Scrutable

shpalman wrote: ↑

Wed May 19, 2021 12:21 pm

I suppose it would mean that if you plotted harm versus quantity the line would go through the origin. Previously it's been argued that small amounts were even beneficial.

Of course one unit, once in your life will have a tiny effect which in practice won't be measurable. The line isn't a step function either.

And there's absolutely no evidence from this data of the direction of that effect.

I've lived in central London for the last 40 years. The pollution I've breathed in has probably done my brain (and other bits of me) more harm than a few classes of vino collapso a week would have done.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Wed May 19, 2021 12:21 pm

Previously it's been argued that small amounts were even beneficial.

I think a very early report of benefits at the lower level is this

Marmot, M.G., Shipley, M.J., Rose, G. and Thomas, B., 1981. Alcohol and mortality: a U-shaped curve. The lancet, 317(8220), pp.580-583.

But people have spent the last 40 years discussing that

Goel, S., Sharma, A. and Garg, A., 2018. Effect of alcohol consumption on cardiovascular health. Current cardiology reports, 20(4), pp.1-10.

Costanzo, S., de Gaetano, G., Di Castelnuovo, A., Djoussé, L., Poli, A. and van Velden, D.P., 2019. Moderate alcohol consumption and lower total
mortality risk: Justified doubts or established facts?. Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases, 29(10), pp.1003-1008.

Minzer, S., Losno, R.A. and Casas, R., 2020. The Effect of Alcohol on Cardiovascular Risk Factors: Is There New Information?. Nutrients, 12(4), p.912.

Haven't looked at the paper under discussion yet.

lpm wrote: ↑

Wed May 19, 2021 9:54 am

I've never understood why people regularly want to make themselves more stupid via alcohol. People seem plenty stupid enough to begin with.

It's nice to go on holiday a couple of times during the year. People don't expect to go on holiday every day. There's a handful of special days when we do fun things, like birthdays and Christmas, but most days are ordinary days.

Yet people seem to think alcohol is an every day of the year kind of thing. Have it just because they like it. Yet the same applies to birthday cake and Christmas presents.

I think the last time I had alcohol was to celebrate the confirmation that Trump had lost in November. Maybe I had some at Christmas, can't remember. I'll go on holiday in a couple of months and will probably have some then. Perhaps at some birthday party.

I'm the normal one when it comes to these luxury events. The rest of you are abnormal.

In that case, I've drunk less alcohol than you, in that I don't think I've drunk any over the last year or so.

lpm wrote: ↑

Wed May 19, 2021 2:17 pm

The unhappiest people I know are the wealthy "ladies who lunch" who are constantly trapped in a loop of demand-complaint-dissatisfaction-demand. They don't enjoy going out to lunch because a restaurant meal is never perfect. It's rarity that, for most of us, makes a restaurant meal good enough to be extremely enjoyable.

This was written especially for you!

The study being referred to, available at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 1.full.pdf does not support the conclusion being drawn. In outline, it compared self-reported alcohol consumption with brain images. This immediately makes it a low quality study as self-reporting can be hopelessly inaccurate. For example, the paper says that 3760 particpiants self-reported as "drinkers" but then gave their consumption as zero units per week.

As the paper says:

Neuroimaging was cross-sectional and therefore we cannot examine the impact
of alcohol on changes in brain measures over time.

so at best any finding is correlational and not causational. Furthermore, the claimed effect is a very small change in brain volume and this is referred to as "harm" even though it does not cite any references to show that the change has any observable effect on brain performance.

I don't understand from the paper how many different levels of alcohol consumption were compared to how many different brain volumes. The graphs are so smooth that I take them to be illustrating the conclusions rather than plotting the raw data (and I very much dislike that the graphics have such poor labelling (e.g. no units) and the descriptions are on a separate page).

Minimum alcohol pricing again.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sat May 29, 2021 12:35 pm

Minimum alcohol pricing again.

A ridiculous policy. It has reduced consumption in Scotland, as surely it would. But at the same time it has increased profit for the alcohol industry, who aren't allowed to sell it cheaply however cheap it is to make. An assessment I saw recently of the Scottish policy suggested that the increased profits were of an order of 10 times the savings of the NHS from the likely health benefits.

