin extracts which have been proven to be very healthy for you.
Wrong. The problem with young people drinking copious amounts of alcohol stems from the stigma American culture creates about alcohol in general. Believe it or not, the same types of people that were responsible for the prohibition are still around and havn't learned shit yet.... But then again, that's why they started the prohibition, because they didn't know shit, a result of not learning shit.... Ironically enough, however, their heads are full of it....
According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol -- up to four drinks per day in men and two drinks per day in women -- reduces the risk of death from any cause by roughly 18 percent
This is why journalists shouldn't be able to read scientific articles. It reduces the risk by 18% without considering cause. If what this guy's interpretation were true, then drinking 4 drinks/day would reduce the risk of death from drunk driving accident or from alcohol-related organ damage.
There isn't even a link to underage drinking on that page you fucking douche.
>Please don't kill Douglas Adams for me, and others.
Too late.
Well then, gynnan tonnix all around, I suppose.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
The Soviets actually did so. A standard daily ration of vodka was 200 grams.
Reportedly, it caused signing the Internationale and chargingly blindly at the enemy.
We surveyed 10 million Americans, and not one of them had been a homicide victim.
paintball
Has anyone seen any research that specifies if one has to drink all of their daily alcohol in one sitting to get the positive effect or can I just sip a little throughout the day. I don't want to drink it all at once as I don't want the side effect of becoming inebriated but I would not have a problem drinking a little at a time if I can still get the benefits.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Por fin!!! Puneta! A ber todos los puertorros... Weeeeeeeeepa!!!!
If you are Puerto Rican, you know what that means...
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
the 21 year Portswood from Balvenie. Runs about 75 $US a bottle, and well worth it.
Here in the US we have this thing called the drug war. You may have heard of it. One of the central tenants pushed out by the government propaganda machine (called the ONDCP) is that all use is abuse. There's no such thing as "harmless use" of any drug, not in the brave new USA at least.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
'ave a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, it'll fix yer right up.
You first, I'm having a beer.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Really? And here I was thinking that everyone died.
So the risk of a drinker dying is 82%?
they forget to say these idiots who drink alchocal become statistics.. i mean drunk drivers.
I know I am coming into this story late but when did the chance of death ever get below 100%?? Can it really be lower or even higher for that matter?
No matter where you go, there you are.
Yeah /., let's get crunk!
Seriously, somebody ought to organize a shot game for slashdot.
1. Take 2 shots every time you see a dupe
2. Drink a white Russian each time Google/Microsoft gets shitcanned in the press
3. Down booze (your choice) everytime SCO tries something
4. profit!
ADD On!
I've also heard that smoking 2 cigarettes a day extends your life, but I've not been able to adhere to the schedule.
But it does bother me how reports like this have a tendency of throwing around the generic term "alcohol" as though it encompasses all drinks when that should not necessarily be the case.
I used to think this was just bad science, but now I'm more inclined to believe it's an agenda, possibly even settling some cognitive dissonance among the researchers.
Wine for example is great for you. But it's because of the anti-oxidant properties of the polyphenols and possible anti-cancer properties of resversatrol, which is already known for improved longevity, positive effect on diabetic and pre-diabetic conditions, improved endurance for atheletes, etc.
Beer is really high in many B vitamins, especially B-12. Many people lack sufficient B in their diets and certain genomic profiles lead one to require even higher levels of B vitamins than the general population.
So, drinking Beer and Wine can be really good for you, on balance, even if the alcohol is bad for you. Personally, I prefer a multivitamin and a grape-seed extract once a day, at a whopping cost of about $8 a month.
If scientists want to get their rep back, they should study people given straight ethanol and see what the effects of alcohol really are. Probably most distilled spirits, perhaps more like Vodka would suffice (you probably can't find enough Everclear drinkers for a study), but even something like Gin or Whisky is bound to have some complex organic chemicals from the berries or casks they're made with.
They do the same thing with coffee. Every study that shows a positive benefit of coffee, say in preventing liver cancer, gets written up by the AP as "Caffeine is good for you!" when coffee is probably among the most complex beverages people drink. This is really bad science.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Once again, we have an article and scientists claiming a causal relationship when the only thing they have shown is a correlation. A specific level of drinking may not cause a longer life, but they have shown that of those in their study, those who lived longer happened to drink in moderation.
