patrick.net

Patrick says

I have a distant cousin who is 103, and has a Manhattan every evening. My wife also had a relative who lived to 107 and liked his daily drink.

Jeanne Calment smoked until she was 117 and lived to be 122. So by your logic it seems all those 1950s doctors who pushed the benefits of smoking were right.

I'm pretty sure that smoking greatly reduces life expectancy for most people, and that is my personal experience with relatives who smoked.

But there is good evidence that moderate drinking significantly increases life expectancy, and my personal experience accords with that as well.

Jeanne Calment was some kind of mutant. I read that she smoked just one cigarette a day though. Maybe at that level it is not so bad, who knows?

If you smoke one cigarette a day, the next mooring your lungs purge all of the crap out of your lungs. But if you chronically smoke, all of that tar in those cigarettes mortars all of that crap into place, and you don't routinely expel all of the smoke and crap you smoked the day before. You wont start hacking it out until weeks or months after you stopped.

Tar scaffolding holding up the lung tissue and alcohol poison. If you can't throttle a bottle in a single sitting, it's totally from wimpsville.

Didn't a UFC guy say trans are mentally ill and should not be supported by public and than said this message is sponsored by bud light?

Patrick says

But there is good evidence that moderate drinking significantly increases life expectancy

Um, no.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/moderate-alcohol-consumption-should-not-be-recommended-for-health-reasons

True, there was slanted research that had the thesis of the benefits of drinking, but it was put out for the same reason as the lie about the vaxx prevents covid.

Alcohol is a poison that can damage every organ in the body, just that low consumption is below the threshold of noticeable damage. If you like your wine, fine, drink up. But do not push that alcohol as a health food. "Significantly" increases life expectancy? Maybe NAPA Valley Growers Association can sponsor research on how the alcohol in wine prevents myocarditis.

I'm pretty sure that the evidence of increased life expectancy with one drink a day is overwhelming, far beyond any doubt.

But I get what you're saying, a lot of research is created simply to please businesses which have influence over science funding.

Patrick says

I'm pretty sure that the evidence of increased life expectancy with one drink a day is overwhelming, far beyond any doubt.

Yep, like the Paunch Paradox: BMI mid-high 20s associated with longer lifespans, faster recovery, and less routine illness. Obesity is BMI 29+

The drinking is healthy story is a myth but it's "supported by statistics".

During the metabolism of ethanol it's turned into acetyl aldehyde inside your body.

Aldehydes are extremely toxic.
An example of an aldehyde is formaldehyde.

Sipping poison is harmless to us at a low level, one per week probably has no negative effects.

Patrick says

I'm pretty sure that the evidence of increased life expectancy with one drink a day is overwhelming, far beyond any doubt.

But I get what you're saying, a lot of research is created simply to please businesses which have influence over science funding.

My take is that we're alive today because of alcohol. Low life expectancy numbers were due to kids dying. 300 years ago they'd drink alcohol because the water was shit. Guess what? We're sitting here on pat net typing about it because, to some extent, alcohol. Our ancestors lived and they lived drinking copious amounts of alcohol.

Alcohol is dangerous and deadly in excess. So not promoting it. My BIL died from it. That said I know functional alcoholics that made it to their 90's and even 100. I'm not talking a drink a night. Multiple.

I think the key is if you like a drink, what else do you intake in a day? If I was on medication of any kind I wouldn't recommend drinking at all. In fact the medication might make you feel better now, but is likely killing you faster than the booze. Everyone also always goes to the liver first. Pancreas is what does most alcoholics in if they drink in excess. Once that SOB is toast you're done. It's a matter of when, not if you die. Liver is a tough mother fucker.

I recommend everyone watch a documentary called "How beer saved the world".

https://youtu.be/pcLasNk4i-c?si=7hD7biReNvyjWN0q

GNL says

I recommend everyone watch a documentary called "How beer saved the world".

i'm gonna have to check that out. As strictly a beer drinker I think it's probably true and why I mention the water thing. Not sure if that's part of the film.

Hard liquor is where the alcoholics go to die. I drink daily, not in excess and just some shitty light beer (sorry beer snobs). Just went through the gauntlet of medical tests. MRI, EEG, CT Scan and blood work. Nothing. Totally healthy for a 40 year old with no concerns besides slightly elevated BP which I've had before I even started drinking.

I think alcohol gets a bad reputation because of the hard stuff if I'm being honest. Not justifying anything I do, I probably drink more than I should. But hard alcohol is trash in my world. I will call a good friend a cunt if they offer me a shot. Get fucked. I actually think if prohibition came back and was for 20 proof and over it would be a good thing. Wine, beer, Prosecco, some coffee liquor and other light booze is fine. You have to have massive amounts in my opinion to lead to health problems. 20oz of vodka a day, a water bottle, is way easier than 35 beers.

