Comment by eadmund
1 year ago
> drinking 1-2 glasses of wine per day
> the astounding thing is that one of the guidelines is that you should drink every day at twice the NHS heavy drinking guidelines. That is a recipe for alcoholism.
Say what? The article implies that 1 glass of wine every day or two (i.e., half of 1–2 per day) is heavy. That seems frankly insane to me.
Are you saying that defining half of 7-14 (or 3.5.7) drinks per week as heavy seems insane to you?
Current science proposes that even 2 drinks a week significantly increases cancer rate, and is the current suggested limit for health - I suspect it would be lower but for reactions like you're having. It seems likely that double or triple that is indeed unsafe.
Media is very careful not to shame their readers: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alcohol-cancer-risk-what-to-kno...
According to the CDC, NIH and other respected credible, mostly objective federal health research groups have all suggested up to 2 drinks per day for men and 1 drink for women is not only safe but also beneficial, citing that moderate drinking "reduced risk of heart attack, atherosclerosis, and certain types of strokes". Obviously this would not be the case for people prone to alcoholism or some other complications or contraindications. Sources: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6761695/
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/about-alcohol-use/moderate-alcoh...
More recent research has come out pretty much destroying the claim that moderate drinking "reduced risk of heart attack, atherosclerosis, and certain types of strokes". So CDC, NIH suggestions are outdated and they'll probably update it in a year or two (hopefully lol).
1 reply →
Yeesh - that has all been completely debunked, and largely addressed by the original post. The link in the comment you replied to addresses your claim specifically, as does this: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Wellness/new-research-shows-moder...
> Are you saying that defining half of 7-14 (or 3.5.7) drinks per week as heavy seems insane to you?
Yes. I assert that drinking 3½–7 drinks a week sounds moderate. One or two drinks a week is light. Heavy drinking would be something like 24 or more.
I define the heaviness of drinking by intoxication, not cancer risk.
Ah, all the definitions of heavy in this comment section other than yours seem to be about health, so I think you may have moved the goalposts there.
1 reply →
> The UK government's guidelines on how much it is safe to drink are based on numbers "plucked out of the air" by a committee that met in 1987. According to The Times newspaper, the limits are not based on any science whatsoever, rather "a feeling that you had to say something" about what would be a safe drinking level. This is all according to Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party who produced the guidelines. [1]
One might think that having admitted this Smith would be circumspect, apologetic and more careful with his claims about health in future. Of course he did the exact opposite:
> However, Mr Smith says this doesn't mean alcohol is not dangerous. He later told The Guardian that this would be a "serious misinterpretation" of his comments. He also argued that the figures were "in the right ball park", and called for heavier taxes to cut consumption
The numbers were based on no evidence but also amazingly in the right ballpark. No contradiction there if you work in public health. Sure enough, ten years later the guidance had become even more extreme [2], with men and women now becoming biologically identical and the government telling citizens that even one drop of alcohol was dangerous:
> The report recommend an upper limit of 14 units per week for both adult men and women, and then included the much-derided “no safe limits” observation.
This highly ideological guidance might have been because:
> Members of the expert group include prohibitionists and anti-alcohol campaigners
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2007/10/22/drinking_made_it_all_...
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/22/stats_gurus_open_fire...
Alcohol is just as bad for you as smoking according to the data, the only safe amount is 0. Why it's not packaged with giant warning labels is another question entirely
Drinking any amount of alcohol everyday is heavy. And frankly alcoholic.