Large Study Shows Drinking Alcohol Is Good For Your Cholesterol Levels 130
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers at Harvard University led the study, and it included nearly 58,000 adults in Japan who were followed for up to a year using a database of medical records from routine checkups. Researchers found that when people switched from being nondrinkers to drinkers during the study, they saw a drop in their "bad" cholesterol -- aka low-density lipoprotein cholesterol or LDL. Meanwhile, their "good" cholesterol -- aka high-density lipoprotein cholesterol or HDL -- went up when they began imbibing. HDL levels went up so much, that it actually beat out improvements typically seen with medications, the researchers noted.
On the other hand, drinkers who stopped drinking during the study saw the opposite effect: Upon giving up booze, their bad cholesterol went up and their good cholesterol went down. The cholesterol changes scaled with the changes in drinking. That is, for people who started drinking, the more they started drinking, the lower their LDL fell and higher their HDL rose. In the newly abstaining group, those who drank the most before quitting saw the biggest changes in their lipid levels.
Specifically, people who went from drinking zero drinks to 1.5 drinks per day or less saw their bad LDL cholesterol fall 0.85 mg/dL and their good HDL cholesterol go up 0.58 mg/dL compared to nondrinkers who never started drinking. For those that went from zero to 1.5 to three drinks per day, their bad LDL dropped 4.4 mg/dL and their good HDL rose 2.49 mg/dL. For people who started drinking three or more drinks per day, their LDL fell 7.44 mg/dL and HDL rose 6.12 mg/dL. For people who quit after drinking 1.5 drinks per day or less, their LDL rose 1.10 mg/dL and their HDL fell by 1.25 mg/dL. Quitting after drinking 1.5 to three drinks per day, led to a rise in LDL of 3.71 mg/dL and a drop in HDL of 3.35. Giving up three or more drinks per day led to an LDL increase of 6.53 mg/dL and a drop in HDL of 5.65. The study has been published in JAMA Network Open.
On the other hand, drinkers who stopped drinking during the study saw the opposite effect: Upon giving up booze, their bad cholesterol went up and their good cholesterol went down. The cholesterol changes scaled with the changes in drinking. That is, for people who started drinking, the more they started drinking, the lower their LDL fell and higher their HDL rose. In the newly abstaining group, those who drank the most before quitting saw the biggest changes in their lipid levels.
Specifically, people who went from drinking zero drinks to 1.5 drinks per day or less saw their bad LDL cholesterol fall 0.85 mg/dL and their good HDL cholesterol go up 0.58 mg/dL compared to nondrinkers who never started drinking. For those that went from zero to 1.5 to three drinks per day, their bad LDL dropped 4.4 mg/dL and their good HDL rose 2.49 mg/dL. For people who started drinking three or more drinks per day, their LDL fell 7.44 mg/dL and HDL rose 6.12 mg/dL. For people who quit after drinking 1.5 drinks per day or less, their LDL rose 1.10 mg/dL and their HDL fell by 1.25 mg/dL. Quitting after drinking 1.5 to three drinks per day, led to a rise in LDL of 3.71 mg/dL and a drop in HDL of 3.35. Giving up three or more drinks per day led to an LDL increase of 6.53 mg/dL and a drop in HDL of 5.65. The study has been published in JAMA Network Open.
Drinking is good for your health. (Score:5, Funny)
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is what I heard.
I believe it pairs well with measles.
Large Study Shows Drinking Alcohol is Good (Score:4, Funny)
^^ That's as far as I read.
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Realistically, statins are effective at controlling cholesterol and DON'T cause brain damage
This is just a feeble attempt by alcohol producers to keep people from switching to cannabis
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I bet antibiotics are cheaper than statins. Though I realize there are other reasons not to prescribe them for cholesterol.
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> The 4th gen statins also (contrary to common "knowledge") reduce the chances of developing dementia.
