Alcohol Is Good for Your Heart -- Most of the Time (time.com) 125
Alcohol, in moderation, has a reputation for being healthy for the heart. Drinking about a glass of wine for women per day, and two glasses for men, is linked to a lower risk of heart attack, stroke and death from heart disease. From a report on Time: A new study of nearly two million people published in The BMJ adds more evidence that moderate amounts of alcohol appear to be healthy for most heart conditions -- but not all of them. The researchers analyzed the link between alcohol consumption and 12 different heart ailments in a large group of U.K. adults. None of the people in the study had cardiovascular disease when the study started. People who did not drink had an increased risk for eight of the heart ailments, ranging from 12 percent to 56 percent, compared to people who drank in moderation. These eight conditions include the most common heart events, such as heart attack, stroke and sudden heart-related death.
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I haven't read any studies on being drunk and its effect on the ability to comprehend scientific studies.
FWIW, apparently there is real thing called state dependent memory [wikipedia.org]. There are actually studies you can read about this.
As a personal anecdote, in university, if I studied for an exam when drunk (which was occasionally), I realized tended did much better if I was also a bit drunk when I actually took the exam (not a hang-over, but just a bit buzzed). I was also a much better bridge player when I was drunk. I suspect that being a bit drunk allows you to be a bit more creative and think outside the box, whic
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I think you may have been my grad school adviser.
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I think you may have been my grad school adviser.
If I were a grad school adviser, my advice would be not to go to grad school... ;^)
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"I realized tended did much better" LOL
Fortunately, I graduated STEM, not liberal arts ;^b
One of these days there will be grammar checker as well as a spell checker on text entry boxes, but apparently I won't be the one to invent that...
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State dependance is very real. When we wrote, and rehearsed, material with the last major band I was in, we smoked quite a bit oif the ol ganja. But even though we had our parts down, when performiing live I absolutely could not remember how these tunes started out at all, among other problems, until we had some herb. Basically until several bars went by I had to fake it Of course after 100 times of playing them I finally got it, but basically, if we wrote it while smoking, we had to perform it wafter sm
Re:So is this another study that doesn't ... (Score:4, Informative)
So is this another study that doesn't differentiate between 'never drink' and people who drank so much that they had to quit for health reasons and thus 'no longer drink'?
Studies that differentiate between the two tend to show that the never drink people are the healthiest, it is the drank to near death and quit that skew the numbers - and thus the '1 or 2 glasses' are only healthier relative to heavy drinking not to actual abstinence.
... you're clearly not reading the same article as the rest of us. From the article:
The study's findings are particularly interesting because the researchers separated drinkers into categories that are typically lumped together in these kinds of studies. "Non-drinkers" often include people who have never drank, as well as those who quit drinking (who may have been heavy drinkers in the past, and so may have a higher risk of heart problems). This may have inflated the risk of non-drinkers; in some cases, grouping people this way might make drinking alcohol look better for the heart than it actually is.
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it occurs to me to wonder if the researchers are certain it is the alcohol in the wine, or some other factor in the wine.
That's possible. But I suspect it has more to do with lower stress; either a bit of alcohol helps people relax, or people who have a drink or two were less wound up in the first place. It could well be the latter - many teetotalers I know are weird about other things in their life as well.
Absolutely wrong: it did differentiate! (Score:5, Informative)
So is this another study that doesn't differentiate between 'never drink' and people who drank so much that they had to quit for health reasons and thus 'no longer drink'?
I know this is Slashdot so you are not expected to read the article but really you could not be more wrong if you tried. From the article:
The study's findings are particularly interesting because the researchers separated drinkers into categories that are typically lumped together in these kinds of studies. "Non-drinkers" often include people who have never drank, as well as those who quit drinking (who may have been heavy drinkers in the past, and so may have a higher risk of heart problems).
If you actually go further and click on the link to the BMJ article then they have "Non-drinker" and "Former drinker" categories with both of these showing statistically equivalent rates of cardiovascular and heart disease in the categories they looked at and in all cases both categories were statistically significantly higher than the rate for moderate drinkers.
So your assertion is completely wrong: their data show that even if you have never drunk alcohol you will have a reduced risk of heart disease if you start drinking moderately with a sample size of ~136k people. To me this looks like extremely convincing evidence that moderate drinking increases heart health.
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I was commenting about the general nature of such studies. Previous studies which have seperated out 'never drink' and 'former drinker' have shown opposite trends to the current study.
Also this study doesn't actually seperate out all 'former drinkers' from 'non drinkers', see their methodology.
