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Alcohol's Evaporating Health Benefits
New submitter Heart44 writes: A study in the British Medical Journal shows that consuming alcohol — any volume, any type — does not increase life expectancy. The full academic paper is not paywalled. From its conclusions: "Beneficial associations between low intensity alcohol consumption and all cause mortality may in part be attributable to inappropriate selection of a referent group and weak adjustment for confounders. Selection biases may also play a part." The associated editorial adds, "Firstly, in health as elsewhere, if something looks too good to be true, it should be treated with great caution. Secondly, health professionals should discourage suggestions that even low level alcohol use protects against cardiovascular disease and brings mortality benefits. Thirdly, health advice should come from health authorities, not from the alcohol industry, and, finally, the alcohol industry and its organizations should remove misleading references to health benefits from their information materials."
You are the greatest, did you know than man. I mean I really Reealy love you. Now what was this article about. Oh. To your heath! cheers.
Seriously, alchohol can creat fun opportunities to socialize and that's well known to be one of the singlemost important aspects of a healthy life. Or any life at all.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Consuming alcohol certainly does improve life expectancy. Drinking is the only thing keeping me from killing someone almost every day!
is that it helps gets you laid, which is obviously very healthy both as exercise and for your confidence and mental state. Unless you're an idiot and get an std or get pregnant.
I thought so!
Is coffee still evil or does that cure cancer this week? The true killer is sitting in an office with a shit bag of a boss on your case everyday. But do every do a study of how bad for you a full time job is? NO!
Make mine a double, Cheers!
The real take home lesson for this is not to put much faith in any observational study. Such studies typically inflate the magnitude of the putative effect (both for 'good' and 'bad'), typically use inappropriate statistical methodology and suffer from various well known sources of bias (as noted in TFA).
Unfortunately, it makes progress in the medical field very slow and inconsistent since good studies are difficult to impossible to do. Basically, you're gonna die at some point. Within some broad levels of moderation, do what makes you happy. Imbibe what ever makes you feel good.
Don't sweat the details. Even though we live in a world with horrible chemicals, air pollution, endocrine disrupters, radiation, GMOs and PETA most of the Western world is living longer and healthier than ever. Not that there aren't problems with the world - presumably we can do better, but the constant drumbeat of falling skies can safely be ignored.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
So, the pendulum has finally swung back to center, where anyone with an ounce of intellect could have figured it belonged all along. Alcohol isn't "good for you", moderate consumption is neither good nor particularly bad, and overconsumption (as with most things) has consequences. Hysteria on both sides--prohibitionists and snake-oil peddlers--discredited.
Not surprised.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Sometimes you need to take the edge off and for me it's either going to be cocktails/weed or something pharmaceutical. I'm just not a big fan of pills.
Ahhh, the ongoing march of hard endpoint outcomes analysis daggers another belief.
Niacin, various vitamins absent particular diagnosed deficiencies, multivitamins, guess what? Chicken butt. No difference in long term outcomes.
My only concern is certain possibly beneficial heart drugs were abandoned in phase iii stidies because they slightly increased death rates. There could be benefit there for subpopulations if the deaths cluster about some physiology type, which maybe could be pre-tested for, or monitored closely.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Yay perpetually conflicting medical reports. Eggs are good, eggs are bad. Alcohol is good, alcohol isn't good. Chocolate is good, chocolate is bad. Saturated fat is bad, saturated fat is good. I'll pass on clickbait medical research. Michael Pollen summed it up best , "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants". I look forward to the release of the new study proclaiming the health benefits of moderate drinking.
Eggs are bad for you! Eggs are good for you! Meat is bad for you! Meat is good for you! Alcohol is good for you! Alcohol isn't good for you!
I swear, if you listen to and heed all this advice you will go crazy. I think the best thing to do is ignore all this crap, eat *reasonably* (not too much of any one thing, have a balanced diet) and just ENJOY the things you like, regardless of people saying they're good or bad for you, because life is short anyway and we might as well enjoy it while we have it.
