Seeing this after the holidays: "Guess I'll die." ¯\(ツ)/¯
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This is another of a long line of these studies. The effects they get from this type of epidemiology is entirely an artifact of the inclusion/exclusion criteria.
In this case they say they controlled for formerly heavy drinkers who now abstain. Without reading the paper in detail we don't know if they controlled for socio-economic status etc. For example that group may include a group of former polydrug users who were insecurely housed. Assigning that group to "heavy drinkers now abstaining" will tilt the results. There are chronic health conditions that arise from that lifestyle independent of alcohol use.
Epidemiology needs to be treated with kid gloves and I find this kind of advocacy unhelpful.
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The last recommendation was more socially acceptable at the time as drinking was more prevalent. People don’t like being told that happy hour makes them less healthy.
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Reads news…..there are two weeks/day right?
Here's the PLOS article: Associations between moderate alcohol consumption, brain iron, and cognition in UK Biobank participants: Observational and mendelian randomization analyses https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1004039
It appears I killed it at the family Christmas party, in more ways than one, with that mini keg.
Thats why I only drink on new years and not more than 104 drinks. Often times I stop at 100.
More than 0 drinks is risky. Our society has just normalized the very real harm alcohol can cause. People should certainly be able to make their own choice but I think it's really silly to treat alcohol different from other drugs when by every measure it is actually quite a strong drug with a high dependency risk.
Studies have linked marathon running and colon cancer. So we should put out PSAs! Limit yourself to 2 runs a week!
Then find out some other factor (such as special interest funding, industry manipulation, someone trying to get published) was skewing the interpretation of the data, and change the advice again. This ping pong advice is why no one trusts it.
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