It also has the ridiculous effect that it has no effect on people who only drink stuff more expensive than that anyway. A regressive policy that only affects the plebs, perfect for elitist governments.

Just tax it higher if you want people to sell it at a higher price. Then we all experience the effect of it, and it raises some money that can be usefully spent on other health initiatives. I know the cider-makers all shouted last time this was suggested. But minimum pricing has much the same effect on the price of cider. The only difference is that the cider-makers keep the extra income with minimum pricing. As one of the cheapest forms of alcohol per unit, they probably do very well out of it. I really don't think the profit of a tiny proportion of society ought to be major consideration in the choice of policy.

Alcohol caused 740,000 cancer cases globally last year

The Lancet link is in there.

Alcohol-specific deaths in Scotland rose to their highest level in more than a decade in 2020

There were 1,190 alcohol-specific deaths in Scotland in 2020, an increase of 17% from 2019 and the highest number registered since 2008 when 1,316 people died.

I used to drink far too much but over the last few years haven’t drunk much at all. Over the last couple of months I’ve been drinking fairly regularly but at a level which approximates the 14 units a week limit (often below, rarely slightly above).

Bit disappointed to start reading this book and find even that may be too much for my health. f.ck it. I like beer.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drink-Science- ... B002RI9DUG

Stranger Mouse wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 24, 2021 4:15 pm

I used to drink far too much but over the last few years haven’t drunk much at all. Over the last couple of months I’ve been drinking fairly regularly but at a level which approximates the 14 units a week limit (often below, rarely slightly above).

Bit disappointed to start reading this book and find even that may be too much for my health. f.ck it. I like beer.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drink-Science- ... B002RI9DUG

I also have that book, on Kindle (presumably because you linked to it when it was 99p), but I see I only got 4% through. Must try harder.

Right at the moment my regime is 20.65 units a week. This is less than the previous safe level of 21 units per week, but more than I should, I know. That 20.65 units is so precise because I'm with my father and we've agreed numbers and types of drink. However, when I'm on my own it's more variable, usually more.

Brightonian wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 24, 2021 4:58 pm

Stranger Mouse wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 24, 2021 4:15 pm

I used to drink far too much but over the last few years haven’t drunk much at all. Over the last couple of months I’ve been drinking fairly regularly but at a level which approximates the 14 units a week limit (often below, rarely slightly above).

Bit disappointed to start reading this book and find even that may be too much for my health. f.ck it. I like beer.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Drink-Science- ... B002RI9DUG

I also have that book, on Kindle (presumably because you linked to it when it was 99p), but I see I only got 4% through. Must try harder.

Right at the moment my regime is 20.65 units a week. This is less than the previous safe level of 21 units per week, but more than I should, I know. That 20.65 units is so precise because I'm with my father and we've agreed numbers and types of drink. However, when I'm on my own it's more variable, usually more.

I think the old joke about not living longer but just seeming longer is relevant here.

I have a very active job at the moment which has resulted in 15 miles per day walking and lots of lifting. I can’t find any non alcoholic drink which is as refreshing as a can of ice cold Punk IPA. I generally only have one (rarely two) and have plenty of alcohol free days but I would miss an occasional beer terribly.

sTeamTraen wrote: ↑

Wed May 19, 2021 8:40 pm

lpm wrote: ↑

Wed May 19, 2021 2:17 pm

The unhappiest people I know are the wealthy "ladies who lunch" who are constantly trapped in a loop of demand-complaint-dissatisfaction-demand. They don't enjoy going out to lunch because a restaurant meal is never perfect. It's rarity that, for most of us, makes a restaurant meal good enough to be extremely enjoyable.

This was written especially for you!

My friends group is a little* less awful than yours and the more time they have to themselves, the happier they are. Me included.



*like, loads. Jeez, Louise, ditch those tedios.

Young people in Lincolnshire need to grow up and drink less.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 26, 2021 9:08 pm

Young people in Lincolnshire need to grow up and drink less.