I see so many eating bland vegan diets, thinking it's so good for them; I doubt any of them will live longer than typical omnivores.
this article just gave me another reason to drink. thanks.
I suspect the positive benefits found were because people who are relaxed and pro-social enough to have the occasional drink and a laugh with friends are going to be less solitary and stressed individuals.
It's well known that people with a support group do better on several health and longevity metrics than solitary stoics.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
1. That giant frozen bullet train traveling at six times the speed of sound through crowded metropolitan areas is not only fake, but scientifically impossible.
2. Budweiser is found with friends and during good times, but is also accompanied by its lesser known entourage blurred vision, karaoke, screaming, and in high levels nudity and parking lot fits of vomiting.
3. The anthropomorphic frogs could never enunciate a trademarked brand name, and the black screaming "whats up" men were no more than modern day black minstrel charicatures. your black friends cannot be counted on to make this noise as consistently as claimed.
4. patron, fireball, hennessey, hypnotiq, and hundreds of other brands arent directly marketed to youth. Unless you count about a hundred different songs or more that directly associate them with happiness, friendship, and success.
5. 7 martinis and a suit makes you a vomiting insurance liability, not james bond.
6. Dogs and clydesdales do not drink or transport alcohol anymore. Alcohol is transported through a sophisticated network of trucking and trans national freight.
7. Your government lies to you about alcohol because it enjoys a sizeable degree of revenue from its sale through artificially imposed monopoly, driving checkpoints, fines, and incarceration.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I'm just saying after a year in the control group I'd have been ready to end it all :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
I do not know how 'red wine' got inflated to 'any form of hooch', and 'resveratrol' to 'ethanol'. I guess it is typical human folly in which the red wine story was transmuted into an excuse to get totally wasted ... with help from the 'alcohol industry'. (Since when do you need an industry to help you get drunk?)
It is the red wine, taken in moderation and with food, that is supposed to be healthful: Not Pabst nor Thunderbird nor Jack Daniels taken with the bottom of the bottle up in the air.
--- Andy West http://andywest.org
Very misleading summary (yeah, duh). This is not a study, it is an editorial. Someone's opinion. It says so right at the top. Note at the bottom of the article; "Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed."
It's incredibly misleading to cite this article as a "study", all it is is an opinion piece article, nothing more.
Oh no... it's the future.
From Doctrine and Covenants, Section 89: "Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation— that inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good, neither meet in the sight of your Father,"
"Beneficial associations between low intensity alcohol consumption and all cause mortality may in part be attributable to inappropriate selection of a referent group and weak adjustment for confounders. Selection biases may also play a part."
... and the pint of strong lager that they drank before working on the paper probably didn't help much either.
I hardly drink at all ( a beer every few months),
but this article says I should!
They say there IS significant improvement for mena 50-64 and woman 65+. Then they turn around and say that the health benefits are overblown.
"Ya dude, it's real, but not huge and anybody that says different did it wrong, because like... reasons and stuff".
Stupid article. Stupid conclusion.
I know better. After a bit of strong drink I get +2 STR, +6 INT, +9 WIS, +2 DEX, +5 CON, and +8 CHA - and the effects last *exactly* until I sober up.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'd always suspected Alcohol's health benefits are something akin to it being a solvent. Getting some in your blood stream allows it to dissolve or loosen plaque and buildup that are more alcohol soluble than water soluble. That, and, perhaps its helps kill some invasive microorganisms.
Alcohol has been with us for quite some time. Humans have been brewing longer than recorded history (Its an important preservative and water sanitation technique) And previous to that we've been collecting fermented fruit from the ground (Animals do this too. Birds /love/ getting drunk)
Sure, don't pickle your liver every night. There's no way that could be good for you.
Everyone knows e-cigs are the new excuse to do something you know deep in your mind is bad but write it off as being okay.
Exercise is the area where a lot of people can attain significant, proven health benefits.
Sounds like a bunch of teatotaller biased bullshit.
Don't even drink any more, but this is stupid. Thinning your blood minorly once per day has got to be good for your heart rather than it pounding full strength all the time.
Whatever, this is nonsense. Next they'll say vaccines are bad for you...
