I like to have an occasional drink. I suspect that mild drinking on the order of 1 glass of wine per day is not likely to cause harm and would probably be something that a doctor wouldnt feel bad recommending as being generally safe to possible stress reduction health benefits.
That said, there is plenty of research suggesting not drinking is healthier for you and non drinkers are much less apt to diseases like cancer et al. I also think there are plenty of folks who either dont want to or cant stop drinking that would include some doctors that would not want to suggest not drinking at all.
I definitely notice anxiety increases either the day after or the night of drinking. In some ways I could see it causing a feedback loop, but I also somewhat enjoy what I would consider a jolt of reflection during those times. Am I treating people with kindness? Am I too focused on the wrong thing? That said, as Ive gotten older, I think curbing to completely stopping drinking is the trend for me.
It's funny that the only research he mentions is about the positive effects of drinking:
> Research has shown a lower risk of ischaemic events (heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes) among middle-aged and older, light-to-moderate drinkers. But the detrimental effects of alcohol far outweigh any potential protective benefits. An older person will get much greater health benefits from being physically active and eating healthy food than from alcohol.
... what? Someone should tell this guy that you can both have a drink and exercise. To paint it as a choice between the two is silly.
> alcohol doesn’t just harm the drinker; it’s related to violence on the street and in the family.
Having a glass of wine does not lead to "violence on the street and in the family" -- this is "War on Drugs" levels of disinformation.
I personally don't drink much (a small fraction of the average alcohol consumption) but I disagree strongly with that wording. While it may not be wrong scientifically speaking that there isn't any level of alcohol consumption with no negative effects whatsoever, using the same thinking you could also say things like "there is no safe distance to ride a bicycle". This kind of black and white approach has absolutely no place coming from a supposed public health authority like the WHO.
Furthermore, occasional, moderate alcohol consumption has pretty minimal risks, all things considered, and eliminating every little thing in your life with low risk would leave you with an impossibly dull existence. You wanna live the safest possible life? Don't go anywhere (cars are terribly dangerous and biking has its risks too), don't have too much of a social life (other people can infect you with all kinds of things, even in normal years the flu kills 700k people/year), don't go near water, don't even go anywhere you might slip (fall deaths kill tens of thousands annually in the US!) And don't even think of running off to a farm somewhere to escape it all (more than half of all workplace fatalities occur on farms!) At some point, you just have to live, dammit, because living life in fear is not living life at all.
Safe from what exactly? I don’t want my life to be exclusively a maximizing game for length of life & wealth. I’m going to die to matter what, I certainly don’t want to become reliant on alcohol or have an abusive relationship but I would much rather do the things I enjoy with my life than live the most cautious, healthiest life of avoiding fun that is a little bit bad for me.
I think we can all agree that heavy alcohol consumption is bad for your health. However I'm pretty skeptical that a moderate amount of alcohol consumption, say 1-2 drinks per week, is any higher risk to your health than the many other activities we engage in to live a happy and engaging life, as other commentators have pointed out.
Anecdotally it seems that the people who take these things to the extremes (i.e. never have even a single drink because drinking alcohol is bad for you) tend to stress out about a lot of other things as well. Obviously if someone doesn't drink because they find the effects unpleasant that's different, but I'm talking about the kinds of people who for example are overly concerned about microplastics (to the point of not eating any food that has been stored in a plastic container), or air quality (co2 monitors in every room, etc), or diet (will not touch anything with nitrates, only eat unprocessed foods, etc).
To a point, yes all of these things are legitimately harmful to your health, but having this kind of mentality is also not great for your well-being. Really perhaps the highest health-yield lifestyle change they could make is to relax a bit more and try not to get stressed out as much through meditation/mindfulness
Not sure why, but SV in particular seems to attract a lot of people with this kind of mentality.
Don't forget you will get some reduction in sleep quality even from just 1 glass. You may fall asleep more easily but it is not as restorative. I really struggle with that as I get older.