Weed is going the same route. There should be a cap on THC and MG's per dose? Having done shrooms and acid, the weed is getting a bit extreme in my opinion. Won't kill you like alcohol can, but it's going too far at this point. Always wanted it legal, but there has to be someone tapping the brakes on this. I don't like regulation, but my dumb ass has totally gotten fucked up with weed. Haven't done that with alcohol in decades. Fact is most people can't drink that much liquid. With 40% alcohol versus 5% and 10x the ounces you get fucked up and damage your body. I have to drink 64 ounces over 2-3 hours to have a buzz. Drink 6 shots in an hour and see where you're at...

I have known several beer alcoholics; a couple are still living.

clambo says

During the metabolism of ethanol it's turned into acetyl aldehyde inside your body.

Correct and it takes 2 enzymatic steps to metabolize alcohol. If you've run through the 2nd you just make lots of that poison which is one of the reasons hangovers suck so much.

You can make that much less likely by taking 600mg of NAC before you start drinking.

Trump World is saying the same thing......"Go easy on Bud Light and Disney! They have said nice things about Trump!"

He's an enterntainer. As in "will dance, sing or say things for money". Meaning that whatever he says or does might not align with his personal beliefs.

Same goes for that Kid Rock character.

Like with the vax, everybody bears the consequences of their particular wishful thinking. They thought the vax was healthy, too, and many went to the trouble of imposing it on others including their own families. I couldn't talk anybody out of it. The bodies are stacking up.

Alcohol is a poison, period, it is not 'healthful' because it temporarily makes you feel good, or your body can metabolize it rather quickly.

My gripe isn't with drinking, drink all you want, bottoms up, just don't pin fake attributions to it. "It's poison, but I am going to use it anyway, because I like the way it makes me feel, damn the world."

With highly profitable industries that pay shills, actors, media and doctors to slant research over an addictive substance, what could possibly go wrong?

I have no doubt that a lot of alcohol will kill you in short order. Nonetheless, the statistics looking at literally millions of people clearly show that those who drink a little bit somehow live longer on average than those who don't drink at all.

The arguments against the protective effect against heart disease have to claim that this overwhelming correlation is not causation because... reasons. One reason I just read is that people who drink just a little bit tend to be wealthier. I suppose that could be true, but it seems like reaching.

Given the known effect that alcohol has in dilating blood vessels, that alone could be the reason for the statistics showing that alcohol helps.

Anecdotally, my old boss told me that he overheard two cardiac surgeons marveling that while alcoholics were in generally poor health, they had remarkably clean coronary arteries.

Alcoholics have clean coronary arteries because alcohol is a tissue poison that thins the arterial walls, making them weaker. Alcoholic arteries aren't healthy, they are thin and flaccid. Arteries have muscles that regulate blood pressure and perform metabolic functions. There was a study in Russia dissecting early age deaths from alcoholics, with lots of pictures of dissected 'clean' arteries. They did not look 'healthy', in spite of being 'clean', they looked more like vitiated strings.

Drinking spikes your blood pressure (aldehyde), increasing likelihood of stroke in the susceptible. Alcoholics have an increased incidence of dissecting aneurysm. Weakened heart muscle and weak, thin arteries are not a sign of healthy circulatory system. The vessels are also weakened, and can lead to internal bleeding, also from alcohol related coagulopathies.

Alcohol, as water soluble, enters every water soluble body compartment, is also terrible for joints and bone, as well as brain, liver and pancreas. I have a friend who says his drinking contributed to his joint/skeletal weakness and need for artificial joints, he researched it.

There are multiple citations for damages to health and mentation from alcohol use for every citation of alleged 'health'. I know it is pointless because drinkers will drink and 'want to believe'. The 'heart health' stuff seems to be the main theme.

I seriously doubt you would find an objective pathologist who routinely does autopsies who would vouch for the 'health effects' of alcohol. They probably drink, too, anyway, because just hang it all.

I know this pisses people off, but so be it, alcohol mythology is just that, mythology to reassure the customers.

Right, large amounts of alcohol are generally fatal. I do not dispute that.

But as they teach in pharmacy school, "The dose makes the drug." Small amounts of a drug can have the opposite effect from large amounts. This well-known effect even has a name, hormesis.

WookieMan says

i'm gonna have to check that out. As strictly a beer drinker I think it's probably true and why I mention the water thing. Not sure if that's part of the film.

I highly recommend it. Refrigeration and antibiotics are just 2 of the inventions/improvements to society attributed to beer.

Ceffer says

I know this pisses people off, but so be it, alcohol mythology is just that, mythology to reassure the customers.