Do you have anything to back that up? At best I'm finding summaries of current research [harvard.edu] suggesting that the evidence they increase the chance of developing dementia is inconclusive, but absolutely nothing suggesting they actually reduce the chances. There are theoretical reasons why they might reduce the chances, but in practice these don't pan out in any studies trying to find a correlation or reverse c
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There's a lot of nuance to this, remember there are also studies saying NO amount of alcohol is safe.
The question is "as a treatment for cholesterol" , would having a glass of wine at dinner be better or worse than not. Not "you should drink every day", because that puts you onto a death-spiral of being UNABLE to stop drinking without the cholesterol going up.
It's the same with a lot of drugs, once you start, you usually can't stop taking them because it will just put you right back to where you were when y
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Exactly. People want the shit lifestyle with none of the draw backs and that's just not how things work in this world (at least for the vast majority of us). The drugs help push things off a bit but you're never as well off as if you addressed the underlying problem.
Of course for some folks solving the problem isnt possible and the drugs are all they have. I don't think that's true for most folks though.
Re:Drinking is good for your health. (Score:4, Insightful)
One person's shit lifestyle is another person's happy lifestyle. There are plenty of happy, active and healthy people who recreate daily through consumption in one form or another.
You do you.
Why do people constantly feel the need to tell other people how to live?
Re:Drinking is good for your health. (Score:5, Interesting)
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It is. And it may finally be the link that was missing so far.
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And a higher risk of many different cancers.
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I'll stick with statins for cholesterol reduction and cannabis for inebriation
Alcohol is for dead-enders
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No amount of statins is safe either. When trying to run a machine well beyond its design specifications, compromises have to be made.
The big question, is moderate drinking safer than statins?
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At the end of a long hard day, I like to kick back with a Lipitor!
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i have high hdl but also high lipoprotein which is apparently genetic and unrelated to diet (i eat very healthy and do exercise a lot). i have tried five different statins and they all give me severe muscle pain, so i resorted to just "fuck it", and a spoonful of b12 rich brewer's yeast and ground chia seeds daily. but i had been having a few beers or wine or sake every day for most of my life and just gave up on that a few months ago. i do sleep and perform better, but i guess it's time for another blood t
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that's good advice, i already do clams quite often and sardines now and then, fresh herring sadly isn't common where i live. that's why i only take half the recommended yeast dose, to keep a good baseline and not overdo it. my bowl of kefir with the supplements, some assorted nuts and a little bit of fruit (i got some gorgeous strawebrries for tonight) or dark chocolate is my mediterranean "betthupferl" :-)
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Neither are necessary. Eating only oreos will lower your cholesterol faster.
But cholesterols levels being irrelevant to heart disease, people should simply exercise and eat a healthy heavy animal diet.
Control insulin levels, not cholesterol.
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There's a lot of nuance to this, remember there are also studies saying NO amount of alcohol is safe.
Medical studies are one of the reasons I'm convinced that people are losing faith in "follow the science", especially studies where food is involved. We've had several decades of contradictory conclusions on stuff like eating eggs, salt, etc. We were told for 30 years that eating bran muffins would reduce colorectal cancer, and then *poof*, a new study comes out saying "Sorry, you ate all that tasteless shit for nothing. No benefits to bran". What do you do when you have studies, all written by eminent men
Re: Drinking is good for your health. (Score:3)
No, the real question is whether cholesterol is even a problem in the first place. Triglycerides are bad. LDL, not so much.
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One is that the vascular plaques mostly appear near the heart organ because it is constantly moving and damaging the vessels. Once damaged, the body tries to fix them with collagen, but that requires certain chemicals. The theory goes that we are typ
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High fat ground beef is a great source of collagen BTW.
Interesting; I wonder whether the body can simply use it that way.
I also understand that sugar is "sticky" within the blood, wreaking havoc.
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Yes, collagen supplements are absorbed through digestion.
Same will be true with ground beef. (the reason ground beef is high in it is because it include connective tissue, which you wont have in just a steak).
Also another great source is beef bone broth.
And yes, sugar is one of the main sources of modern chronic diseases. Major cause of inflammation.