Sometimes getting drunk mid day seems just the tonic for me. Drink too much too late and your sleep is nuked, drink mid day and most of the effects seem out of my system by the time I go to bed.
For me it's a good way to reset myself back to some baseline. Probably not healthy I'm sure, but I don't think life is a competition to see who can live the most perfectly, so I don't worry about it too much.
What's interesting is that alcohol will probably kill far more people this decade than Covid or opioids, yet very little attention gets paid to this. It's an enormous negative influence on our society, yet there's a lot of social pressure pushing for alcohol use, and we allow advertisements that encourage it. I wonder if in the future we'll look back on this the way we now look back at how ubiquitous smoking was a few decades ago.
I doubt it. We've been using alcohol for thousands of years. COVID-19 for example has 0 societal benefits. And although opioids do, they were abused and that's what people are upset about.
Alcohol deaths may have a high mean but lower variance, covid deaths have an unknown mean and potentially a much higher variance. So we have to prevent it from blowing up before seeing proof it could.
The powers that be will ban alcohol and encourage replacing it with weed. Bezos & co. will swill their wine much more contentedly when the population's nice and doped up, rather than drunk and wild.
There's an interesting discussion around alcohol and hormetic stress. I can't provide a good summary of it in a comment but the wikipedia page is a good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis.
"an immune protein called Interleukin 10, or IL-10 [...] By boosting IL-10 signaling in the brain, [...] scientists could reverse the aberrant effects [...] a stark reduction in anxiety-like behaviors and motivation to drink alcohol."
As usual, the 'in mice' caveat applies, but if there is a compound which can both reduce anxiety and motivation to drink that works on humans without terrible side effects, it would certainly be huge.
Interesting. My psychiatrist pointed out at one point that drinking can cause increased anxiety for several days. Ever since I’ve paid attention to it and she’s definitely right - days where my anxiety is higher follows drinking 2-3 days before.
If I can notice it after one night out, it doesn’t surprise me that long term the two could be highly linked.
> Ever since I’ve paid attention to it and she’s definitely right - days where my anxiety is higher follows drinking 2-3 days before.
Yup I've noticed this as well. At first I thought I was drinking too often, so I didn't drink at all for ~3 months and tried again. Same thing. I'm "hungover" for a day and more anxious than usual for 1-2 days after that.
I've made a point to only drink anything on Friday now to avoid anxiety at work
TBH the greatest thing I ever found to help was to drink so much over such a long period of time that you get the most amazingly horrific withdrawal symptoms. Sober 6 years because I don't like to drink any more. YMMV
> To determine the impact of CeA IL-10 overexpression on dependence-induced drinking, a cohort of mice (N = 32) was injected with control or IL-10 virus as described below in ‘Viral injections in the brain’ 4 weeks prior to starting the 2BC-CIE paradigm.
Interesting that "anti-inflammatory" is mentioned several times in this short piece.
I used to be a moderate drinker, having 1-2 per day several times a week. After stopping completely about 8 or 9 months ago, I no longer have acid reflux or that burning feeling in the back of my throat from spicy food.
This was an unexpected and wonderful result, to say nothing of dramatic weight loss and other benefits.
I used to think there could be health benefits to moderate drinking, but in retrospect it was only a justification for unhealthy behavior.
An altered immune response makes sense, given what alcohol puts your body through.
About a couple months in. First noticed that my occasional bouts of difficulty swallowing (spicy/acidic foods) completely disappeared. Later noticed I wasn't using antacids anymore.
I believe it's more than just alcohol itself though. Alcohol leads to eating more food (especially late at night) among other unhealthy behaviors that contribute to an overall feeling of an inflamed body.
I had the same experience and these kinds of health benefits started after a couple of weeks of stopping alcohol consumption and continued to get better for a couple of months until I've reached a point where they haven't been issues at all (So far at least, about 18 months).
It wasn't obvious how much use or how chronic the use had to be - is it implied to be chronic heavy drinking or just the glass of wine a day that causes the changes?