I see things like this and realise that I don't know any cops socially

getting flight-pissed does seem to be curiously British

tl;dr it's ok for MPs to have shown up drunk in Gibraltar because British just can't conceive of sitting somewhere for two hours without spending the time drinking continuously.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:51 am

getting flight-pissed does seem to be curiously British

tl;dr it's ok for MPs to have shown up drunk in Gibraltar because British just can't conceive of sitting somewhere for two hours without spending the time drinking continuously.

Not just a British thing

lpm wrote: ↑

Wed May 19, 2021 1:33 pm

It's amazing isn't it, how capitalism always discovers stuff we buy is good for us. And those studies are always unimpeachable.

How strange any studies that discover stuff we buy is bad for us are promptly found to be flawed.

You'd think it would average out, just by chance. But no.

Is the pharma industry included here?

Ok. Slightly drunk for the first time in years so I suppose I should post on the other thread but I can’t rememberthe name so I can’t find it (because I am slightly drunkI I used to get very drunk a lot and I prefer this state but I suppose I’ll have to wait until the morning to see if I still think that.

Generally over the last few years my alcohol consumption has ranged between nil and moderate so I’m quite enjoying the alcoholic buzz I am getting now but I wouldn’t woNt to return to taking it too far too often.

Moderation in all things I suppose.

Including moderation.

ETA: my typing is that bad before alcohol.

Millions in UK drinking harmful levels of alcohol at home

Eight million people in England are drinking so much wine, beer or spirits that it is harmful to their health, according to data from the government’s Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, with a large increase in the numbers drinking at levels considered to be dangerous.

Prof Julia Sinclair, the chair of the addictions faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said the switch to drinking at home during the Covid pandemic was partly to blame for the rise, with drinking sessions sometimes lasting several hours longer than they would in a pub.

Figures based on YouGov surveys show 18.1% of adults in England were drinking at “increasing or higher risk” in the three months to the end of October 2021, which equates to 8 million people.

That is much higher than in February 2020, before the pandemic, when 12.4% or about 6 million people drank at these levels. In October 2019, 11.9%, or about 5 million people, were drinking at this level.

The NHS recommends adults consume no more than 14 units of alcohol per week. Increasing or higher-risk drinking is defined by the alcohol use disorders identification test (audit) used by professionals, which asks questions about people’s drinking habits. It looks at how often people drink, how many units in one session, whether they ever feel guilty and whether they sometimes miss out on usual activities due to drinking.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:20 am

Millions in UK drinking harmful levels of alcohol at home

Eight million people in England are drinking so much wine, beer or spirits that it is harmful to their health, according to data from the government’s Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, with a large increase in the numbers drinking at levels considered to be dangerous.

Prof Julia Sinclair, the chair of the addictions faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said the switch to drinking at home during the Covid pandemic was partly to blame for the rise, with drinking sessions sometimes lasting several hours longer than they would in a pub.

Figures based on YouGov surveys show 18.1% of adults in England were drinking at “increasing or higher risk” in the three months to the end of October 2021, which equates to 8 million people.

That is much higher than in February 2020, before the pandemic, when 12.4% or about 6 million people drank at these levels. In October 2019, 11.9%, or about 5 million people, were drinking at this level.

The NHS recommends adults consume no more than 14 units of alcohol per week. Increasing or higher-risk drinking is defined by the alcohol use disorders identification test (audit) used by professionals, which asks questions about people’s drinking habits. It looks at how often people drink, how many units in one session, whether they ever feel guilty and whether they sometimes miss out on usual activities due to drinking.

Interesting. I don't measure it exactly, but my consumption has gone way down during the pandemic, mainly because I'm avoiding pubs, the only place where I actually enjoy drinking. I find drinking on my own a bit miserable when I'm on my own, and when on occasion I'm with others, at their places, none of them happen to drink much. (Though I have found I'm eating a fair bit more.)

Britain has a drinking problem – and the alcohol industry can’t afford to let us kick it

Well ok but the alcohol industry is international so if* Britain has relatively more of the problem that's maybe not entirely why.