". We reclassified non-drinkers as former drinkers if they had any record of drinking or a history of alcohol abuse in their entire clinical record entered on CPRD before study entry."
This will not capture a signific
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This will not capture a significant percentage of the former drinkers who are non drinkers. So contrary to your assertion, the current study did not truly separate out the two categories.
It did the best that any survey can do - this is medicine not precision science. It will not capture those who were moderate drinkers and who then stopped since they would have no medical problems (indeed the study shows they would have less chance of a medical problem). However this would bias the non-drinkers to look more like the moderate drinkers i.e. it would make non-drinkers look healthier.
As for former heavy drinkers I see no reason to suspect that these would end up as non-drinkers over moderat
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This will not capture a significant percentage of the former drinkers who are non drinkers. So contrary to your assertion, the current study did not truly separate out the two categories.
However, their defined data (raw data) contains former drinkers as well. It is just that the way their analysis (reclassification) for the result merges former drinkers with non-drinkers to make it easier. It is similar to given 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, I want to reclassify it to 1, 3, and 5 to make it more distinctive.
We used the most recent record of alcohol consumption in the five years before entry into the study to classify participants’ drinking behaviour. In light of current debates on the U or J shaped relation observed between consumption and aggregated cardiovascular disease outcomes we defined five categories of drinking: non-drinkers (Read codes such as "teetotaller" and "non-drinker"), former drinkers (those with codes for "stopped drinking alcohol" and/or "ex-drinker"), occasional drinkers (those with codes for "drinks rarely" and/or "drinks occasionally"), current moderate drinkers (codes such as "alcohol intake within recommended sensible limits" and "light drinker"), and heavy drinkers (codes including "alcohol intake above recommended sensible drinking limits" and "hazardous alcohol use").
This reclassification does not invalidate their study or make it look as bad as your impression is. Also, if you really look at the trend in their figures, you should see that it is OK to merge for
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14% of the participants were in the group that never drank. If a few percentage points of the participants had that reason for not drinking, it may have skewed the results a bit.
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That is good but insufficient. Non-drinkers ARE a very special group. Drinking is pretty much the norm (especially in the UK) and people who never drink often have a reason. Apart from previous alcoholism, reasons may be strong religious belief or health problems. Also, non-drinkers have different habits. They probably don't drink or eat nothing at parties or romantic dinners. There may be increased consumption of soft drinks or fatty foods. Hell, it could even be that people stay in bad relationships for l
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So how many people use that as an excuse to knock back a couple wines every night, then continue to have a few more, then injure them selves or someone else because drunk? At least you will get slightly less heart disease eh.
The study showed that consuming more than ~2 glass of wine per day (less if you are a woman) is actually harmful for your health so the sort of people doing this cannot use the study to justify their drinking problem.
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Surprisingly, an IT site has a better article and data...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2... [theregister.co.uk]
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1 glass of wine doesn't even use up your quiescent ADH levels. It is quickly metabolized. The third and fourth glasses are past the point that the metabolization rate is determined by the production rate of ADH and so stays around a lot longer.
It might affect your athletic performance, but a single glass of wine a day makes little measurable difference to most people, other than it's enjoyable to drink.
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Unless you're burning more energy than you're eating and you have no glycogen or fat stores, this doesn't matter.
If you are burning more energy than you're eating and you have no glycogen or fat stores, you're going to die unless you eat something like straight sugar right now.
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Not so quick. The body will convert its protein stores (i.e. muscles) to energy before dying.
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Not so quick. The body will convert its protein stores (i.e. muscles) to energy before dying.
If you have standard Western metabolic disorder, your body will convert its protein stores to energy even if there's lots of fat both floating around and stored in adipose tissue. Your brain will ignore the leptin your fat cells are producing, the insulin will tell your fat cells to hang onto the fat and you will be hungry regardless. This is the essence of metabolic disorder. That is what it is. It does not explain why, which if we understood fully we would solve the problem. Low carb is an effective hack
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Calories from alcohol can't even be used for energy, they're just turned straight into bodyfat
No, it can be used for energy after a few conversion steps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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1 glass of wine doesn't even use up your quiescent ADH levels. It is quickly metabolized. The third and fourth glasses are past the point that the metabolization rate is determined by the production rate of ADH and so stays around a lot longer.
Does this apply to those who turn red after drinking even a 1/2 glass of wine as well???
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1 glass of wine doesn't even use up your quiescent ADH levels. It is quickly metabolized. The third and fourth glasses are past the point that the metabolization rate is determined by the production rate of ADH and so stays around a lot longer.
Does this apply to those who turn red after drinking even a 1/2 glass of wine as well???
