Comment by B8MGHCBekDuRi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by B8MGHCBekDuRi | Hacker News Reader

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no need to debunk the truth.

It's like drugs.

Take too many pills, you die.

Take them when you need them and their benefit will surpass the risks.

Alcohol works the same way.

We know for a fact that moderate drinkers live longer than non-drinkers and heavy drinkers.

We still don't know why.

edit: most people don't want to hear the truth.

Moderate drinker live longer than non-drinkers.

It's a well known fact

For example, one study following more than 333,000 adults for about eight years found light-to-moderate drinkers were more than 20 percent less likely to die prematurely from all causes and from cardiovascular disease in particular than people who never drank at all.

When they tried to "debunk" it the only explanation they could find is that non-drinkers die prematurely because of the risks they took earlier in life.

Confirming that moderation is key, abstinence due to guilt for past behaviour and a sudden fear of death, won't solve anything.

I'm sorry if the alcoholics that took the 12 steps here are triggered by the truth, but your problems are not everyone's problems.

We have been drinking alcohol for longer than we were able to write, we still do it, because it's a social rite, it keeps people together, like a good meal, you can't simply delete it because you used to drink scotch straight from the bottle since the moment you woke up and the only solution you've found is getting a different addiction: staying clean at all costs.

"because moderate drinkers tend to be very socially advantaged," Naimi says. Moderate drinkers tend to be healthier on average because they're well-educated and more affluent, not because they're drinking a bottle of wine a week on average. "[Their] alcohol consumption ends up looking good from a health perspective because they're already healthy to begin with."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/03/22/4714163...

> Moderate drinkers tend to be healthier on average because they're well-educated and more affluent, not because they're drinking a bottle of wine a week on average

the point is that non-drinkers live less.

Which totally contraddict the point that non drinking is good for you.

a recent Lancet study confirms that at 2 standard units per day there is non-drinking equivalence for health risks

2 units per day it's about a pint of beer per day.

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

Both can be true at once, for exactly the reason described: the causal effect goes in the other direction.

> Both can be true at once, for exactly the reason described: the causal effect goes in the other direction.

still non drinkers do not live longer on average.

which totally defeat one of the few benefits associated to not drinking, unless you don't like drinking.

even if minuscule doses of alcohol increased the risk of getting some form of cancer, I live in a big city, I already increased my risk of getting cancer 10x by simply breathing ...

And I surely don't enjoy smog and pollution as much as I enjoy beer.

If I had to eliminate one of them, I would go living in the country, where air is cleaner.

"We still don't know why."

That's the point though. Even if this fact is true it doesn't mean that drinking is healthy for these moderate drinkers. There could be other reasons that they're living longer and that drinking is actually working against them, not for them.

> Even if this fact is true it doesn't mean that drinking is healthy for these moderate drinkers

That's not the kind of inference we can derive from the data though.

The conclusion is that, even if we know that alcohol is not good for our health, moderate drinking has not been correlated to higher mortality or shorter life span, so we can conclude that, at the time of this writing, there are no evidence that show that moderate drinking is worse than not drinking for our health.

Regardless of the causes, the data simply doesn't show any correlation whatsoever with worsening health conditions, it shows, however, a correlation with a mildly longer average life span, which has not been explained, yet.

Id be interested in a source as it is my understanding that most of this research was disinformation from the alcohol industry. The small uptick in death rates at 0 alcohol consumption is due to the prevalence of people with severe illness not drinking. The illness causes both the non drinking and the increased risk of death. When this is corrected for, people who drink 0 alcohol live longest.

> Id be interested in a source as it is my understanding that most of this research was disinformation from the alcohol industry

it's independent scientific studies

alcohol industry doesn't need to convince people, they sell alcohol, people enjoy alcohol, it's not like cigarettes that stink and taste horribly and are bad for those around you,e specially kids.

The ability (which is common) to moderate oneself when drinking is associated with general better health (Modest drinkers were more educated, less obese, more active, less smoked, and had lower rates of hypertension, diabetes, and high triglycerides, proteinuria, high uric acid and high level of C-reactive protein when compared with regular drinkers)

So in general we should not look at the substance, but at the person.

non drinkers are usually people who are scared of losing self control.

heavy drinkers are usually people who cannot control themselves and did not chose abstinence.

But the solution is to learn moderation, since young age.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-11427-x

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