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1. No argument here about alcohol
2. Thining the blood would not REDUCE cholesterol levels.
You are confusing thining blood helping someone with arterial plaque (not really sure it does, but I follow what you are saying) with reduction in cholesterol blood levels. These are not the same.
Besides, cholesterol levels are irrelevant. They arent the cause of heart disease and should be ignored. Triglycerids and insulin levels are important.
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It's entirely possible that moderate alcohol consumption would to lower your cardiovascular disease risk factors, while at the same time increasing your risk of CVD through other factors like blood pressure or abnormal blood clots.
The kinds of diseases that develop over decades in humans are complex, multi-factorial phenomenon, and it typically takes years to sort out the effects of conflicting mechanisms. So you shouldn't every make lifestyle changes based on individual studies that focus on hypothetical
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> There's a lot of nuance to this, remember there are also studies saying NO amount of alcohol is safe.
Be wary of the media filter. Scientists aren't, for the most part, doing studies titled "Is Asbestos Good Actually?" They're doing studies to see whether X affects Y where X is, in this case, alcohol, and Y is some specific condition or disease. Unfortunately when it goes through the media filter it ends up turning into "Boffins say Wine is Good For You!", "Researchers Sound Warning on Beer!", "Health E
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Take that ya bitches (Score:5, Funny)
My liver and other organs are multi-systemically fucked but thank God my cholesterol is good.
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As they say in toxicology -- dosis sola facit venenum
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"There are no confirmed human deaths from THC overdose alone."
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Actually it has killed a few, but likely because of extenuating medical conditions like with the kid who died from eating a spicy chip. Sure, it had lots of capsaicin, but in almost everyone it would just irritate their face, mouth, bowels, and anything else it touches and be done in like a day. Compared to Tylenol (acetaminophen) it’s quite safe as just a few extra of those pills destroys your live
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THC is not the gun, but the ammo.
Like the thing that needs to be mentioned, over and over, is that there are sorts of natural intoxicants, and it took hundreds of years to figure out what it was and how to cultivate it. Nicotine, Caffeine and Alcohol coming from tobacco, chocolate/coffee, and rotten fruit. There are wild animals who get zooted by eating rotting fruit..
But how many people have died from having unchecked limits on these? There's also things like dairy/cheese/yogurt that has the same issue.
The
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Unpasteurized milk is a bigger risk than heroin? You've successfully undermined your entire post with just that one claim.
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Like the people who eat/drink unpasteurized milk are special kind of moron that are taking bigger risks /. meme since 4 or 5 or 6 weeks?
Is this a new
What the fuck is wrong with drinking unpasteurized milk?
The only difference to pasteurized is: how long it takes to spoil in the fridge!!
Stupid (american?) idiots.
If you can not smell that the milk is spoiled or taste it, then you have a much more serious problem than a random germ in the milk.
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You said:
Food safety regarding milk and pasteurization: is an only american thing.
No one ever got a sickness in Europe form unpasteurized milk.
This week I learned from a French cooking class I took that the French don't sell 'raw' milk but it's either pasteurized OR filtered (think reverse osmosis ) So when people in France say unpasteurized they mean it's been filtered. This is a lot different from just walking up to a cow and drinking.
We had a great discussion on food safety durin
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Indeed.
But, Canada is worse. Raw milk isnt allowed to be sold ANYWHERE in Canada.
At least there are like 14 states that allow it, if Im not mistaken.
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Like the people who eat/drink unpasteurized milk are special kind of moron that are taking bigger risks than the people potentially getting fake weed or heroin.
Take a deep breath and step away from the mainstream media. I have been drinking raw milk for 16 years, with family members drinking it for far longer than that, and have had zero adverse affects from it. The only times milk has made me sick was when when it was store-bought (corporate farms which abuse their cows and pasteurize/ruin their milk).