I'm 'a live forever
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Just because A and B are correlated and A happens before B in time, doesn't mean that A is a cause of B. The tendency of medical researchers to make such assumptions is killing people. For example we now know that the women who had HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) were a healthier set of women than the ones who didn't choose to do it or didn't choose to continue with it. However the result was that women who took HRT had less heart disease. So naturally the medical researchers (often paid by the HRT manufacturers) announced that HRT was good for health. This increased the number of takers. But a double blind trial then showed that HRT actually causes disease and reduces life expectancy. The alcohol story is the same. People who like a drink have a pretty good toxin-handling system and so live longer than people who find drinking disagreeable. Yes ethyl alcohol is toxic: why else would men engage in competitive drinking. Needless to say my explanation is just a guess: there are various other ways that alcohol consumption and better health could both be caused by some other factor.
...we do have a guardian angel.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
If you ask any doctor if they take the word of their patients on how much alcohol they consume the majority will tell you "no" In fact most doctors automatically double the amount that their patients claim to drink. Given that, does this equal 8/day for men and 4/day for women? Something to think about...
I don't what type of study they are pulling but I have read some papers refuting this claim. A few pdfs on the subject can be found here (Search Alcohol+Life+Study) or use google.
"Hey, mister. You gotta help me. These two guys work me night and day. They don't feed me, they make me sleep on the floor. They put anti-freeze in the wine and they gave my red hat to the donkey.
You're using her as bait, Master!
But even a friend's mom who is a registered nurse got on his case one time when he got plastered from a combination of wine and spirits, claiming that, "Mixing those types of alcohol together is incredibly dangerous!"
...."
:)
Hmm, my roommate in school had a saying:
"Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Beer before liquor
I'm not sure how the rest went
is how i think of alcohol consumption. in 2005 i could only gargle gin to get drunk and when i spit it out it was full of green toxins from the flu that year...
"research" sponsored by Jolly Dragon
I didn't RTFA (zis is Slashdot; Ve don't "RTFA" hier.), so I'll probably be modded down for this, but I wager it's likely that their methodology is flawed.
http://outcampaign.org/
All comments at my level so far seem to accept and discuss the results as describing a causal relation.
I'm thinking if you can afford to buy four alcoholic drinks per day, you are either comparatively wealthy or living in a region of the world that can afford to sell you cheap alcohol. Either way, the sheer fact that you are able to buy some 1500 drinks per annum means you're pretty well off in a global perspective, perhaps even compared to your neighbors. Can we really take for granted that the study isolates the effects of alcohol from all other variables?
/ Per
My understanding is that may be due to the barrels in which some alcohol is aged, like bourbon. The chemicals in the wood that give the amber colors also affect things like hangover, unlike the clearer alcohols like vodka, rum and gin. If it makes the hangover worse, it might also affect the buzz as well...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The military should have its soldiers drink 2-4 drinks per day. Casualties will drop by 18% and morale will rise.
Might work, but a beer would cost $100 per can, and you'd have to requisition it as "refreshment, liquid, alcoholic." And brewing to MIL-SPEC would probably be a bitch...
On the other hand, if you made the cans the same diameter as a grenade, you could fire them at the enemy if you ran low on ammo. Or you could use the launcher to deliver brews to soldiers who are separated from their supply. Returning veterans would then be easy to detect at a bar, since each round of drinks would be greeted with a cry of "Incoming!!"
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
You're right that antioxidants in red wine might have some effect, but I would argue that the difference in the "buzz" one gets from red wine and the buzz one gets from vodka is minimal. Ethanol is a single molecule, C2H5OH. Remove the alcohol from red wine, and it is no longer psychoactive. If there's any objective difference between drinking wine and drinking beer, it's confined to effects on absorption and metabolism.
Subjective judgment of the "buzz" is likely highly dependent on social situation. Wine is a more refined drink, and people tend to think it's a more refined drink, and drink it in a more refined social situation. Does that mean it has a more refined buzz? Perhaps subjectively, but this more refined buzz is not something in the composition of the wine itself. Perhaps it's purely psychological, or perhaps it's related to the difference in consumption patterns between wine and vodka drinkers. There are too many variables involved to make any kind of accurate judgment.
Finally, it's far from a well-established scientific fact that mixing beer and liquor is a bad idea. One possibility is, when you start drinking liquor after you're already drunk from drinking too much beer, you can't really judge how much alcohol you're consuming and how fast you're consuming it, so you end up drinking too much and puking. There's also a school of thought that says that the difference is due to the carbonation, and another that says that it's due to the food or liquid content of the stomach. At the core, wine, beer, and hard liquor are all only alcohol delivery mechanisms.
I would argue that when you consume the alcohol is at least as important as how you consume te alcohol. The rate at which you consume alcohol determines how much alcohol is in your bloodstream at any given time, and different amounts of alcohol affect the brain in different ways (the neuropharamacology of alcohol is extremely complex, but Erowid is typically reliable when it comes to drugs). Also, there's the diurnal rhythm of alcohol metabolism. Getting drunk in the morning will leave you drunker longer than getting drunk at night, although, because acetaldehyde mediates many of the toxic effects of alcohol, if acetaldehyde metabolism doesn't follow the same rhythm, drinking in the morning could actually be better or worse for your brain. I'm sure there are some good papers on this topic, if you're interested.