Asian glow? I suspect not, but I've never read a peer reviewed paper that addresses the issue, so I would be spouting bullshit if I claimed to know. I suspect not because that is caused by a lack of an enzyme to process a breakdown product and I've forgotten all the names and I'm not looking it up right now.
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Actually, that's probably what OP was referring to: ADH - Alcohol dehydrogenase [wikipedia.org]
That's what I'm thinking too, but I don't actually know. I'd have to go an read up on it. Where's a biochemist when you need one?
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This is why most of these studies say it's OK to have the two drinks; but they also say you shouldn't start drinking if you aren't already.
I think we are just at the brink of finally getting past statistical medicine and in to something much better. Statistical medicine is like Newtonian physics. It serves you well up to a point. To really do advanced things, we need to get beyond it and get to an understanding based on each individual's genetic makeup and environment.
It's only recently that they acknow [nosleeplessnights.com]
As usual, more detail needed (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hate these studies, because they don't give us actionable information.
What I'd like to see:
-Those that never drank in their lives vs those that drank moderately vs those that were heavy drinkers at a younger age and drink moderately now vs those that were moderate drinkers and quit, and several other permutations.
-"Drinks per day/week" replaced with "ml of pure alcohol per kg of body weight, per day/week". A woman drinking a "glass" of wine at 110 lbs is not the same as a man drinking a "beer" at 300 lbs, and both the wine and the beer can vary wildly from one size glass to another, or a 5% standard beer vs a 7-10% craft beer.
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I really hate these studies, because they don't give us actionable information.
What I'd like to see:
-Those that never drank in their lives vs those that drank moderately vs those that were heavy drinkers at a younger age and drink moderately now vs those that were moderate drinkers and quit, and several other permutations.
-"Drinks per day/week" replaced with "ml of pure alcohol per kg of body weight, per day/week". A woman drinking a "glass" of wine at 110 lbs is not the same as a man drinking a "beer" at 300 lbs, and both the wine and the beer can vary wildly from one size glass to another, or a 5% standard beer vs a 7-10% craft beer.
Also, correlation is not causation. Perhaps those who can afford to pop open a wine bottle daily also have a better diet and a healthier lifestyle overall.
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Generally speaking you should never, ever change your behavior based on the results of a single study -- even a controlled, double-blind study, much less an epidemiological survey. You should wait for a comprehensive literature review paper in a high-impact peer reviewed journal before you consider a result reliable.
That said, correlation is still quite valuable -- to researchers. Science doesn't have the resources to come up with quick, definitive answers on a question like this, involving a complex syst
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A scientifically-standard drink is 10mL of pure ethanol in carrier medium.
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A scientifically-standard drink is 10mL of pure ethanol in carrier medium.
Yet a standard drink is useless without a standard amount of blood for said drink to swim through before it hits the brain.
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For the study to be meaningful it needs to be a controlled randomized trial, not an observational study with plenty of confounders.
Not every day (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Not every day (Score:4, Informative)
{Raises my glass}
Missing correlations (Score:1)
Who would have guessed? (Score:1)
Lowering stress leads to a longer, healthier life.
More at 11.
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BINGO! (or YAHTZEE! if you prefer)
THIS issue is the primary one I really want to see categorized - - - Do the 'moderate' drinkers have a less stressful life style because they occasionally consume a bit of alcohol _vs_ the teetotallers that don't drink at all (for whatever reason) and the related stresses of the teetotallers lifestyle of FORCED exclusion of relaxing lifestyle issues.
Basically, is the occasional drinker more likely to have a better life-orientation due to the 'tolerant' attitude . . . and
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Relative risk ratios. (Score:2)
The linked article quotes relative risk ratios for specific ailments without giving the baseline. This is a sure sign of an incompetent journalist and hides the actiual result.
E.G. 10% increase of dying of X
Compared with: Probability of dying from X went from 0.001 to 0.0011.
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Dark beers are made by toasting malt, the Maillard reaction. Which at high temperatures can produce carcinogens (acrylamide) that are soluble in ethanol.
I seriously doubt it's in high enough quantities to matter, but it should exist if I understand it correctly. And likely there are beneficial things in a pint of Guinness worthy of research.
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A good whine will be loud enough to get attention, but not too loud. The finer whines will elicit just the right reaction of sympathy that is the mark of a great whine. The best whines will not only get what you are whining for, but won't leave any after taste of annoyance. Ideally the person being manipulated will believe it was their own idea with no sense of manipulation.
"glass of wine has heathful benefits" (Score:4, Interesting)
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I once met a woman who had been a lobbyist for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS [discus.org]) and was involved in promoting the "one drink a day is healthful" idea in the 1980's. I asked her if she got free booze for life. She said, "Oh yes!"