I have learned over the years that mainstream media cannot be trusted, and for good reason. All mainstream media is owned by the same handful of mega corporations,
Re: Take that ya bitches (Score:2)
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It would be hard to OD on it considering there are no endocannabinoid receptors in the brain stem, so basically zero chance of it knocking out your central nervous system. Definitely fucks with other parts of the brain though, but not in a way that can e.g. cause you to stop breathing, stop your heartbeat, etc.
Theoretically the only way it could even knock you out at all would be the sheer volume of it fucking with your blood chemistry by a substantial amount, which given it mostly binds to lipoproteins. Th
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"the LD50 of the active ingredient in nutmeg is 5.1 g/kg. So 5-6 times more toxic than THC"
Don't do drugs, kids.
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That idea is too complicated for the average idiot...
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Exercise is healthy. We lift heavy things to keep our muscles in good shape, so obviously we need to exercise our livers regularly too otherwise it'll forget how to do it's job.
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What about the funny bone? Did you break that and lose your sense of humourous? ;-)
Hold my beer (Score:2)
Hold my beer.
On further review, I'll just down it. Pass me another.
Drown yourself in it (Score:3)
Here's what your healthy self will look like at 35:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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We'll talk about this again when you'll be constantly out of breath from your bad lungs or tired and weak all the time from your bad liver.
It's not about pride, it's about preferring to die without having suffered for years because of a bad health.
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There are many things people drink for, but it is the first time I see someone associating it with "proud".
There are many things that one can get a high from. Destroying your body is in the way of literally all of them.
But cheers if drinking is what makes your life bearable.
So what is the proposed mechanism? (Score:5, Interesting)
If there is evidence for association or a dose-response relationship, then what is the underlying causal mechanism? That's the real question. Alcohol consumption has other health effects, many of which are detrimental. So before this research can be considered useful, it has to explain what is happening at a metabolic level; e.g., what is alcohol consumption doing to lipoprotein synthesis or endogenous cholesterol.
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I don't think this is a super mysterious or unexpected finding. The shit's engine cleaner, after all; cuts grease on contact.
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Looks like it was a correlational study. It can be tricky to suss out the causative relationship
If the results are so stark and compelling, then the obvious next step is a controlled double-blind study. Cost would absolutely not be an issue. I'm sure alcohol companies would line up to throw money at such studies, assuming that the confirming results are a slam dunk.
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The proposed mechanisms are discussed in a cited paper from 2011: https://www.bmj.com/content/34... [bmj.com], which, itself, cites a paper from 2000: https://www.ahajournals.org/do... [ahajournals.org]
TL;DR: "Possibly caused by an increase in the transport rates (TR) of highdensity lipoprotein (HDL) apolipoproteins apoA-I and -II" (De Oliveira e Silva, et al., 2000), but "The mechanisms by which alcohol influences high density lipoprotein cholesterol...are not fully understood" (Brien, et al., 2011).
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If there is evidence for association or a dose-response relationship, then what is the underlying causal mechanism? That's the real question. Alcohol consumption has other health effects, many of which are detrimental. So before this research can be considered useful, it has to explain what is happening at a metabolic level; e.g., what is alcohol consumption doing to lipoprotein synthesis or endogenous cholesterol.
The study is observational so assuming the effect is real, it could be something unrelated. For instance, perhaps the change in drinking habits reflected changes in social habits. Going out more and drinking lowered cholesterol not because of the alcohol, but because the improved mental health translated into better eating habits elsewhere.
Those Are Not Life Changing Numbers (Score:3)
While this is interesting, those numbers aren't going to let me stop taking my statin, even if I started having 3 drinks per day.
So, it's worse than the toxic effects. There really isn't an upside here regarding cholesterol. I guess it could have come out that it made them worse, so there's that.
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You should stop taking your statin because its useless.
But I agree, drinking alcohol isnt a solution for anything either.
Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease. Inflammation is.
Cutting out all sugar should be the prescribed solution to anyone with heart issues or risks.
Big Idea.. (Score:2)
Kills your liver & brain, (Score:2)
but happy cholesterol levels :-)
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Smoking in bed can lower your cholesterol to zero (Score:3)
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Or eating Oreos for a month.
