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Comment by DenisM | Hacker News Reader

> drinking alcohol only in moderation (defined in this study as just under 2 units for women and 4 units for men daily)

This part Of “stay healthy” advice has always puzzled me - it looks like full blown alcoholism. Am I way off?

Is alcoholism not actual dependency on alcohol? As in not being able to leave it from one day to the next? If people drink 15 beers/day it is unhealthy but if they can quit tomorrow for months (or ever), it is not alcoholism right? Many people know it's unhealthy to consume enormous amounts during december (I know plenty who do a few bottles of wine per day per person) and then just quit 2nd of January. As far as I can see on the definition of alcoholism, that is not alcoholism... There is no dependency; they just like to be drunk for a month... And stuff themselves with fat. A lot of people all over the world (if they can afford it) do.

And 4 units/day (which is not 4 beers in many cases, it is less, but let's say it is) is something a lot of people do; they are, again, not dependent on it.

Doing damage is something else. I think no alcohol (at all) (+no/little refined sugar, processed food, stress laden work, too much fat, smoking anything, living in smog infested cities, driving motorcycles etc etc) are better, but that's just a feeling; the 'advice' seems to change every few years. One year wine is good for your cardiovascular system, one year it's bad. And the amounts vary too. Etc.

Ok, so it doesn't apply to your friends then? I am talking about daily drinking - the topic article promulgates it as "healthy".

Someone who "could stop drinking any time" and yet drinks every day year-round is de-facto addicted - among all the possible things they could do in the evening they always chose to do the same exact thing. Many addicts are high-functioning, but they are still addicts.

FWIW the rest of the recommendation by the NIAAA (National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism) is no more than 14 drinks per week for men and 7 drinks per week for women. So, they are not advising that 4 drinks per day every day for a week is safe.

The article does not mention the weekly limit though, which is typical - 4 units per day is mentioned often and the second limit is hardly mentioned at all.

I think the idea is that full-blown alcoholism is what really destroys your body. That being said, the link is definitely inconclusive - this is the article I always think of when thinking about alcohol [1].

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45283401

> This part Of “stay healthy” advice has always puzzled me - it looks like full blown alcoholism. Am I way off?

Yes, probably because you are mistaking a not-more-on-any-day-than level for a constant-consumption-every-day level.

Oh, and also confusing addiction with level of consumption.

There's slow low key buzz in afternoon/evening, evening and there's overloading your liver binging.

Also those numbers are not adjusted for body size. Some non-obese people weigh 100lb and some weigh 260lb.

4 units is not 4 beers.

A single 7% beer bottle is 3 units.

9 beers a week is... Not quite full-blown alcoholism. But I can see why the study picked that as a threshold.

A 25ml (.8oz) shot of 40% proof is 1 unit. 4 of those per day is one hell of a “healthy habit”.

I don’t know how large beer bottles are in the US, but 330ml (11.2oz) at 7% is 2.3 units.

(These are all European measurements, if that makes a difference. The NHS is in the U.K., though, where 1 unit = 10 ml of pure alcohol).

Alcoholism is a compulsion to drink alcohol, not a count of how much alcohol a person consumes in a given time period.

To be honest, I've never head of health issues caused by alcohol beyond the possibility of your liver failing. So I suspect, if you stay within liver failure bounds, you're good to go in terms of health.

I'm ignoring here the fact that drinking more might cause a cascading effect of bad habits, like eating more, exercising less, sleeping less, etc. Here I assume that you'd drink, but not degenerate your other habits as a consequence.

It's pretty conclusively bad for brain health; alcoholics hands aren't shaking from weak liver function...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147148920...

Had never heard of that before. Thanks for the link. So its probably that brain damage also only happens at levels that put the liver at risk, and maybe that's why this isn't observed in the OP study?

There are studies that show even moderate alcohol usage can have a damaging effect. And any amount of alcohol has been shown to raise risk of cancer.

https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353

The consensus is slowly moving towards there not being a healthy amount of alcohol consumption.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Beyond liver failure excessive alcohol use causes throat and mouth cancer as well as pancreatitis at the very least.

I see, had also never heard of this. I'd guess then that we're talking in the same level of excess that make you at risk of liver damage? And that might be why these don't seem to impact OP's study?

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