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A small glass of grape juice has health benefits too. Most of the time fruits and vegetables with dark pigments are powerful antioxidants. While I'm not sure if those antioxidants help with heart disease, it would be interesting to see if non-alcoholic options prove to be beneficial.
Briefly there was a grape juice on the market made with wine grape varieties and it was really good. It's the variety of grape that stands out the most in the flavor of wine, so the juice tasted basically like wine. Maybe not as
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variety of grape that stands out the most in the flavor of wine,
I'm wondering perhaps the grape contents is what is good, instead of eating a lot of grapes you can get same amount of the "good stuff" those grapes contain in a liquid form. The wine may have the same as the grape juice, maybe drink the juice before turning it into wine (though might not be as much fun, drinking grape juice doesn't have that "wine connoisseur" image that gets respect at parties of sophisticated people. Are certain grapes more beneficial than others? Right now I'm too lazy to do research so
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Growing up, my grandparents had a couple of acres of zinfandel.
Each year, a winery would pay to pick & keep them, and my grandmother would go pick the late ripeners about two weeks later.
She juiced them, and canned them in mason jars.
The stuff was wonderful, heavy, and pulpy. It did, however, etch the jars . . .
Today, my father tries to see it to me every year or two, but I live a few hundred miles away. (anyone want to buy a couple of acres of northern californian zinfandel? :)
hawk
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Living into your 90's has more to do with genetics than with diet.
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I would seem like a glass of dark red wine would be better for you than a pabst blue ribbon, resveratrol and all that jazz.. But it doesn't appear to be the case.
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For goodness sake do not walk outside, particularly if there is traffic around. Nitrogen Dioxide is great at cell mutation. Lets face it pal your body is awash with mutagens and most of the time it does a pretty good job of fixing its genetic damage. I think we lack data on whether small amounts of alcohol are significantly worse than all the other crap we subject ourselves to, and alcohol at least makes life more fun for most people. I do totally agree though that it is correlated with cancer in large quan
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It's not that concentrated in your blood, or else it would kill you.
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Of course you could probably also show that uptight tea-teetotalers are generally joyless curmudgeons...
Well, to be fair, they're not all curmudgeons... [wikipedia.org] ;)
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I happen to enjoy alcohol, and this regimen has allowed me to continue to enjoy it without negative effects. Pretty much everything I like to eat is high in purines, so I needed to find another way to manage. Mushrooms, shellfish, fish, meat, beans all high in purines. Now I don't care!
Good for your heart... (Score:2)
...now if it was only good for your LIVER and kidneys too.
I wonder if drinking gasoline is good for one organ before it destroys the rest of your body.
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I new a lady who had kidney stone issues who was advised by a doctor to try drinking 1 beer a day.
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key word you seem to have missed: moderation.
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Time to extrapolate (Score:3)
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Well, they DID say "Most of the Time".
adds up fast (Score:4, Funny)
Drinking about a glass of wine for women per day, and two glasses for men
I drink a glass of wine for women per day, and two glasses for men, and several for children. I think that's 8 or 9.
Just a study (Score:5, Insightful)
Because alcohol carries a risk of liver disease, there are safer ways to lower risk, he says, such as quitting smoking, exercising regularly and eating a healthy diet.
#KillTheBill (Score:2)
The good news is that if you drink enough, it won't matter if you have health insurance.
Many different things (Score:2)
We do studies which do measure self-reports of alcohol consumption over long duration periods (e.g. years).
In general, what most of these studies tend to say is:
A. Don't binge drink.
B. No, seriously, stop.
C. If female, there tend not to be positive effects of drinking more than one drink per day. No, don't add up all the alcohol from the week and drink it at one party.
D. If male, 2-3 drinks a day may have a positive effect. Some of that is because men tend to be bad at socializing. Some of the positive impa
good news! (Score:2)
it's vice versa (Score:1)
Sounds great. (Score:2)
Now we just have to figure out how to prevent it from slowly destroying the rest of our bodies and we'll be all set! ;)
What do the numbers mean? (Score:2)
As with most studied, the really interesting parts are hidden in the data [bmj.com].
A few things should be kept in mind. For example, there was a huge difference in two characteristics of the subpopulations [bmj.com]. Non-drinkers and former drinkers had much higher incidence of diabetes and being socially deprived compared to moderate drinkers. This is mentioned in the research article but not the Time article. When adjustments for systolic blood pressure, diabetes status, body mass index, HDL-cholesterol, use of statins
Many study (+ 10 000) were funded by the industry (Score:1)