I agree with you here. Everything is a sale so to speak. So alcohol needs to continue to sell. I'd just argue that % and quantities are the bigger issue. Liquor like whisky and vodka are god awful substances. I'd have no issue if they were banned. People get hammered on them all the time, too quick and too easy to hide.

I don't think outright prohibition would ever work, but I'm actually okay with banning certain levels of alcohol sold in stores. I like my beer, but I also don't like being full all the time or fat. Vodka I'd be dead.

I don't believe in prohibition. The problem is counter educating against the pushers putting out baloney to reassure their 'victims'. It is pretty impossible to outspend and out bullshit the pushers, alcohol is too ancient a social habit.

I don't care if people drink. I generally do not want to be around people past their second drink or so, because they are not the same, and even if they think they are 'better' because they like the feeling, they aren't. They become increasingly absent and detached from their surroundings, but clueless that they are. Of course, the lack of inhibitions is not always flattering.

One Irish guy in our tri valley court must be made of forged Irish steel, because he is basically an alcoholic Eveready rabbit and lives on into his seventies. He was a successful executive. He never gains weight, still golfs, is highly sociable. He has had adverse effects, including angering one female neighbor we had by groping her when he was in his cups. He fell and had a serious torsion fracture of his arm, that kept him from golfing and created a permanent though minor disability. His wife basically tries to take separate vacations, relegating him to his 'drinking' vacations. His family members tolerate him but likewise isolate him because of the drinking.

When we go to our court parties, he will always bring tons of wine, keeps filling everybody's glasses, then try to move on to hard liquor. You can see him drifting off into his alcohol coma. He thinks he is funny when he isn't, but wants everybody to humor him. He's a garrulous drunk, no dead air from him. He tries to reach a point where everybody is in some kind of intoxicated brawl, very Irish of him. I am shocked he has survived all of his imbibing for so long.

I know a lot of people like that.

Thats why I think alcohol is far less harmful (physically not behaviorally) than they make it sound. If your liver is intact and likes a good workout there aren't really any other things you need to watch out for. There's also a strange counterbalance with weight, you don't put on any as long a you drink wine or liquor or even lighter beers such as pilsner. It's often the opposite your appetite is curbed for a while.

From the article that Headset linked:
However, the scientists found that both those who never drank alcohol and those who abstained in the 12 months prior to the study and had no previous risk factors did not have a higher rate of death than those who drank low to moderate amounts of alcohol.
So no advantage to light/moderate drinking, but not a threat to longevity either.

It's a surfactant (breaks up fats) and 30 years ago when I was in school it was theorized a small amount helped the circulatory system. Also a very small amount. Like 3oz of a light beer or something and no more, switches on garbage collection in the brain - for more recent research. There is actually a flushing system that usually runs during sleep.

just_passing_through says

There is actually a flushing system that usually runs during sleep.

That explains why a passed out drunk pees his pants.

Low to moderate alcohol consumption is highly correlated with longevity in almost every observational study to date.
Every one.

However, the reason is still not understood as alcohol is essentially a poison - and so... there are more recent studies that take a
different approach and find that all drinking is harmful. And yet...

The view is that drinking in this context is indicative that you lead a healthier life style in general - exercise, have a job,
and have good social connections (which is likely why you are having a glass of wine at a group/family dinner).
Low level wine / beer consumption in a group/meal situation does unequivocally correlate with better life outcome, and
even the studies that state that all alcohol is debilitating do show that the risk for low consumption is very small.

The greatest improvement to reducing alcohol damage is for moderate / heavy drinkers.

Personally, I think that the health benefits from say a glass of wine a night is actually underestimated. It allows one to cope with difficulties, is a social
lubricant that gets social interaction going, etc...

A review of latest JAMA study:
https://peterattiamd.com/alchohol-intake-and-cardiovascular-disease-risk/

Moderate alcohol consumption also reduces the risk of Alzheimer's Disease:

https://www.alzinfo.org/articles/moderate-drinking-reduce-alzheimers-risk/

Want to lower your Alzheimer’s risk? A drink or two a day may help, according to a new report. But the key is moderation. Too much alcohol can damage the brain and lead to other health problems.

Earlier findings by this group and others have suggested that moderate drinking can have benefits for the brain. But this was a largest analysis to date.

“This study is not the final word, but it does provide the most complete picture out there,” said study author Michael A. Collins, Ph.D., of Loyola University Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine. The researchers looked at data from143 studies from more than 365,000 participants around the world. The findings appeared in the journal Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment.

Given that arteriosclerosis is a known cause of Alzeimer's as well as of heart disease, the same effect may be at play, whatever it is.

Again, a large amount of alcohol is clearly bad for both brain and heart, but small amounts seem to be beneficial.