HDL: it's kind of bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
This summary is kind of BS, not because it's untrue but because it left out the most critical fact about HDL adjustment: pharmacologically raising HDL does not improve health outcomes. Nobody knows why. One theory is that that HDL is a marker of something else, and the "something else" is not affected by HDL-raising drugs. The HDL change is not even a hint of an implication that alcohol could improve health outcomes. It is just a provocative quirk that should be studied further.
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This is why statins (LDL-lowering) are one of the most prescribed drugs in the world, but the chemicals that raise HDL are practically unheard of: the former improves healthspan but the latter does fuck all.
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Statins are one of the most prescribed drugs in the world solely due to heavy and corrupt marketing. There's no other standard treatment that your doctor forces you to sign paperwork when you decline it. If that's not enough to indicate somethings fishy going on, then "the meal was cooked a long time ago." Statins only extend your lifespan on average by less than a week. You get up to 7 days for all of its significant side effects and costs. They shouldn't be taken for preventive measures.
Cholesterol i
Re:HDL: it's kind of bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
If part of your argument is "don't trust doctors", the argument is unfalsifiable (since all the research is done by doctors). Thus I'm not going to try. I'm just not going to take it seriously.
Also, the side effects and costs are non-existent (in my case), and if a heart problem is prevented despite not increasing my lifespan, that's still a huge win. That's why I wrote "healthspan" instead of "lifespan". However a quick search for meta analyses does not corroborate your claim that lifespan is not increased. But I didn't go to far as to look for a meta analysis that wasn't written by a doctor.
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If part of your argument is "don't trust doctors", the argument is unfalsifiable
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It wont be a win when you start having cognitive decline, dementia and/or alzheimers as a senior because the statin reduced necessary cholesterol for brain function.
Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease. As he mentionned its inflammation.
Many doctors have published research in line with what he mentionned above. Most front line doctors (not researches) don't know this, because they don't read up on studies not published by their medical journals,which are heavily controlled and subsidised by the pha
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It wont be a win when you start having cognitive decline, dementia and/or alzheimers as a senior because the statin reduced necessary cholesterol for brain function.
Is that actually a thing? Because my understanding is that the body can't run out of cholesterol. The cells synthesize what they need. It also seems like you are conflating cholesterol and lipoproteins. The way you're using the terms (in your multiple posts) is inconsistent.
I don't understand enough of the relevant biology to interpret cardiology research, and it doesn't sound like you do either.
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Lipoproteins transport cholesterol to where its needed in the body (the brain functions a bid differently).
I'm not conflating anything.
Statins inhibiting an enzyme called HMG-CoA reductase. This slows down the livers ability to produce cholesterol.
Pharma studies pretend this only affects LDL.
As for the brain, the synthesis is done within the brain, because of the blood brain barrier. However astrocytes use the same HMG-CoA reductase pathway to produce cholesterol and transport it throughout the brain using
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My apologies for jumping to conclusions. You were writing for a general audience and I didn't know whether "cholesterol" in your comments referred to LDL, TC, or a more general measure that we don't test for. And thanks for explaining how statins affect the body's balance of cholesterol. This is indeed something doctors don't bother mentioning to patients.
It sounds like this is an issue I should pay attention to, and in the mean time see whether I can get excellent lipid levels with more dietary changes and
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Actually the study you linked does point to a possible benefit of cycling, if I'm reading it correctly. It would need to be studied much more though:
There was a trend toward improvement in ADL (P = 0.07) and IADL (P = 0.06) scale scores with discontinuation of statins, but no change with rechallenge.
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Ooh, finally some 'FUN' mutant powers!
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I don't know why you were modded down. Your post seems eminently reasonable.
Atherosclerosis is a "all of the above" thing, LDL, inflammation, metabolic dysfunction all are a piece of the puzzle.
Maybe soon we can add microplastics to the mix.
Those "statins only get you 7 days" studies that keto fanatics love to point out all have one fault - they lasted a year or so.