This story is generating all sorts of commentary, possibly by inebriated posters, while the tech stories before and after are languishing in only double digit response counts!
On this subject, you may want to read this Wikipedia article :
:-)
- French Paradox : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox
Here are 2 extracts :
1. Introduction : "The French paradox refers to the fact that people in France suffer relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite their diet being rich in saturated fats. The phenomenon was first noted by Irish physician Samuel Black in 1819."
2. Part of the chapter on Wine : "It has been suggested that France's high red wine consumption is a primary factor in the trend. This theory was expounded in a 60 Minutes broadcast in 1991. The program catalysed a large increase in North American demand for red wines from around the world. It is believed that one of the active ingredients potentially related to this effect in red wine is resveratrol.
Resveratrol and other grape compounds have been positively linked to fighting cancer, heart disease, degenerative nerve disease, and other ailments. Red wine typically has health benefits not found in white wine (with some exceptions) because many of these compounds are found in the skins of the grapes and only red wine is fermented with the skins.
The first scientific study of the relationship between alcohol consumption and atherosclerosis was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1904. The first epidemiological study to report that moderate drinkers exhibit greater longevity than abstainers or heavy drinkers was published in 1926 by Raymond Pearl. Hundreds of studies have followed in recent decades."
More on Wikipedia., as usual
Beer before liquor never sicker, liquor before beer, never fear.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I'm a wanker too, you insensitive clod !
Oh, wait....
This news about an alcohol is absolutely false and stupid. The next one will be that a moderate consume of cocain or geroine will be very good for organism. Probably the productors of wine have been pay this "investigation".
Proof that I'm going to live forever.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
The use of alcohol in moderation is one of the "wise" parts of the bible.
/. ... just in case someone wanted a citation.)
"Paul instructed Timothy, 'Drink no longer water, but use a little wine [oinos] for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities' (1 Tim. 5:23)."
(It isn't all rules for meddlesome church-lady types to flog us with.) (Yes, the participle is dangling.)(Yes, that is my first and last bible quote on
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
... and unless it scaped me of some frame didn't show up in Firefox, they seem to use "drink" interchageably with "glass".
Now, a glass is 150ml to 250ml in many homes. MCDonald's small Coke has 300ml. Supposing a drink to be around 200ml, which (according to Wikipedia/wine) means about 20g of alcohol (most probably ethanol).
I bet that what really expands your lifespan is relaxing and taking things a little less seriously. It's just that most of the people only reach that level by having a drink.
We're talking about 4 glasses of Wine, not heavy vodka. I worked in a pharma company, and I saw these figures. Except it becomes dangerous from 4 glasses per day, not 5.
One thing it's always important to consider when looking at the health consequences of a human-controllable factor such as drinking alcohol is: some people may make a decision about how much alcohol to drink and this decision is based on a reason related to their current health.
For example, those who are already unwell or have a chronic condition may well decide to avoid alcohol completely, or have this recommended to them by their doctors. This means that the future outcomes recorded for "those who do not drink, or who drink very little" can be biased to some extent by the fact that they are already at a higher risk of disease or death. Getting this sort of bias measured is incredibly difficult.
If this happens, then you get a mortality relationship which seems to be telling you: drinking almost nothing has a modest mortality rate (because it includes all those who have been avoid alcohol); a small amount of alcohol, consumed by largely health-conscious people leads to a lower mortality rate; then higher levels of alcohol lead to higher mortality rates. At face value, this suggests that "drinking a small amount of alcohol is good for you". While this may be true, you have to be very careful in interpreting the results.
Basically, this boils down to the difference between: some people get ill or die because they drink a lot, and some people drink very little because they are already ill.
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
Did they classify the non-drinkers to those not drinking because they've chosen so, and to those not drinking because of an illness (think exploded liver or pancreas)? There was a news item earlier this year, in which they had noticed that some similar studies had not.
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
I question the cause and effect of the beneficial population since the teetotaler population includes those medicated folk who should not be drinking and are (not coincidentally) in poorer health not likely to live as long.
Is it a rule, that there's an exception to every rule?
I don't have any statistics to back this up so this might be bogus but one thought came to mind was automobile accidents.
For several years I worked for an automobile towing company which was licensed to do all the towing for the area towns. Some of the more gruesome car accidents that involved a driver under the influence of alcohol walked away without a scratch on them, while other horrendous accidents with sober drivers either lead to a fatality or some serious injuries.