This world is turning stupider by the second.
The quiet truth is that if you are sick or have any real health issues, you stop drinking alcohol. Alcohol is a powerful drug that affects your body in many ways. If you are not healthy, you often can not drink it.
Moreover, most healthy people in the US drink alcohol. It is one of the primary social activities that people engage in. Look at dating events, they almost always alcohol.
As such, people that do not drink alcohol fall into three general categories. Religious, Sickly, and Ex-Alcoholics.
So cause and effect were reversed. Being healthy lets you drink alcohol, rather than drinking alcohol making you healthy.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
+1 And some hate that all the conversations are lost due to alcohool and therefore don't like to socialize with drunken idiots.
But in the morning I'll be sober and happy, but you will still be bitter.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
http://velvetgloveironfist.blo...
http://harridanic.com
Hey....shut up.
A study in the British Medical Journal shows that consuming alcohol — any volume, any type — does not increase life expectancy.
That is the type of conclusions you get when you entrust research to the "scientitsts" types who never leave the lab.
Alcohol helps overcome stress, which otherwise would cause more harm to health than the alcohol
Alcohol helps to "loosen" up, which these days seems to be the only reason why western civilization is still procreating. Being born is the biggest health benefit a human can experience in their life.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Well, alcohol is a solvent like water is a solvent.
Like dissolves like. Alcohol and water are polar molecules, so those looking for their polar solvent fix could substitute water for alcohol and pocket the savings.
Traditional "solvent", like say Turpentine or paint thinner is a non-polar molecule. Used to dissolve other non-polar molecules, like alkyd paint, or grease.
I come here for the love
Aspartame. Oh wait, no they didn't. They just took the paid-for conclusion by the FDA that ant killer makes a safe substitute for refined sugar.
Thalidomide. Oh wait, no, they completely ignore the MASSES of evidence of the harmful effects of thalidomide (missing limbs, protruding spinal clusters, etc) and give the go ahead to reintroduce it as a fucking antidepressant!
Dietery fat and its connection to heart disease. Oh, wait, nope again. Not one single peer reviewed study into the connection at all, ever, anywhere by anybody yet the BMJ continues to publish unfounded claims that fat=bad.
The resurgence of poliomyelitis and the concurrent (some might say contemporaneous) emergence of a previously little-known condition variously called Lou Gehrig's Disease, ALS, Motor Neurone Disease, Post Polio Residual Paralysis... all sharing the same root cause and displaying shockingly similar symptomology yet the BMJ being an industrial journal pursues the industry line that it's most certainly definitely NOT actually caused by the live polio vaccine in spite of ample evidence that puts it beyond the Black Swan level of anomaly and firmly into the "merits further study" box.
When somebody says something is impossible, and someone else proves them wrong by a SINGLE proof sample, that's not an anomaly, that's SCIENCE.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Last night around 7pm I had a couple of ciders as an experiment as to the effects on my sleep. Even with that little alcohol I woke up at 4 and stayed awake till 6. Damn, there goes another fun thing out of my life. Alcohol is definitely not worth the life disruption. An age thing I guess.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Good Bourbon and Whiskey increase the QUALITY of life dramatically.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One thing to keep in mind is this observation: There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Another is that we really don't know how the body works yet, as evidenced by the (still) constantly shifting winds around cholesterol, fats, vitamins, carbohydrates, breast milk, and so on.
It's also worth keeping in mind that a lot of "official information" (such as the food pyramid, almost anything at all related to the "drug war" and more) is utter nonsense cobbled up for reasons entirely unrelated to your well-being, or lack thereof, and that places ranging from GNC to Walmart have been caught red-handed selling what amounts to sawdust in bottles labeled as various herbs.
It seems to me that the appropriate behavior WRT one's health at this time is moderation in all consumables of interest, avoidance of things your taste or immune system makes clear to you aren't positive experiences for you, while only really staying clear of things that science has actually nailed to the wall as seriously harmful, such as cocaine, tobacco, meth, any addictive substances (there really aren't all that many of these, it isn't much of an inconvenience to avoid them even if you're into drugs as entertainment.) Pay attention to your body's response to things you ingest. It's a simple enough idea, but one a lot of people simply don't take seriously. Drinking enough to ruin your next morning? Might be an important message in that for you...
