Is ‘moderate drinking’ really good for the heart?
drbriffa.com
drbriffa.com
- Zero alcohol group; likely to contain above-average numbers of people who are strict on themselves, and thus more likely to be stressed often
- Medium alcohol group; likely to contain above-average numbers of people who enjoy relaxing
- High alcohol group; a high alcohol intake is bad for your health and is likely to include above-average numbers of people with a poor quality of life
I know of no medical evidence to specifically back up that idea, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that worrying less about things can yield improvements in health.
So in conclusion whilst the "eat and drink" bit of "eat, drink and be merry" might be debatable, the "be merry" bit is definitely good advice. HAPPY NEW YEAR HACKER NEWS!!!
:)
Cardiac health is just one of the possible factors increasing life span. There is no way to factor out the root cause this way. You need a control.
I will warn about alcohol and tylinol use together somehow this is not well known it may be very very dangerous together. Tylinol is so common it was hard to spot the combined risks.
This is usually a phrase that's used to shut down scientific research. Although one can find evidence for almost everything, it's entirely permissable, and good to try to balance up all the evidence and figure out which side is more correct.
Certainly better than assuming we know something to be true that later turns out to be unsupported, eg. high fat diets causing to high fat humans.
I'm sure the scientists conducting these studies try to eliminate these inconsistencies to as much as their ability by establishing the cause-effect relationship, but it seems impossible to do this exactly right and thus we should consider the associated problems in studies like these.
But there are some compounds in some kinds of alcoholic beverages, mostly red wine, that are thought to be beneficial. Of course, you could get the same benefits by skipping the fermentation process and just drinking grape juice.
Like the old wives tale says, a glass of wine with dinner will stop you getting food poisoning. And research has been proving this for a while: http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/HealthIssues/1110384069.htm... (It's a far better read than the NYT article it takes from with more citations)
Considering that 30% of the population annually considers themselves to have suffered food poisoning, that's quite the statistic and as most people confuse food poisoning symptoms with flu symptoms it could easily be far higher. Given that wine is of high enough proof to be potentially effective when consumed in any quantity with food that it has far ranging benefits far beyond just what's in it.
If you ate something with a deadly E. Coli strain, you'd probably be kicking yourself in the ass if you drank grape juice over red wine. Not to mention the potential risk you face from food poisoning through tainted juice.
B) The whole "wine as a replacement for water" thing is bullshit. Alcohol is a diuretic; when you drink wine, your net hydration is negative.
C) Tainted juice is a non-issue if it's fresh; fruit is one of the safer things you can eat, especially vine fruits, since they don't contact the ground much. If it's spoiled juice... after a certain point it's alcoholic. Ethanol is the by-product of spoilage in grape juice.
D) It's possible that alcohol in conjunction with food reduces contaminants in the food, but I find it highly unlikely this is the reason people started to and continue to drink; it seems that getting buzzed is the more plausible explanation.
That assumes that those compounds have the same effect when in grape juice. That's not a safe assumption--it would have to be actually tested. It sometimes turns out that other things consumed with a given compound affect things like how effectively it is taken in, or how efficiently it is used. That's one of the reasons, I believe, that nutritional supplements have sometimes been found to not be as effective as getting the same amount of a given nutrient "naturally".
This is probably also why attempts to find "magic bullets" in foreign cuisines have generally failed. We might determine that in some country, they consume a lot of X, and even determine that X is responsible for some beneficial effect they have that we want. Then we start consuming X, and don't get the effect. X might only provide that effect when coupled with other things in that country's cuisine.
It's true that some things need to work in conjunction; calcium absorption is rubbish without vitamin D, and vitamin D is fat soluble so it needs to be eaten with fat. But I've never heard of alcohol being necessary for any absorption process.
Mainstream press: http://singularityhub.com/2010/09/02/heavy-drinkers-outlive-...
Direct link to abstract: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010....
I posted this to HN a few months ago...
Also, resveratrol is not the only substance in red wine that is alleged to be helpful. Another is, of course, alcohol...jury is still out on whether low-dose alcohol can help cardiovascular health in the long term.
That's important, because work needs to be done to identify other lifestyle habits that tend to be present in lifelong-teetotalers, but not in the drinking group. I think it's entirely reasonable to think that folks who abstain from alcohol over the course of a lifetime probably have a lot of other habits that are a bit healthier as well.
So I think it's important to note that this article drew very little in the way of conclusions, but I get the feeling that folks are going to take it and run with it anyways.
One of the headline figures, apart from the weight loss, is the reduction in his cholesterol levels. I think this is probably a bit disingenuous though as he admits to giving up meat during the process ;) All the same, it's a good story.
The trick is to filter through the B.S. and work out for yourself what your plan will be.