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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!
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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
Good Bourbon and Whiskey increase the QUALITY of life dramatically.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So if she drives a car, and is pulled over -- what then? Is she similarly not responsible for her actions? Or does alcohol's ability to invalidate someone's decision making ability only apply to sex?
I would have thought it was all the walking. Seriously they walk or take public transportation everywhere. Also even though their food is very rich it isn't the laoded with fillers stuff you find in the US but instead it is made with real components of food.
Time to offend someone
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.
I think you forgot the line about the cosmonauts.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
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.
So now men are expected to be mind readers, sussing out a woman's mental state? Are you serious. We're notoriously bad at figuring this out.
The real problem that YOU'RE tuning out is that women should be treated equally under the law. If a man were to be 'coerced' into drinking, he'd be responsible for his actions (up to, and including calling a fucking cab.) Women should not be excused for poor decision making simply because of consuming a few too many free drinks from the shady dude at the end of the bar.
Since Slashdot is full of pedantic twats, the situation I am NOT describing is a guy having sex with a girl who's passed out. That's rape, and that's wrong. but a girl who's had a few too many drinks is just as responsible for her body and her actions as a guy in the same situation. Either women are equal to men in terms of agency and responsibility, or they're not. The SJW machine does not get to pick and choose elements of equality to go by.