Bad news, red wine drinkers: alcohol is only ever bad for your health | Hacker News Reader

Bad news, red wine drinkers: alcohol is only ever bad for your health

theguardian.com

21 pointsn1b0m10 comments

I suppose the problem with moonshots like "X can cause cancer in the long term", replace X with "alcohol", "cigarettes", "cola" or what else, is that "in the long term we're all dead. sometimes unexpectedly". The unexpected part is key. If it were guaranteed you live 100 by abstaining from vice then by all means. But illness and death can and will come out of nowhere and it leaves you even more bitter: you didn't even allow yourself to enjoy life and now it's taken from you.

So like vice, also abstinence: in moderation. In fact abstinence is itself a vice if taken to extremes I would say.

I’m not so sure alcohol is really helping us enjoy life that much though. I’ve had periods with all kinds of different drinking patterns, and it always feel like alcohol always takes away from you as much as it gives. Even when I drink so much that I get a noticeble hangover. It might be subtle. Like feeling ever so slightly worse when not drinking. But there’s always a trade-off.

During long periods of not drinking I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

That’s even more the case these days when there’s so many good non/low alcoholic beers and dry ciders (had some good wines too but too many are bad)

The only pattern of drinking I’ve found that I think actually make life more enjoyable in total, is to have like 2-3 units of alcohol on really special occasions, like 3-6 times a year. Any downside is immeasurable and when you wait so long between drinking it the alcohol is more efficient at making you feel good. You can also go back to not drinking easily without feeling like you’re missing something.

It should be said that the chance of developing a serious problem if you have a habit of drinking. You can have a traumatic experience, or other kind of psychological issues, and suddenly that casual drinking can turn into a real problem.

> alcohol is only ever bad for your health

False: it's useful for disinfecting the skin around a cut or injection site, and as a mouthwash. These external or quasi-external uses are beneficial for health.

Alcohol can help preserve foods for long-term storage. While it may not be good for you, it's healthier than food poisoning.

Mouthwash with alcohol isn’t good for your oral health though. Uncles you’re fighting some kind of infection I suppose, but then there are better solutions.

To add your point: there have been times when drinking alcohol was safer than drinking water. Contaminated water can be far worse than a mildly alcoholic drink.

What an I supposed to be using for mouthwash? Or nothing at all?

My dentist tells me fluoride based mouthwashes. Brigadier General Jack D Ripper says otherwise—sapping purity of essence and all.

This article has a couple of problems.

The claim that no amount of alcohol (ethanol), no matter how small, is beneficial is not interesting. Nobody in their right mind believes otherwise. There is no such widespread belief. (But see below). The article is using it as a strawman version of widely believed claims which are that certain alcoholic drinks are beneficial in moderation (due to content other than the ethanol).

Much more important than no small amount of ethanol being beneficial is the fact that ethanol has threshold values below which it is safe. I.e. there are quantities of ethanol that are so small as to be harmless.

Ethanol occurs naturally in fermented foods and ripe fruits. It can even be produced in the gut. It would be crazy to tell people to avoid all traditional fermented foods and ripe fruits, which are safe.

The claim that ingested ethanol offsets no benefit is actually false, because ethanol contains calories; it can be used for energy. It's obviously not a unique benefit, but a benefit is a benefit. If you ingest an amount of ethanol so small that it is harmless, then you're obtaining a small number of calories from it, and so there is a quantifiable net benefit (if you need the calories).

The article is right mainly about no alcohol during pregnancy, the claims about red wine. However, the latter requires nuance: the benefits of the substances found in red wine are real; they may just be offset by the negative effects of the alcohol. The polyphenols like resveratrol can be obtained directly from the skins of red grapes without having to produce wine first.

A lot of us wouldn’t even be here to have health without alcohol; it helped build our civilization.

I wonder if news is worse for your health than red wine too.

You're vastly better having a glass of red wine than a glass of sugar loaded fruit juice.

I see a lot of good attitudes and perspectives on comments.

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