Apparently enough alcohol exposure to show addictive behaviour: the study used mice with the "2BC-CIE" exposure method:
> To induce alcohol dependence, we used the two bottle choice - chronic intermittent ethanol vapor exposure (2BC-CIE) paradigm, as previously described (Patel et al. 2019). This method consistently produces alcohol dependence in C57BL/6J mice (Becker and Lopez 2004; Bajo et al. 2016; Huitron-Resendiz et al. 2018), as exhibited by escalated alcohol intake, anxiety-like behavior and reward deficits. Briefly, mice were exposed to limited access alcohol (15% w/v) and water - two bottle choice (2BC) sessions followed by either chronic intermittent alcohol (CIE) exposure in vapor chambers (La Jolla Alcohol Research, La Jolla, CA), to induce alcohol dependence (dependent mice) or control air exposure (non-dependent control mice) in identical chambers. Naïve mice were not exposed to any alcohol either by drinking or vapor exposure.
Any suggestions for alcohol-free things to do in Covid-era NYC after hours in autumn and winter when you live by yourself and have spent all day at your desk in your bedroom?
With a bit of commute it could fill up to 2 hours of your day and have a plethora of benefits. Once you get into the whole "getting better than yesterday" thing, it's exciting to go train every day and improve your "stats".
It's still debated. The reason people think a glass per day might be helpful is observational studies, which show that people who don't drink are slightly worse off than those who drink a little. However, you can imagine how these can be confounded (e.g., not drinking because of terminal illness or some other exogenous harm). It's hard to properly adjust your model to fully eliminate this sort of problem.
In contrast, Mendelian randomization studies generally suggest that there is no safe level of alcohol intake.
I am mostly convinced by the MR studies and think that alcohol is harmful for physical health (while being mindful that physical health is just one of many competing things that people value).
I think it mostly comes down to having a standard routine, whether it's a nice glass of wine with dinner (implying a regular dinner) or something similar.
Most of the times people say the secret to my health is "i do this every day" I think that implies not having too much chaos in life and a stable environment
"In contrast, Mendelian randomization studies generally suggest that there is no safe level of alcohol intake."
I believe this is the case. The idea that moderate alcohol consumption is "healthy" or beneficial in some way is a misunderstanding of their data.
What we see is the following:
People who drink no alcohol at all and people who abuse alcohol have, generally, poorer health outcomes than people who drink, but do not abuse, alcohol.
The poor health outcomes for the alcohol abusers needs no explanation.
It is the poor health outcomes of the abstainers that is misunderstood: they're simply not robust, or constitutionally enabled, to drink even small amounts of alcohol without feeling bad.
So my conclusion is that the abstainers are not having poorer health outcomes because of the absence of alcohol - they're having poorer health outcomes anyway.
One of the main researchers behind all the health buzz around red wine, was revealed as a fraud. Having falsified data at least 145 times. I guess he wouldn't have had to do that if red wine was healthy.
Quite likely it's just something people like to hear, so it is being told to them. I vaguely recall that correlation between red wine consumption and longevity disappears if controlled for wealth. Can't find any links tho.
I've also heard that the control, those who don't drink, are often not drinking because they used to be alcoholics thus scewing the longevity stats for non-drinkers.
I have found zero medical societies/health institutes that recommend someone begin drinking alcohol who currently abstains for any reason. If you already drink alcohol, consuming a single serving of red wine per day is probably not detrimental.
The pop science articles (think NYT, etc.) love to lead with clickbait like "Wine could extend your life by X years" but from what I can tell alcohol in the west, to the extent that it extends lifespans, does so by thinning blood, which is needed because of our poor (high fat) diet.
I'd say that there's probably also sufficient evidence of no safe level of sobriety, either. Those studies always annoy me. It's kind of like asking the question: how many times can I smack my head safely?. Well, none—but if you spend your whole life concerned about it you're probably not going to have a great time.