Get regular exercise -- I'm talking every day -- and don't sit at a desk (or anywhere else) for too long at any one time.
Couple all that with carefully avoiding the legal system (inasmuch as the government spends a great deal of effort trying to turn your personal choices into excuses for jailing you) and you might survive long enough to see science figure out how we actually work -- and I suspect that will arrive at nearly the same time as solutions for the various downsides of this and that.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Jump to a conclusion that makes you look smart and the article look stupid!
and if you can fit it in... Blame Obama for the whole thing!
You say that like it's a real thing with alcohol.
The reality is that the needle pretty much swings right or left.
Is that if you don't like or agree with the results you see today, just sit tight and another, equally-reputable university/journal/whatever will publish a paper next week with the exact opposite of these findings.
I'm sitting here lone with a barrel of industrial grade cleaning alcohol and a tube. My life is going to be lone but it's forever! Italian wine industry tells me so while they are infiltrating the media with anti-white wine messages targeting the white wines of Germany and Austria.
Someday soon, there will be the acknowledgement that - including taking our microbiomes into account - we only *look* the same but there are some weird cohorts below the racial and familial but above the DNA level that finally answers why studies like this and the same studies re-ran can be such a 'random walk' in their near-useless results.
~ Your cholesterol level is 500! Wait, you haven't been using sunblock, have you?
~ Umm, well, yeah.
~ You IDIOT!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Aspartame poisoning has been so debunked it's not even funny. Do you know how many cans of diet coke you have to drink to actually have a risk of hitting the LD50 of aspartame? Let me put it this way: You'll die from water poisoning, or possibly caffeine poisoning first.
Perhaps for hot drinks people have reasoning to be leery, but if your body is hot enough to break down aspartame to formaldehyde, you're dead. It's fine for anything served cold.
But go ahead, show me evidence to the contrary.
And I say this knowing that most people use alcohol in moderation (1-2 drinks per day). But I also know that alcohol is a massive problem in society. Have a read at this --> http://ncadd.org/index.php/in-...
If you include deaths from drunk driving then alcohol is the single biggest killer in the United States - ahead of tobacco and all other illicit drugs (cocaine, heroin, etc.) combined. Not to mention assaults, etc. that are often fueled at least in part by alcohol.
The notion that alcohol has health benefits is complete bunk. Red wine is probably the only one that can even make a case for it, although the amount of anti oxidants present in wine are minuscule at best. Certainly nowhere near that amounts that you would find in dark berry fruits such as cranberries and blueberries.
So what of the negative effects? Have a read --> http://www.webmd.com/mental-he...
Alcohol is toxic to human liver cells. If you have 1-2 drinks a day then the amount of toxins are negligible. More than that and there is a good chance that eventually you will develop cirrhosis of the liver. Or cardiovascular disease. Or certain types of cancer.
I'm not saying that we should ban alcohol or that everyone should stop drinking. It's your body - do with it as you will. But I simply cannot accept the premise that alcohol is "healthy" in any way.
A biotoxin that kills basically all known living cells isn't good to drink? YOU DON'T SAY?! By the way, I've noticed a pattern. The doctors that say drinking a glass of wine per night if good for you are also incredibly fat and thus complete hypocrites and possibly alcoholics.
people born with the condition Phenylketonuria don't need to hit any sort of LD50 for aspartame, even tiny amounts will cause a violent reaction.
As someone prone to hypoglycaemia, I have to avoid aspartame because it is known through peer-reviewed study to cause wild fluctuations in serum insulin, and I don't want to take the risk of going full-blown diabetic because of something I could have avoided. It also causes me crippling migraines that through process of elimination I have managed to discount EVERY OTHER POSSIBLE CAUSE.
There's your evidence.
For reference, here's some double-blind studies:
RB Lipton et al. Aspartame as a dietary trigger of headache. Headache 1988 29: 90-92.
