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."

Comments

I love you man

[goombah99]

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.

Brittish Medical Journal, HA!

[unixcorn]

Consuming alcohol certainly does improve life expectancy. Drinking is the only thing keeping me from killing someone almost every day!

Don't believe anything

[ColdWetDog]

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.

The Pendulum

[ScooterComputer]

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.

Did they take suicide into account?

[Big Hairy Ian]

I'm just saying after a year in the control group I'd have been ready to end it all :)

Not a study

[Tx]

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.

Article debunked here...

[shabble]

http://velvetgloveironfist.blo...

The [lack of health benefits] claim is based on the fact that most of the risk reductions in the latter two tables are not statistically significant, except for women aged 65 and over. But there is a simple reason for this which some cynical people would call a trick. A relatively small sample has been taken and then split into different age groups, sexes and consumption levels to create dozens of even smaller samples. This, combined with the fact that there are relatively few never-drinkers to use as a reference, makes it very difficult to generate statistically significant results from any individual group.

If you combined the age groups, the reduction in mortality would reach significance. If you combined the genders, it would reach significance. If you combined the various different drinking levels and simply compared those who drank moderately with those who never drank, it would reach significance.

Re:Winston Churchill

[rogoshen1]

If you're sober and *happy* the morning after drinking; you drank in moderation.
(Or you're Irish.)