(Speaking as one who apparently probably has had to have given up alcohol for the rest of my life because my pancreas decided it wants me to die)
Intuitively I would imagine it depends on the person. If you’re a person with a weak liver or kidney, there is probably no positive. If you’re a person with thicker than average blood, I could understand how alcohol might alleviate the amount of work the heart has to do, at least for a little while.
Are sulfites thought of as generally being bad for you? I was under the impression they were pretty neutral unless one happens to be in the very small group of people who are particularly sensitive to them.
After not drinking alcohol for more than a year, I just feel alcohol is such a drag on life. A lot of mental energy and time consumed in alcohol related activities. Planning, buying, drinking and recovery from hangover if you had too many. Not to mention physical effects like upset stomach, feeling cranky next day, headaches etc.
Just like we don't like to overwork, so our body. Not processing alcohol and its side effects - few less things to do for our body. I feel very calm most of the time and less anxious than before. I also didn't fell sick in last one year. No visit to doc.
Above all net positive in mental and physical wellbeing are too good to have one or two drinks.
Readit News
That said, there is plenty of research suggesting not drinking is healthier for you and non drinkers are much less apt to diseases like cancer et al. I also think there are plenty of folks who either dont want to or cant stop drinking that would include some doctors that would not want to suggest not drinking at all.
I definitely notice anxiety increases either the day after or the night of drinking. In some ways I could see it causing a feedback loop, but I also somewhat enjoy what I would consider a jolt of reflection during those times. Am I treating people with kindness? Am I too focused on the wrong thing? That said, as Ive gotten older, I think curbing to completely stopping drinking is the trend for me.
Some doctors would say a different thing.
“This might not be the answer people want to hear, but there is no safe level for drinking alcohol.”
https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention...
> Research has shown a lower risk of ischaemic events (heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes) among middle-aged and older, light-to-moderate drinkers. But the detrimental effects of alcohol far outweigh any potential protective benefits. An older person will get much greater health benefits from being physically active and eating healthy food than from alcohol.
... what? Someone should tell this guy that you can both have a drink and exercise. To paint it as a choice between the two is silly.
> alcohol doesn’t just harm the drinker; it’s related to violence on the street and in the family.
Having a glass of wine does not lead to "violence on the street and in the family" -- this is "War on Drugs" levels of disinformation.
Furthermore, occasional, moderate alcohol consumption has pretty minimal risks, all things considered, and eliminating every little thing in your life with low risk would leave you with an impossibly dull existence. You wanna live the safest possible life? Don't go anywhere (cars are terribly dangerous and biking has its risks too), don't have too much of a social life (other people can infect you with all kinds of things, even in normal years the flu kills 700k people/year), don't go near water, don't even go anywhere you might slip (fall deaths kill tens of thousands annually in the US!) And don't even think of running off to a farm somewhere to escape it all (more than half of all workplace fatalities occur on farms!) At some point, you just have to live, dammit, because living life in fear is not living life at all.
Anecdotally it seems that the people who take these things to the extremes (i.e. never have even a single drink because drinking alcohol is bad for you) tend to stress out about a lot of other things as well. Obviously if someone doesn't drink because they find the effects unpleasant that's different, but I'm talking about the kinds of people who for example are overly concerned about microplastics (to the point of not eating any food that has been stored in a plastic container), or air quality (co2 monitors in every room, etc), or diet (will not touch anything with nitrates, only eat unprocessed foods, etc).
To a point, yes all of these things are legitimately harmful to your health, but having this kind of mentality is also not great for your well-being. Really perhaps the highest health-yield lifestyle change they could make is to relax a bit more and try not to get stressed out as much through meditation/mindfulness
Not sure why, but SV in particular seems to attract a lot of people with this kind of mentality.
Drink to relax or drink for fun, but don't expect anyone to tell you to drink for your health.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
For me it's a good way to reset myself back to some baseline. Probably not healthy I'm sure, but I don't think life is a competition to see who can live the most perfectly, so I don't worry about it too much.
"an immune protein called Interleukin 10, or IL-10 [...] By boosting IL-10 signaling in the brain, [...] scientists could reverse the aberrant effects [...] a stark reduction in anxiety-like behaviors and motivation to drink alcohol."
