"...among 100 women who have less than one drink per week, about 17 will develop an alcohol-related cancer."
How does this insane number get unnoticed for so long. I really find it hard to believe. < One drink per day more dangerous than smoking a pack per day?
Edit: Ok, looked into the reference and it's a bit more subtle, though I can't find numbers for people not consuming anything, allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers.
"For example, a study of 226,162 individuals reported
that the absolute risk of developing any alcohol-related cancer over the lifespan of
a woman increases from approximately 16.5% (about 17 out of every 100 individuals)
for those who consume less than one drink per week, to 19.0% (19 out of every 100
individuals) for those who consume one drink daily on average to approximately
21.8% (about 22 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume two drinks
daily on average (Figure 5). That is about five more women out of 100 who would
have developed cancer due to a higher level of alcohol consumption."
Pretty significant, although "less than one drink per day" is a bit vague.
> allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers
I assume "alcohol related" in this context means that alcohol consumption increases the risk for those types of cancers, but you might still get those types of cancers even if you have never consumed any alcohol. And "less than once drink per week" is assumed to be almost the same as never consuming any alcohol at all, so 17% is the risk for women who never consume any alcohol.
Ah yes that must be it. 17% of women get these cancers, which are cancers that you have a higher risk of when drinking, but in this case they are not caused by drinking. I though < 1 per day is still drinking 6 special Belgian beers of 8-10 % alcohol on a Saturday so I thought, that's still quite something. At least I'd be heavily hung over the next day. I expected the baseline to just be "non-drinking".
I imagine it's because they count any cancer that could be caused by heavy-drinking as an "alcohol-related cancer", regardless of whether it was actually caused by alcohol or not.
How did they establish causality, or is it just a correlation potentially resulting from hidden variables? E.g., I do not know many smokers that do not touch alcohol, but plenty of non smoking abstinates. I also know plenty of sedentary obese heavy drinkers, where a higher percentage of the teetotal lot are more health obsessed in other ways.
They can't really. This data is almost always self-reported. They can attempt to eliminate common confounds but the data is very noisy. People have a lot of bias and inaccuracies when reporting the primary data. Even questions like "how many cigarettes per day/week/month/year do you smoke?" is subject to enormous inaccuracies. And the more questions re confounds which are asked, the more the noise, and the lower the number of questionnaires returned. And no matter how many confounds are included in the questionnaires, there are likely a thousand more which also matter. It's a fairly major issue in health research, and why we so often see headlines with conflicting findings every few years. See research into the health of eggs, for example. One should be highly skeptical of correlative health evidence at this point (and this is what most of the clickbait studies are). Instead, try to focus on the causative research where they identify specific genes or chemical mechanisms which cause outcomes. This is much more difficult, of course, and sparse.
If I recall correctly (and I might not), the idea that moderate drinking is healthy came from a faulty study where people who didn't drink at all were less healthy.
But the people who didn't drink at all often didn't drink because they self-excluded because of alcoholism or disease.
They weren't less healthy because they didn't drink, they didn't drink because they were less healthy.
I think you're broadly correct. But it's not one "faulty study". Every attempt to do a broad population-based study of alcohol use vs health outcomes finds this effect.
Controlling for why people don't drink is difficult to do without introducing bias. So there are still two competing theories: either the non-drinkers were a less healthy cohort to begin with, or moderate drinking has net health benefits.
The current WHO and IARC guidance is that there's no safe level of alcohol consumption that doesn't affect health and that alcohol is a clear carcinogen.
I wish the popular and completely absurd phrase "drugs and alcohol" would become outdated.
Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/whatever use healthy?"
>Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/
The "drugs" of alcohol and caffeine are more deeply integrated into public social life. Wine is mentioned in the Bible. Beer is sold at family outings like baseball games. The White House serves alcohol at official state dinners. President Obama had the famous "beer summit" https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+beer+summit&tbm=isch
Also, the existence of alcohol is caused by common natural processes. E.g. leaving apples or pears out on the kitchen counter too long and it naturally ferments which creates alcohol. I remember leaving some old pears in the kitchen and they eventually smelled like alcohol. I ate the pears and they definitely tasted like alcohol. The point is, alcohol can come into existence without even doing anything.