KA Lapierre et al. The neuropsychiatric effects of aspartame in normal volunteers. Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 1990 30: 454-460.
SS Schiffman et al. Aspartame and susceptibility to headache. New England Journal of Medicine 1987 317: 1181-1185.
SM Koehler, A Garos. The effect of aspartame on migraine headache. Headache 1988 28: 10-13.
SK Van Den Eeden et al. Aspartame ingestion and headaches: a randomized crossover trial. Neurology 1994 44: 1787-1793.
LC Newman, RB Lipton. Migraine MLT-down: an unusual presentation of migraine in patients with aspartame-triggered headaches. Headache 2001 41: 899-901
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
The direct health benefits of earlier alcoholic drinks don't apply today. That's true. (Historically, that stuff tasted terrible too and nobody was really drinking it for pleasure/social reasons.) And yeah, maybe those studies about red wine having beneficial anti-oxidant properties is over-blown too?
But there's little doubt in my mind that a beer or two helps people reduce their stress levels, which is certainly a positive. Like all things, I think the bottom line is that alcohol in moderation is going to be just fine. Too much of it and then yeah, it's detrimental to health.
Aspartame doesn't appear to be directly toxic, but artificial sugars trick your brain into thinking you are going to get sugary goodness, and there can be negative effects if there isn't negative, including weight gain.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Yet another parents-mob group against drinking alcohol. Sigh....
Alcohol can help prevent strokes, and heart attacks. It thins the blood and prevents clotting. Any moron that's drank a beer or two before getting a tattoo knows this. Or anyone that has deep vein thrombosis (me) knows for a fact that it helps deal with clots.
But then I didn't pay much attention to the studies this is telling me may be wrong either. I was going to drink it either way and I think we all know that. Mmmmm, Beer!
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Aspartame... ant killer
How do you kill ants with aspartame? I was unable to persuade them to eat it.
Thalidomide... give the go ahead to reintroduce it...
IIRC only one isomer of thalidomide does bad things.
The resurgence of poliomyelitis... Lou Gehrig's Disease, ALS, Motor Neurone Disease, Post Polio Residual Paralysis... actually caused by the live polio vaccine
Well, everyone with those very rare diseases certainly had the vaccine. But so did everyone without those diseases, except the ones with polio.
Can't you at least check snopes before you start spouting off?
http://www.snopes.com/media/no...
"~unless you're intolerant, allergic or a PKU sufferer".
There are numbers greater than zero, and high enough to not be anomalous to directly disprove your claim of the benign nature of aspartame. However, not enough double blind studies have been done, most importantly by those seeking to prove the absolute safety (as so often claimed) of the chemical for the food industry, so in the absence of such studies and in the face of plenty of anecdotal evidence and suggestion by small studies (100 sampled) that it is in fact harmful in more ways than it is beneficial, I would tend to err on the side of caution. What you do is up to you. I would ask that you read the studies for yourself before jumping bandwagons and decide for yourself if the evidence of harm directly attributable to aspartame is significant enough to warrant a nudge away from the partyline.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
You can't accept the premise that alcohol can be healthy in moderation because it is harmful when used to excess?
apart from getting you drunk, that is.
Wine and beer, on the other hand... those are beneficial for your health. And they only contain 14% and 5% alcohol (respectively).
Aspartame doesn't appear to be directly toxic, but artificial sugars trick your brain into thinking you are going to get sugary goodness, and there can be negative effects if there isn't negative, including weight gain.
That is One of the common myths around artificial sweetners, your brain doesn't actually have much if anything to do with your insulin/sugar levels (apart from you wanting more sweet things). blood sugars/insulin etc are purely a chemical process controlled by the pancreas.
Well said, heavy drinking is a big problem, but banning it causes worse problems.
So, I guess we will muddle on as best we can.
