A new Word of Wisdom

[hostile]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/23/health/global-alcohol-study/index.html

No amount of EtOH is good for your overall health.

[MartyFunkhouser]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/23/healt...udy/index.html
No amount of EtOH is good for your overall health.

Meh, I'll still have a few beers a week or a shot of whiskey here and there.

[falafel]

Meh, I'll still have a few beers a week or a shot of whiskey here and there.

Get busy dyin', or get busy dyin'.

[Northwestcoug]

Cheers to David Speigelhalter, quoted in the article:

However, countered David Spiegelhalter, the Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, "Given the pleasure presumably associated with moderate drinking, claiming there is no 'safe' level does not seem an argument for abstention.

"There is no safe level of driving, but governments do not recommend that people avoid driving," Spiegelhalter, who also was not involved in the research, said in a statement. "Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention."

[falafel]

Cheers to David Speigelhalter, quoted in the article:

lol @ Speigelhalter

[Moliere]

Meh, I'll still have a few beers a week or a shot of whiskey here and there.

That’s the exact way I view Mormonism. There’s some stuff That is healthy but overall 98% of it is healthy and awesome.

[MartyFunkhouser]

That’s the exact way I view Mormonism. There’s some stuff That is healthy but overall 98% of it is healthy and awesome.

See, this is why when people call you a prog-motcojcolds I think they are being insane. You are an all in hardliner if you think that 98% of the stuff is healthy and awesome.

[Flystripper]

Meh. I will happily shave off a couple of years at the end for incredible enjoyment now. Currently at The Urge in San Marcos before my sons football game against Mission Hills in San Marcos. I am enjoying a pint of Northern Pine Get Yer Gloves with a caprese flatbread. Pretty incredible sjbh.


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[MartyFunkhouser]

Meh. I will happily shave off a couple of years at the end for incredible enjoyment now. Currently at The Urge in San Marcos before my sons football game against Mission Hills in San Marcos. I am enjoying a pint of Northern Pine Get Yer Gloves with a caprese flatbread. Pretty incredible sjbh.


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[Northwestcoug]

And here's the inevitable 'cooler heads prevailing' after the Lancet article splash:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/u...mid=tw-nytimes

Some good general info on metaanalysis.

But, and this is a big but, there are limitations here that warrant consideration. Observational data can be very confounded, meaning that unmeasured factors might be the actual cause of the harm. Perhaps people who drink also smoke tobacco. Perhaps people who drink are also poorer. Perhaps there are genetic differences, health differences or other factors that might be the real cause. There are techniques to analyze observational data in a more causal fashion, but none of them could be used here, because this analysis aggregated past studies — and those studies didn’t use them.

We don’t know if confounders are coming into play because this meta-analysis could only really control, over all, for age, sex and location. That’s not the researchers’ fault. That’s probably all they could do with the data they had, and they could still model population-level effects without them.

But when we compile observational study on top of observational study, we become more likely to achieve statistical significance without improving clinical significance. In other words, very small differences are real, but that doesn’t mean those differences are critical.

Here's the harm data:

For each set of 100,000 people who have one drink a day per year, 918 can expect to experience one of the 23 alcohol-related problems in any year. Of those who drink nothing, 914 can expect to experience a problem. This means that 99,082 are unaffected, and 914 will have an issue no matter what. Only 4 in 100,000 people who consume a drink a day may have a problem caused by the drinking, according to this study.

At two drinks per day, the number experiencing a problem increased to 977. Even at five drinks per day, which most agree is too much, the vast majority of people are unaffected.

The absolute risk of an alcohol-related event is 4 per 100,000 people who reported one drink/day, and 63 per 100,000 with 2 drinks/day. Those are the 'real' numbers, which should even still be viewed with caution given the limits of metaanalysis. And since it was a world-wide study, the risk of confounding variables increases. No one is getting tuberculosis in developed countries because they are moderate drinkers:

This is a population-level study, arguably a worldwide study, but the results are being interpreted at an individual level. There are merging, for instance, the 23 alcohol-related health issues together. But not everyone experiences them at the same rate.

For diabetes and heart disease, for instance, the risks actually go down with light or moderate drinking. The authors argue that this result is overrun, however, by risks for things like cancer and tuberculosis, which go up. But for many individuals, the risks for diabetes and heart disease are much higher than those for cancer and tuberculosis.

There's a catch for FS, MP, and me. They are quantifying a drink as smaller than what I would call one

Of course, some drink too much without knowing it. For this study, a drink was defined as 10 grams of pure alcohol, as much as you might get in one ounce of spirits (a small shot glass) that is 40 percent alcohol; 3.4 ounces of wine that’s 13 percent alcohol; or 12 ounces of beer that’s 3.5 percent alcohol. Many people consume more than that and consider it “a drink.”

But in the end, here is the responsible view on the study, which really hasn't changed:

Moderate alcohol consumption is associated with certain improved risk factors for health (which this study confirms), but this is not the same as recommending that people drink. I don’t, and I don’t know of any health-related professional organizations that do.

But just because something is unhealthy in large amounts doesn’t mean that we must completely abstain. A chart in the study showed rising risks from alcohol from 0 to 15 drinks.

Consider that 15 desserts a day would be bad for you. I am sure that I could create a chart showing increasing risk for many diseases from 0 to 15 desserts. This could lead to assertions that “there’s no safe amount of dessert.” But it doesn’t mean you should never, ever eat dessert.

Food is not medicine. Neither is alcohol. Alcoholism is terrible. There’s a balance, and we could spend lifetimes arguing over where the line is for many people. The truth is we just don’t know. If these studies are intended to drive population-level policy, we should use them as such, to argue that we might want to push people to be wary of overconsumption.

Too many people interpret them individually, however, with panic-inducing results.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Interesting. I like the fact that people push back on bogus analyses. We are becoming better educated on how to parse this stuff.

That being said, some of the health benefits of drinking have been oversold in recent years. Truth is probably in the middle somewhere.

[Flystripper]

Interesting. I like the fact that people push back on bogus analyses. We are becoming better educated on how to parse this stuff.

That being said, some of the health benefits of drinking have been oversold in recent years. Truth is probably in the middle somewhere.

yeah I never bought into the idea that the benefits of alcohol beverages go beyond taste and enjoyment. The carbs/calories alone likely outweigh any health benefits. So it comes down to enjoyment and keeping it to moderation. Some people like chocolate cake, I enjoy a pint.

[Jeff Lebowski]

yeah I never bought into the idea that the benefits of alcohol beverages go beyond taste and enjoyment. The carbs/calories alone likely outweigh any health benefits. So it comes down to enjoyment and keeping it to moderation. Some people like chocolate cake, I enjoy a pint.

[LVAllen]

Marijuana: Okay if doctor prescribed and pharmacy filled, not okay for recreation. Which makes it less like tobacco, and more like morphine. Got it.

[MartyFunkhouser]

Marijuana: Okay if doctor prescribed and pharmacy filled, not okay for recreation. Which makes it less like tobacco, and more like morphine. Got it.

While speaking on the KUER program “RadioWest," three LDS Church leaders reiterated the Utah-based faith’s opposition to Proposition 2, which would legalize medical cannabis in the state, while advocating for the alleviation of pain and suffering through carefully regulated and precisely used medicinal marijuana.

Umm, every single medical marijuana bill in the State of Utah has been swiftly killed by the LDS church. Just be honest and say, we don't support any form of marijuana use. The only reason that Proposition 2 is on the ballot is because each medical marijuana bill keeps getting killed.