In contrast, the White House isn't handing out crystal meth or heroin at state dinners and there aren't any natural decaying processes that turns random food into ecstasy. Marijuana is natural but it isn't culturally accepted by the public. (President Clinton's "Yes, but I didn't inhale.")
Alcohol/caffeine have a lot of acceptable functional uses that the other drug categories don't have which is why society continues to talk about them as a separate class.
This is just the explanation of why it's "drugs and alcohol", and OP probably is well aware of that. The point is there's an argument to be made that even though history shaped this distinction it's harmful in some ways and progress should be made towards removing this partcular distinction and make it one based on science, e.g. a more fair classification based on toxicity/negative effects.
while the special treatment of alcohol is due to cultural,historical and commercial reasons, from a toxicology point of view it makes sense to treat them all separately. But I agree with your sentiment.
As far as I understand, the aftereffects of alcohol are due to its poisonous effects on organs, receptors and neurons. Drugs act on receptors directly by binding to them or restricting binding.
I don't understand your distinction. Alcohol affects receptor binding. Drugs' aftereffects are due to their poisonous effects on organs, receptors and neurons.
It's poison. If it never existed and someone tried to bring it to market today it would never fly. Should have skull and crossbones on it. Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline.
Sure, but so is society on our psychological health in general. Apparently, we're so anxious that a lot of us subconsciously feel we need to drink in order to just have an actual conversation.
Social anxiety is the true poison in society. Without it, we wouldn't drink nearly as much.
I have nuanced takes that don't agree with the take that I just wrote, but I find there to be a kernel of truth in it. I've fought social anxiety for years, and started out clubbing sober when I was 17. I did start drinking around 18 but mostly out of curiosity. It was only around the age of 30 that I really noticed that by then I did it to alleviate social anxiety. It caught me off-guard since my teenage self would scoff at the idea of it. I'd never need alcohol to alleviate my social anxiety, I'd just grit through it and talk to whomever I want. I think I just became a bit comfortable and soft. It's easy-ish for me to switch back though due to the reference experiences I have being a teen, dealing with social anxiety sober. So that's a huge blessing. Not everyone is that lucky.
In Italy, cigarette packs carry shocking pictures of diseased lungs, tumors, and other severe health effects, yet they fail to deter smokers. It’s essentially a cultural problem.
The existing ones, sure - you get used to it. But for non-smokers, that's a visible indicator of what you're bringing on yourself if you start smoking, so it has a deterring value. It helps you to present an abstract idea into something palpable that you can't ignore that easily.
Something has deterred smokers: the overall rate of adults who smoke has fallen from 50% to 25% in the last 50 years [0] - the source gives measures by gender and birth cohort, but you can aggregate them any way you want to see a big drop off.
I have been thinking why not take similar actions against alcohol as with tobacco. Add warning labels, increase taxes to huge number. Maybe ban anything but 94% pure stuff. No more any type of flavourings like they did with menthol.
No worries, all the kids ditched alcohol a while ago and are on n2o these days. On my morning walks I see a few 3L+ tanks discarded around my block of flats, there are new ones almost every day
Alcohol is a toxin that your liver must work to break down, provides empty calories with no nutritional value, disrupts sleep quality, impairs judgment and coordination, and even moderate consumption increases risks of cancer, heart disease, and other health problems. Any perceived benefits are vastly outweighed by these inherent harms.
You have argued one half of the equation, and stated that the other side cannot possibly add up that high.
You've just replicated the "Watchmaker" argument of creationists: "Random chance can't account for these low probabilities that we can't yet quantified."
This newer work seems basically to be arguing that the effect on the lefthand size of the curve is because drinking alcohol is so common that people who drink nothing are likely to be in poor health already.
Readit News
How does this insane number get unnoticed for so long. I really find it hard to believe. < One drink per day more dangerous than smoking a pack per day?
Edit: Ok, looked into the reference and it's a bit more subtle, though I can't find numbers for people not consuming anything, allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers.
"For example, a study of 226,162 individuals reported that the absolute risk of developing any alcohol-related cancer over the lifespan of a woman increases from approximately 16.5% (about 17 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume less than one drink per week, to 19.0% (19 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume one drink daily on average to approximately 21.8% (about 22 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume two drinks daily on average (Figure 5). That is about five more women out of 100 who would have developed cancer due to a higher level of alcohol consumption."