You shut your lying trap, bmj! I only pay attention to articles that say what I want to do is healthy!
and in most places with very poor water quality it's truth. Hell look at India - high levels of chlorea and menigitus. Don't drink the water as it'll kill you unless you boil it first then filter it to clean out the arsenic, lead and other contaminents
My point wasn't that aspartame was harmless. My point was that it fucks up the metabolism even for those whose body handles it normally. I hate aspartame and basically all other artificial sweeteners. They don't fool my taste buds (they taste metallic and syrup-like to me), and they often leave me lightheaded. I am actually quite bothered by the prevalence of them, since it's rare around here to find chewing gum with just real sugar and they will often be placed next to the 'real' food with minimal labeling.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The available data seems to suggest that moderate alcohol usage is healthier than abstaining completely. If someone is saying that something is inherently good or bad for you, they are almost certainly a misinformed idiot. What is and isn't good for your health is very much contextual. Rat poison (warfarin) has medical usage as an anti-coagulant, but it obviously isn't something for a typical person to be downing on a Tuesday afternoon. Alcohol has a number of effects. Depending on the amount and your own personal body chemistry, drinking an alcoholic beverage can either help or hurt your health.
As a general rule to be applied to everyone, the best advice regarding alcohol would probably be to listen to your body. If you feel better when you drink a certain amount of alcohol through the week, then it's probably okay for you to keep it up. If you feel worse when you drink a certain amount of alcohol through the week, then you should probably reduce or stop your drinking.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists abstain from alcohol and tobaco. Both populations live appreciably longer than any other non-smoking group of Caucasians in the USA.
The problem seems to be that sweetness without calories confuses the part of the brain that puts together sweetness and calories, resulting in your brain not knowing when it's had enough.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"Beneficial associations between low intensity alcohol consumption and all cause mortality may in part be attributable to inappropriate selection of a referent group and weak adjustment for confounders. Selection biases may also play a part."
So, why is YOUR study automatically better than all of the other studies that came before you? This is why I generally ignore any 'study' that shows this is good or that is bad until there are LOTS of studies done on it that all say the same thing.
look for a product called "xylitol". It's a natural sugar alcohol that occurs in herbs such as spearmint. It's also nutritionally negative (it contains fewer calories than it requires for metabolism - which the human body does readily) and the ONLY byproducts are carbon dioxide and water. There is no formaldehyde or methanol interstage.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
>people born with the condition Phenylketonuria don't need to hit any sort of LD50 for aspartame, even tiny amounts will cause a violent reaction.
And people with serious peanut allergies can barely sniff a peanut before their throat closes up. That doesn't mean peanuts are poison.
>As someone prone to hypoglycaemia
You have a disease and need to be careful it doesn't cause you trouble. Guess what, I have lactose intolerance. I have to be careful not to eat stuff with a lot of milk in it or else I'll have the worst shits you don't ever want to be near. That also doesn't mean milk is poison.
Your studies have been debunked time after time after time. They're older than hell for a reason. They were done poorly and are thoroughly debunked. You even had to go back to 1973. Good Lord.
I'd list all the cites, but why not click them yourself?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame#Safety_and_health_effects
"Aspartame is one of the most rigorously tested food ingredients to date"
That sums it up.
As for headaches, that shitty study also proves that oranges, cheese, bacon, and red wine would be "poison", since they are listed in it as headache triggers. Seriously. Oranges = poison.
True, reading a study that actually looks at drinking in moderation and finds that it doesn't confer benefits w/r/t mortality for almost anyone doesn't do much for stress levels. Unless you are a teetotaler who's into schadenfreude.
...if I would live longer if I quit drinking, eating red meat, and smoking the occasional cigar. He said it would only seem that way.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Hic... ssf sh s jty ,ilmln k 8bt v f b cmvbhkh , b i.bgui bu g nvyj tu biy lguo;oi fj fghjb f, ...hic!