Reduction of Alzheimer's is one of the standard fake ploy of medical snake oil propagandas. But, I can't remember the rest.

There is a bar drink called 'Brain Hemorrhage', which is probably as honest as the informatics get.

Patrick says

Again, a large amount of alcohol is clearly bad for both brain and heart, but small amounts seem to be beneficial.

I just went through the major medical tests. Nothing. I'm 100% healthy by doctors definition. I drink 3-6 beers a day. Everyday.

Large amount is relative to what is being consumed. 6 beers over 6 hours versus six hard liquor drinks over 2 hours is different on the body. Sipping beer or wine in moderation I don't think is a big deal. If you find yourself in trouble than it is a big deal. Health wise though booze has been in the diet for centuries. It's why I don't drink hard liquor. It's too easy to over consume. Wine and beer it's harder.

It's always amusing when people trot out studies proving that the things they enjoy are actually good for them. I've always considered it just needing some external validation. I don't really believe you're having a beer to increase your longevity. I don't really believe you're masturbating daily to prevent colon cancer. I don't believe you drink five cups of coffee a day to age gracefully. If you were worried about health you'd be eating cottage cheese and broccoli for dinner every night instead of looking up brands of cigarettes with the least tar or whatever.

Just enjoy the stuff you enjoy and don't be too worried on your deathbed about not having had enough beers throughout your life.

A good read is Peter Attia's book Outlive His basic argument is that best practice medicine now is about risk evaluation because there are so many unknowns and RTC studies are so difficult, with more complex diseases, with many causes both environment and genetic, that getting definitive results is near impossible. So, how do you evaluate various studies and determine what studies are good vs bad? It seems as others pointed out there are simply many bad studies from which you can draw the wrong conclusions. The book, though, can be summed up with just one word: exercise.

That seems to be the key to a long life, with diet and what you eat/drink not nearly as important as originally believed.

Of course, his premise is that you want a "quality" long life, so he views weight bearing exercise as critical.

Make up a critical test for the theory in your mind, that would at least have a 95 percent statistical validation. This isn't 'data harvesting', which presumes the truth of usually slanted underlying 'data' without researching the validity of the underlying data. Literally, anything can be 'proven' with data harvesting. Not much different than AI, which is agnostic to data, but can be slanted with programming toward a particular subset of choices.

Testimonials from people who drink? Mostly, they just state that their drinking is 'fine' without consequences (drinking solipsism) and will usually just lie to make their amount 'socially acceptable' even if they are routinely drunk.

Controlled drinking in a population, by making them drink a certain amount every day in a long term longitudinal study? Absurd. The people in the study who don't like to drink will fake that they drank, the alcoholics will get shit faced and claim they stuck to the protocol etc. etc.

Isolating the effects of alcohol in a heterogeneous population suffering from many varying mixed patterns of possible genetic or acquired pathologies? Well, good luck with that one. The allegation of heart health (when alcohol is a known muscle toxin) is absurd on its face.

Alzheimer's reduction? Alzheimer's is seldom a specific diagnosis, but is usually a garbage pail diagnosis of many senile diatheses of many often unspecified etiologies. Again, the problem of adequate controls and longitudinal studies will wind up anecdotal at best.

May the best and most pleasing and commercially successful anecdote mythology win.

Patrick says

I'm pretty sure that the evidence of increased life expectancy with one drink a day is overwhelming, far beyond any doubt.

But I get what you're saying, a lot of research is created simply to please businesses which have influence over science funding.

i have research proving that if everyone sends me money it’ll increase world happiness and lifespan.

joking of course, but all the research and articles paid for by companies looking for conclusions or they won’t fund it. wsj and forbes all full of shit imo, i read too much bullshit there.

Genetics plays a huge role.

There's a lot of bulslhit about salt consumption. About 90% of the population is salt INsensitive. They just piss out the extra sodium, no harm, no fowl and the temporary boost in sodium does bupkiss to the circulation. At most a few points of elevated blood pressure shortly after the high salt consumption, then a few hours later it's flushed.

But 10% of the population is salt sensitive, they have to not only control the sodium intake, but make sure they're eating enough salt.

There was a study saying that most cancer drugs don't work on about 20-25% of the population due to the way those particular body chemistries process the drug.

When you get into sophisticated drugs, there's dozens of pathways, and if just one processes it abnormally, you get atypical results. Sometimes it exacerbates problems.

I was just reading a Substack article which claimed that chemotherapy has only a trivial effect on the life expectancy of cancer patients.

Considering the ongoing atrocities of Rockefeller medicine, and the bizarre allowance of physician to directly profit from the sale of the chemotherapeutic agents, one has to wonder. The rug of legitimacy has really been pulled out from under the medical establishment that formerly was trusted.