Thanks for explaining where the other poster was coming from. And indeed, if death can be delayed with such a short intervention, that's some highly efficacious shit!
On the other hand, they can be fake, so buy a name brand or keep getting blood tests.
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Whats incompatible with taking statins is long term cognitive function. Especially in senior years.
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However what we do know is that low cholesterol is a clear indicater for increased all cause mortality.
Cholesterol is also not an indicator of heart disease risk, as more than half of patients with heart attacks have low levels of LDL.
Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, inflammation is.
Data Summary (Score:1)
-1.5 0.85 mg/dL 0.58 mg/dL
-3 4.4 mg/dL 2.49 mg/dL
3+ 7.44 mg/dL 6.12 mg/dL
-1.5 Quit -1.10 mg/dL -1.25 mg/dL
-3 Quit -3.71 mg/dL -3.35 mg/dL
3+ Quit -6.53 mg/dL -5.65 mg/dL
https://chatgpt.com/share/67d2... [chatgpt.com]
It depends (Score:2)
That's why they do it (Score:2)
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Had to keep those McDonalds beef tallow fries in check SOMEHOW!
Don't turn into the Daily Mail (Score:3)
The Daily Mail is notorious for printing articles that say that drinking red wine is good / bad for your health. They have alternated between these headlines for decades. The article under the headline will then proceed to gloss over or misrepresent a study while ignoring important considerations such as sample sizes, reporting mechanism, controls, rigor, conflicts of interest etc. And if the lede is mentioned at all, it is buried at the bottom, e.g. the study might have been conducted on mice.
And the lede was buried in the Ars Technica article that some submitter linked to but didn't bother to include in their summary, that drinking is still bad for you because it increases risk of cancer and other conditions and if you drink at all, moderate.
Don't turn into the Daily Mail.
True for all Medical Study Reporting (Score:2)
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Yes it's their fault. The Daily Mail is a paper tabloid that has transitioned to web clickbait. Stories about vices being bad/good for people have become part of their staple. They're trying to generate page impressions and they don't give a damn whether the headline is accurate, the study is accurate or anything else.
Alcohol is good, in certain circumstances (Score:1)
That'll be an interesting trip to the doctor in the future.
"Your bad cholesterol is high, I need you to start knocking back 4 pints of skullsplitter every day."
Heart or Liver, Heart or Liver (Score:2)
Min-maxing my aging body is not easy.
Whisky D!ck (Score:2)
You need cholesterol to build sex hormones and maintain neurons.
Of the LDL 1 of 4 main types can get stuck in inflamed endothelial intima of the blood vessels which are swolen by triglycerides which are caused by rapid simple carbs.
Did InBev fund this study?
Need to read the paper (Score:2)
The paper [jamanetwork.com] is available online.
Is interesting to note the magnitudes of the cholesterol level changes. Stopping 1.5 drinks per day results in an increase of an average of 1.1 mg/dL, and around 3+ drinks has an increase of 6.5 mg/dL. Those numbers are about the same as measurement error and normal daily fluctuations, even if the correlation of the number of daily drinks to cholesterol change is strong (although I didn't catch any mention of a correlation coefficient).
One seemingly crucial factor wasn't report
How many got cancer? (Score:2)
this has been known for a long time (Score:2)
and most alcoholics & heavy drinkers have very little arterial blockages
Alcohol Causes Other Problems (Score:2)
Managing Cholesterol levels is irrelevant (Score:2)
Cholesterol isnt the cause of heart disease.
Cholesterol is necessary for a functionning brain and cognitive functions.
Reducing cholesterol for seniors leads to dementia, cognitive loss and alzheimers.
Cholesterol shows up to already damaged arteries and gets jammed up there trying to repair them.
The problem is insulin and inflammation.
Remember, more than half of people with heart disease have below warning levels of LDL.
LDL levels are NOT and never will be an indicator of heart disease risk.
*** Obviously for
Blood Glucose (Score:2)
I wonder how much this has to do with blood glucose. I believe diabetics are at greater risk of cholesterol issues. Would consuming sugar do the same thing?