As usual, the 'in mice' caveat applies, but if there is a compound which can both reduce anxiety and motivation to drink that works on humans without terrible side effects, it would certainly be huge.
If I can notice it after one night out, it doesn’t surprise me that long term the two could be highly linked.
Yup I've noticed this as well. At first I thought I was drinking too often, so I didn't drink at all for ~3 months and tried again. Same thing. I'm "hungover" for a day and more anxious than usual for 1-2 days after that.
I've made a point to only drink anything on Friday now to avoid anxiety at work
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4292849/
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02061293
I used to be a moderate drinker, having 1-2 per day several times a week. After stopping completely about 8 or 9 months ago, I no longer have acid reflux or that burning feeling in the back of my throat from spicy food.
This was an unexpected and wonderful result, to say nothing of dramatic weight loss and other benefits.
I used to think there could be health benefits to moderate drinking, but in retrospect it was only a justification for unhealthy behavior.
An altered immune response makes sense, given what alcohol puts your body through.
How long did it take before you noticed this change?
I believe it's more than just alcohol itself though. Alcohol leads to eating more food (especially late at night) among other unhealthy behaviors that contribute to an overall feeling of an inflamed body.
> To induce alcohol dependence, we used the two bottle choice - chronic intermittent ethanol vapor exposure (2BC-CIE) paradigm, as previously described (Patel et al. 2019). This method consistently produces alcohol dependence in C57BL/6J mice (Becker and Lopez 2004; Bajo et al. 2016; Huitron-Resendiz et al. 2018), as exhibited by escalated alcohol intake, anxiety-like behavior and reward deficits. Briefly, mice were exposed to limited access alcohol (15% w/v) and water - two bottle choice (2BC) sessions followed by either chronic intermittent alcohol (CIE) exposure in vapor chambers (La Jolla Alcohol Research, La Jolla, CA), to induce alcohol dependence (dependent mice) or control air exposure (non-dependent control mice) in identical chambers. Naïve mice were not exposed to any alcohol either by drinking or vapor exposure.
A diagram on a similar study can be found at https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-General-CIE-protocol-f... - for the diagram from this study, see page 4.
With a bit of commute it could fill up to 2 hours of your day and have a plethora of benefits. Once you get into the whole "getting better than yesterday" thing, it's exciting to go train every day and improve your "stats".
In contrast, Mendelian randomization studies generally suggest that there is no safe level of alcohol intake.
I am mostly convinced by the MR studies and think that alcohol is harmful for physical health (while being mindful that physical health is just one of many competing things that people value).
Most of the times people say the secret to my health is "i do this every day" I think that implies not having too much chaos in life and a stable environment
I believe this is the case. The idea that moderate alcohol consumption is "healthy" or beneficial in some way is a misunderstanding of their data.
What we see is the following:
People who drink no alcohol at all and people who abuse alcohol have, generally, poorer health outcomes than people who drink, but do not abuse, alcohol.
The poor health outcomes for the alcohol abusers needs no explanation.
It is the poor health outcomes of the abstainers that is misunderstood: they're simply not robust, or constitutionally enabled, to drink even small amounts of alcohol without feeling bad.
So my conclusion is that the abstainers are not having poorer health outcomes because of the absence of alcohol - they're having poorer health outcomes anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipak_K._Das
The pop science articles (think NYT, etc.) love to lead with clickbait like "Wine could extend your life by X years" but from what I can tell alcohol in the west, to the extent that it extends lifespans, does so by thinning blood, which is needed because of our poor (high fat) diet.
(Speaking as one who apparently probably has had to have given up alcohol for the rest of my life because my pancreas decided it wants me to die)
Just like we don't like to overwork, so our body. Not processing alcohol and its side effects - few less things to do for our body. I feel very calm most of the time and less anxious than before. I also didn't fell sick in last one year. No visit to doc.
Above all net positive in mental and physical wellbeing are too good to have one or two drinks.