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No alcohol safe to drink, global study confirms
A large new global study published in the Lancet has confirmed previous research which has shown that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. The researchers admit moderate drinking may protect against heart disease but found that the risk of cancer and other diseases outweighs these protections. A study author said its findings were the most significant to date because of the range of factors considered.
The Global Burden of Disease [open, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31310-2] [DX] study looked at levels of alcohol use and its health effects in 195 countries, including the UK, between 1990 and 2016.
Analysing data from 15 to 95-year-olds, the researchers compared people who did not drink at all with those who had one alcoholic drink a day. They found that out of 100,000 non-drinkers, 914 would develop an alcohol-related health problem such as cancer or suffer an injury. But an extra four people would be affected if they drank one alcoholic drink a day. For people who had two alcoholic drinks a day, 63 more developed a condition within a year and for those who consumed five drinks every day, there was an increase of 338 people, who developed a health problem.
One of the study authors, Prof Sonia Saxena, a researcher at Imperial College London and a practising GP, said: "One drink a day does represent a small increased risk, but adjust that to the UK population as a whole and it represents a far bigger number, and most people are not drinking just one drink a day."
Related: The Truth We Won't Admit: Drinking is Healthy
Study Shows 3 Drinks a Day May Cause Liver Cancer
Even Moderate Drinking Linked to a Decline in Brain Health
American Society of Clinical Oncology: Alcohol Use Increases Risk of Cancer
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Saturday August 25 2018, @04:12PM (12 children)
Really.. that means that anything you leave lingering in your mouth before swallowing (go time time to do stuff like chewing) is dangerous, and it also means that you only can take one sip from each body of fruit-juice.
Seriously, I kinda doubt a couple of molecules of etanol would be dangerous to drink, especially since we have stuff to produce that in our saliva (not to mention that the body itself creates quite a bit of alcohol).
Also, does this means that bread made with yeast is off limit as well? (that produces impressive amounts of alcohol)
(Yes, I am well aware that they mean "no safe limit for the amounts that people that slept through introduction to biology and cooking consider imbibing", but the phrasing really sets me off)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 25 2018, @04:24PM (4 children)
It's a counterpoint study, I believe intended to offset the overly rosy picture painted by the "2 glasses of wine with dinner is good for you" science that has been pushed for the last 30 years. Their point (lame, in my opinion) is that even 1 glass of wine with dinner represents a tiny increase in risk, of cancer, of accidental death, etc. and when you multiply this number by the current world population you reach some horrific number of deaths per year caused by even 1 glass of wine with dinner.
Newsflash: the current world population is horrific no matter how you analyze it. 100,000 deaths more or less is insignificant and irrelevant when considering the psychological benefits of stress reduction and enjoyment of the moment. I think I'm going to go have a drink now and forget about all the impending doom of the world, and for the near term that will be an improvement in quality of life - if that also means that, statistically, I've just taken 10 minutes off of my total predicted lifespan, so be it - IMO improvement in the quality of life for 2 waking hours here and now is a good trade for 10 minutes of "maybe" statistically weighted far into the future.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:06PM (2 children)
Hmmm, there IS a way to get by without drinking alcohol at all. Just requires adjusting your microbiome slightly :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-brewery_syndrome [wikipedia.org]
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)
Well, they say that the only cure for a hangover is to be drunk all the time, I guess that is actually possible. And, haw, the cure is the Atkins diet.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:33PM
We all know there is no cure for stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 26 2018, @02:32PM
For some reason, I do not seriously interpret the statement to mean that alcohols occuring naturally is the problem. It seems more like there's a problem with rationaling over indulgence of a toxic substance while clinging to health benefits that are small compared to the damage the actual alcohol does.
but people get upset when there is no alcohol lobby to fund campaigns and stuff, so there will be outrage that theres proof (pun intended) of long term harm from such a commercialized industry.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Saturday August 25 2018, @04:45PM
It's even worse in California... In California (only), because they are willfully ignorant [pasadenastarnews.com] of Paracelsus' toxicology principle [camiryan.com], all of these things are dangerous poisons that also cause cancer
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 25 2018, @04:50PM (1 child)
Safe: fsck... do you see what you did there?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 26 2018, @10:43AM
OP checked the file system. Probably to ensure that the data is safe. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hartree on Saturday August 25 2018, @06:00PM (1 child)
It's not science. It's advocacy.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 26 2018, @01:14PM
Say that about alcohol and you (rightly) get +5 insightful, point out the same kind of people doing the same kind of thing for the same motivations but in the climate study field and watch the internet hate machine spin to life...
(Score: 5, Touché) by number11 on Saturday August 25 2018, @07:12PM
A wee bit more than "a couple of molecules". It's a UK study, the UK counts a "drink" as containing 8g alcohol. Lessee... atomic weight divided by g = moles times Avogadro's Constant = number of molecules. About 10^23. Probably a bit more, as there will be some subjects who count "water glass full of vodka" as one drink.
You might want to stop eating the raw dough. Most of the alcohol is lost in cooking. Um... one source says "rosemary onion bread" contains 0.98g/100g, so eating a kg per day might lead to ill effects :) Most breads seem to have less than half that much (0.2-0.4g) though. Amazing the stuff you can look up on the 'net.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 26 2018, @01:12PM
For an identical problem in a different biological topic, the term to google for or wikipedia for is "Radiation Hormesis"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis [wikipedia.org]
Generally speaking the most popular (not necessarily correct) philosophic outlook today for alcohol is the hormesis effect exists for alcohol (or at least highly functional alcoholics will bitch if you imply otherwise) and hormesis effect does not exist for ionizing radiation. Also the general public is near certain that non-ionizing radiation has no hormesis effect and definitely causes cancer and ED and bogeymen, but the scientists laugh because there's no perceptible reaction mechanism to explain it beyond "I iz scared of witchcraft"