Large Study Shows Drinking Alcohol Is Good For Your Cholesterol Levels 40
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:3)
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is what I heard.
I believe it pairs well with measles.
Large Study Shows Drinking Alcohol is Good (Score:2)
^^ That's as far as I read.
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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.
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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?
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.
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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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.
Drown yourself in it (Score:2)
Here's what your healthy self will look like at 35:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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So what is the proposed mechanism? (Score:3)
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.
Those Are Not Life Changing Numbers (Score:2)
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.
Big Idea.. (Score:2)
Kills your liver & brain, (Score:1)
but happy cholesterol levels :-)
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Smoking in bed can lower your cholesterol to zero (Score:2)
HDL: it's kind of bullshit (Score:2)
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
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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
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)
Don't turn into the Daily Mail (Score:2)
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