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Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

"This should shock no one. Health wise, alcohol is bad for you. Period."

...

"Sooo many ways to explain why "moderate" drinkers are healthier ..."

I have this silly idea that drinking, which is bad for you, in moderation, actually exercises the processing and filtering mechanisms (liver, kidney, etc.) that are required to deal with it.

Which is to say, imagine you never drank alcohol - how healthy (or "fit") would those mechanisms be ?

I have no idea if there is any validity to this thought but I find the idea to be interesting.

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I suspect the amount of alcohol you need to drink to keep these pathways ‘excercised’ is probably a lot less than even moderate drinkers drink.

There are trivial amounts of alcohol in a lot of things that teetotalers end up consuming, even the religiously so ones.

Vanilla extract, meats cooked in alcohol (it does not all burn off), some vinegars, mustard, cooking spray, "non-alcoholic" wine/beer -- they all have marginal amounts of alcohol.

Sounds like something you might have read and forgotten about. This is a very popular, if controversial, idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

I don't know if you're right or not.

I suspect the basis for your theory is the idea behind inoculation. However, the purpose of the kidney and liver are to serve as filters for toxins. In any other context, filters don't get stronger with use, they degrade with use. The more crap you shove through it, the faster it degrades. How often do you have to change your car's air/fuel filters, or your HVAC filter? How often do you have to change them when you abuse them by living in a dusty climate?

Thus, my own (unqualified) take on it is that these organs can only handle a finite amount of filtration before they simply fail.

Your argument could also be used for exercise, that lifting weights should make you weaker, not stronger. Bearings and rubber bands wear out with use.

The distinction should be between living and nonliving systems. Living systems are frequently designed to strengthen things that are under stress. This is why working out makes you stronger; compressing, even breaking a bone can make it heal stronger. And why we build up tolerances to things. Our biological filters work with specialized proteins, our body can learn to express certain proteins more in response to stress. Perhaps that includes the ones involved in filtering?

Biological systems are often built to respond positively to moderate amounts of stress. Even to need some amount of stress to function correctly.

Sort of like exposure to pathogens / parasites can curb autoimmune diseases?

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