Pretty significant, although "less than one drink per day" is a bit vague.
I assume "alcohol related" in this context means that alcohol consumption increases the risk for those types of cancers, but you might still get those types of cancers even if you have never consumed any alcohol. And "less than once drink per week" is assumed to be almost the same as never consuming any alcohol at all, so 17% is the risk for women who never consume any alcohol.
That's like calling death from bleeding out "gun related death", because people who get shot often die of bleeding out.
Very poorly written I'd say.
This data is self reported of course, and "one drink daily" are people who actually drink a lot more.
If you actually drink less than daily, very little to worry about AFAICT.
But the people who didn't drink at all often didn't drink because they self-excluded because of alcoholism or disease.
They weren't less healthy because they didn't drink, they didn't drink because they were less healthy.
Controlling for why people don't drink is difficult to do without introducing bias. So there are still two competing theories: either the non-drinkers were a less healthy cohort to begin with, or moderate drinking has net health benefits.
I don't know how that could have health benefits.
Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/whatever use healthy?"
The "drugs" of alcohol and caffeine are more deeply integrated into public social life. Wine is mentioned in the Bible. Beer is sold at family outings like baseball games. The White House serves alcohol at official state dinners. President Obama had the famous "beer summit" https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+beer+summit&tbm=isch
Also, the existence of alcohol is caused by common natural processes. E.g. leaving apples or pears out on the kitchen counter too long and it naturally ferments which creates alcohol. I remember leaving some old pears in the kitchen and they eventually smelled like alcohol. I ate the pears and they definitely tasted like alcohol. The point is, alcohol can come into existence without even doing anything.
In contrast, the White House isn't handing out crystal meth or heroin at state dinners and there aren't any natural decaying processes that turns random food into ecstasy. Marijuana is natural but it isn't culturally accepted by the public. (President Clinton's "Yes, but I didn't inhale.")
Alcohol/caffeine have a lot of acceptable functional uses that the other drug categories don't have which is why society continues to talk about them as a separate class.
Moderate meth use, uh, what does moderate mean? But when I laugh it's more that I doubt the very premise.
Moderate ecstacy use, go for it.
Like heroin versus morphine, safe uses are probably possible, but highly risky.
Deleted Comment
Social anxiety is the true poison in society. Without it, we wouldn't drink nearly as much.
I have nuanced takes that don't agree with the take that I just wrote, but I find there to be a kernel of truth in it. I've fought social anxiety for years, and started out clubbing sober when I was 17. I did start drinking around 18 but mostly out of curiosity. It was only around the age of 30 that I really noticed that by then I did it to alleviate social anxiety. It caught me off-guard since my teenage self would scoff at the idea of it. I'd never need alcohol to alleviate my social anxiety, I'd just grit through it and talk to whomever I want. I think I just became a bit comfortable and soft. It's easy-ish for me to switch back though due to the reference experiences I have being a teen, dealing with social anxiety sober. So that's a huge blessing. Not everyone is that lucky.
In a regulatory domain? Perhaps not; however, we did try prohibition. It didn't go well.
> Should have skull and crossbones on it.
Which didn't work. So some people go the idea to poison it. Then people learned to re-distill it to avoid the blindness it would otherwise cause.
> Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline
Most people don't regularly drink to the kinds of excess that would make this an apt comparison.
... Because it was already there. The hypothetical would imply a world where people weren't already high functioning addicts
It makes far more sense than huffing gas.
It makes the most sense a couple maybe few times a year.
The worst thing to do is over hype the downsides. People tune out and then have no real guidance to draw from.
The existing ones, sure - you get used to it. But for non-smokers, that's a visible indicator of what you're bringing on yourself if you start smoking, so it has a deterring value. It helps you to present an abstract idea into something palpable that you can't ignore that easily.
[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2566030/
Caring about the health effects of casual drinking is like counting the calories in a cupcake. If it matters to you, it’s probably not for you.
Birds do as well. Trout do not (in the wild). The LCU drinker might be "some tetrapod".
https://www.quickwhip.de/collections/miami-magic/products/mi...
You've just replicated the "Watchmaker" argument of creationists: "Random chance can't account for these low probabilities that we can't yet quantified."
This newer work seems basically to be arguing that the effect on the lefthand size of the curve is because drinking alcohol is so common that people who drink nothing are likely to be in poor health already.