I'm aware of xylitol, but it seems to have largely gone out of vogue, at least with the locally available brands. Even stuff like JuicyFruit that has actual sugar in it adds aspartame to make the flavor last longer in exchange for making the flavor awful.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
yeah, it's expensive though I'm at a loss as to why - it's water soluble hence not that difficult to extract from mint oil, the plant grows like a weed - seriously, plant just one and wait a year, it'll drop rhizomes everywhere it can and grow to eight feet. You'll go from nice smelling edible houseplant to nice smelling Triffid invasion.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
1. I drink to get that little lift or buzz 2. Sometimes I drink to get hammered 3. Sometimes I drink because you can't trust the water 4. I drink because I like the variations of what I'm drinking. I love beer and I like some wines. White Russians are good and straight shots of tequila are good too. 5. I drink to be social and I'm one social beast... as for the health benefits, I really don't factor those in when I'm getting my drink on.
Paul E. Bahre
"The available data seems to suggest that moderate alcohol usage is healthier than abstaining completely." - And it appears that many of those studies were funded by the beer and wine industry. So it's not exactly objective.
I just challenge the assertion that alcohol is healthy in any amount. It is toxic to the human liver and I don't see how ingesting something toxic is healthy. The risks far outweigh the benefits, and the benefit claims are dubious at best.
"What is and isn't good for your health is very much contextual. Rat poison (warfarin) has medical usage as an anti-coagulant, but it obviously isn't something for a typical person to be downing on a Tuesday afternoon." - You are correct about warfarin but if alcohol were beneficial would physicians not be prescribing it for medicinal use? If someone were omega-3 deficient would a doctor suggest that they drink more red wine? Not likely. Although you might get very small amounts of omega-3 from wine it's far better to get it from food or vitamins.
All I'm saying is that whatever perceived benefits received from alcohol can be attained in greater quantities in other ways without any of the proven risks of alcohol intake.
For a long time folk have said that moderation and alcohol go hand in hand.
For a number of reasons the first 1/2 to 1 standard drinks has a place at the table in my mind.
About the second standard drink most of the advantage is undone and by the 4th for sure
the only advantage might be social lubrication. But that is a slippery slope that gets
increasingly dangerous.
Adding the smallest amount of alcohol vastly changes the way water and
common fats interact. Surface tension changes and the ability to emulsify
fats so a lot of surface area for digestion is available improves. This solubility/ surface
interaction can also apply to fats in motion in the blood and how they interact
with plaque in the arteries. Mostly it has interaction with bile and the fat in the gut.
A number of common bacteria in the gut generate some alcohol but as a rule
this is quite small. Some cases of walking intoxication from gut bacteria are known.
Given the legal consequences of alcohol I find this biologic reality and lack of data on
this combined with wanting instrumentation precision and accuracy to be appalling.
The lack of science in this area is deafening.
Anyone that has noticed the burbling of a beer fermenter or the tooting of a
person with lots of healthy fiber in their diet should realize that bacteria
and bacteria byproducts happen.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Forget Alcohol; It may be good or bad;
Focus on Cancer; It's really really BAD;
Casteism
I think you are throwing the word 'toxic' around a bit too lightly. It's important to remember that a lot of the things widely considered facts about alcohol today were basically just propaganda based on loose science at best (largely using people who considered beer whiskey and wine to be food groups). Animals have been consuming alcohol for a very long time, and humans have an exceptional number of adaptations that made us better at drinking alcohol, relative to our mass, than most other creatures. Capsaicin is a chemical certain plants evolved that irritates mammal tissue but doesn't bother birds, which results in more intact seeds traveling further distances. However, humans have learned to tolerate the pain and it has shown a few health benefits. We are complicated creatures, and to pretend that we aren't is almost certainly going to be disastrous.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"I think you are throwing the word 'toxic' around a bit too lightly" - Well, perhaps. It's just how I interpret it.
"We are complicated creatures, and to pretend that we aren't is almost certainly going to be disastrous." - Indeed.
We can agree to disagree. I will commend you on staying civil and not resorting to personal attacks, as so often happens.
My folks smoked all their adult lives, the father died at 89, the mother at 76. They had one ritual every day: have a moderate drink (one jigger of scotch, later tequila) everyday at 5PM. They never were sick, never got cancer. The mother's lungs were said to be about the size of large grapefruits when she died. We also made chocolate fudge almost weekly, but lately the experts (so called) are saying that chocolate makes no health difference. They also drank several cups of coffee in the morning.