The accident scenes were disgusting and when the officer would tell me the driver walked away from it because they were drunk, I was almost in shock. I guess the alcohol loosens up your body/muscles or slows your reaction time and you sort of bend with the accident rather than stiffen up for impact and do more damage to yourself.
Of course-- there would be plenty less accidents all together without drunk drivers on the roads. And there are PLENTY of drunk driving accidents in which the driver and passengers are all instantly killed-- hopefully not taking innocent sober drivers with them.
I don't really know where I'm going with this post-- because there are too many variables to this theory and I don't have any statistics, but I just thought I'd share my personal observations.
Drunks at the wheel that hit things have a chance of living and sober people in that same accident could die or get seriously injured. I've seen it quite a few times and it still amazes me.
I asked my 94 yr old grandmother a couple of months ago about her 'secret' of a long life:
1) stay mentally active (she's an avid gardener)
2) don't drink (never had 1 single drink of beer/alcohol)
3) pray every day
4) be kind to everyone
I added the 4th one because she's a living and breathing saint!
I love the 16-year Lagavulin. Also about $75/bottle, and also well worth it. I'll see if I can find the Portswood the next time I'm out. :-)
Is that 4 x 64oz College size kegger jugs? 4 x 1oz shots of Everclear? 4 x Hurricanes? 4 x glasses of ripple? Ill take one of each and call it a day.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
now we may possibly have to use the term, "Senator Kennedy from Mass." for longer than we expected. F'in wonderful...
Well, you certainly can't go wrong with the Lagavulin ... The Portswood is aged in casks that held port which I find gives it a complex flavor. Try it neat with just a drop of water :)
Slashdot: News for Drunks. Stuff that winds up in the Bladder....
Reading the US constitution is interesting, the most obvious thing is that the federal government has far more power than the constitution grants it. It is really the job of the supreme court, not congress, to correct that error.
The stuff you mention is all anecdotal. I am not a chemist (but I am a homebrewer), and here's what I understand to be the difference between various alcoholic beverages. In the form that humans consume, there are basically two types of alcohol: ethyl and methyl. Yeast produce both, with ethyl alcohol in the greater quantity. Both forms of alchol are 'poisonous', but of the two ethyl is definitely preferable. Methyl breaks down to formaldehyde in your liver, which, among many nasty things, will cause you to go blind. In normal fermented beverages-- i.e., ones that have not been subject to distillation-- the quantity of methyl alcohol is a non-issue. Distilled beverages need to have the additional step of removing the methyl alcohol (or by engineering the distillation process so that methyl alcohol is not captured).
There are basically two types of yeast (a fungus) that are responsible for all alcohol that we drink: ale yeasts (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), and lager yeasts (Saccharomyces pastorianus). Ale yeasts ferment at a higher temperature range than do lager yeasts. Lager yeasts are also capable of breaking down dextrose, which is a type of sugar that contributes 'mouthfeel' (like 'fullness') to a beverage. This is why lagers tend to be lighter in body than ales. Various strains exists among these two types that produce a variety of esters, fusel alcohols, sulphur compounds, and so on, but in general these byproducts are kept to a minimum as they produce a whole variety of 'off flavors'-- fusels in particular make something taste 'hot' or 'spicy'.
Anyhow-- the point being that the real difference between your choices for alcoholic beverages are: 1) alcoholic content (by weight/volume) and 2) the other kinds of things that are mixed in with those alcohols, (eg., sugars, tannins, and so on). A strong drink (like wine as compared to a typical beer) affects you differently because there's more alcohol. Tannins also tend to make that hangover last a bit longer, although it should be said that hangovers are mostly caused by dehydration and/or vitamin B deficiency (vitamin B is utilized in alcohol metabolization).
Yeast, by itself, has little or nothing to do with those other compounds. They're just there because they existed in the yeast's food (like grapes, barley, rice, etc), and the yeast had nothing to do with them, so they stuck around. Other organisms (molds, bacteria, and other 'wild yeasts') may affect them somewhat, but modern breweries (Belgians excepted) go to great lengths to make sure that these contaminants do not enter the product, as they make quality control extremely difficult.
No, the point of these studies really is to try and isolate the benefits of consuming alcohol-- ethyl alcohol. Not the other things. We already know that, e.g., grapes are good for you, and if you really want a good source of antioxidants, try eating fresh fruits and veggies.
Whoa, this is a members only bar, you've got to Register and sign in.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Even then, they knew you lived longer drinking alcohol than water.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Now drinking 4 beers a day makes me health conscious and not an alcoholic!!