Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
This one is from 2014, but it's not like these numbers change much over time.
80% of Americans have one drink OR LESS per day.
90% of Americans have two drinks or LESS per day.Only 10% of all Americans, the top decile, go past the 2 (or about 2.2) drinks per day average mark. All drinkers of 2.2 or higher fall into just 10% of the total population.
That does not say 90 percent of drinkers are healthy.
No, but you stated that the studies were based on a low number of drinks, I said that that low number was the normal number (or less) for normal drinkers. You asked how I knew that, I showed. No one suggested taht binge drinking around the clock is healthy. Only that heavy drinking is a small percentage of drinkers and that the studies are studying drinking rates that reflect the majority of the real world, not outliers.
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@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
All of the "pro alcohol" studies say the same thing... If you have a healthy drink a day, you will see the health benefits of that drink, even if it contains a small amount of alcohol.
That's not what the studies I've seen (and linked) claim. Maybe that's what they measured, but it is not what they state as the result. The words and meaning you are using are explicitely different than the words and meaning that they use.
I'm not debating what they are claiming. I'm saying what they are claiming is incorrect and inconclusive based on the study they did. You can see that for yourself if you bother to check.
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
I know a large percentage of the population drinks. I also know a large percentage of the population is unhealthy.
But only a tiny percentage of the population drinks heavily, and only a tiny percentage is healthy.
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@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
I know a large percentage of the population drinks. I also know a large percentage of the population is unhealthy.
But only a tiny percentage of the population drinks heavily, and only a tiny percentage is healthy.
But if alcohol was healthy like these articles suggest, then so much more people should be healthier than they are. Most people I know wh9 drink have health issues such as high or low blood pressure, weight, or numerous other issues that you claim alcohol helps with... unless they are very young drinkers who islets not effected so much yet.
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
All of the "pro alcohol" studies say the same thing... If you have a healthy drink a day, you will see the health benefits of that drink, even if it contains a small amount of alcohol.
That's not what the studies I've seen (and linked) claim. Maybe that's what they measured, but it is not what they state as the result. The words and meaning you are using are explicitely different than the words and meaning that they use.
I'm not debating what they are claiming. I'm saying what they are claiming is incorrect and inconclusive based on the study they did. You can see that for yourself if you bother to check.
That's fine, just be clear that you are saying that they are lying and falsifying the results. Which I agree they likely do, they are doctors mostly and I don't trust the field (I don't trust the process that they have to agree to to become doctors.) But those same problems exist with the studies that say that alcohol is bad. So you can't make that claim, either. If you are going to claim that you have studies that say that all alcohol is bad, then you are stuck accepting these more numerous, more rigous, and less political studies as being even more meaningful. you can't have it both ways.
As much as I don't trust doctors, the study from the UK gov't is far, far more useless as it shows nothing at all based on the complete lack of data collected.
So the bottom line is, until someone does an actual study, what we know is that alcohol poses so little health risk that there is no rational reason to be concerned about it as no one can find conclusive evidence of its risk except in extreme amounts that are not normal and that applies to all things, even things we know are healthy in small dosages. What we don't know is if alcohol in "proper" amounts is actually healthy, unhealthy, or neutral. But we do know that it is so close to neutral that modern medicine can't agree on which side it falls.
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
I know a large percentage of the population drinks. I also know a large percentage of the population is unhealthy.
But only a tiny percentage of the population drinks heavily, and only a tiny percentage is healthy.
But if alcohol was healthy like these articles suggest, then so much more people should be healthier than they are.
That's not how healthy things work. That's totally illogical. By that logic, eating broccoli would protect you from smoking. One healthy activity, even loads of them, don't offset bad decisions.
I could do everything right, but if I started every day with 2lb of bacon, I'd die quickly.
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
Most people I know wh9 drink have health issues such as high or low blood pressure, weight, or numerous other issues that you claim alcohol helps with...
And imagine how much worse it would be if they weren't doing at least something healthy to offset the things causing the blood pressure, weight, and other issues!
No one has ever claimed that alcohol would offset other things, only that it helps a little.
It's like keeping your server room at an even tempterature. Does it help protect your equipment, of course it does. Does it mean you don't need backups? Of course not. It helps, but it doesn't help much. It's a background noise improvement in the overall scope of things.
But just because something doesn't help enough to overcome the big factors, in no way suggests that it's not helping.
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Examples... I drink great amounts of water, eat very few processed foods, eat almost all meals cooked at home, exercise some and keep moving all day long, I walk places instead of driving, I'm a vegetarian (and have been for a LONG time), etc. All things that everyone agrees are healthy.
Am I healthy, no. None of those things individually OR combined is enough to offset everything else.
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I also drink no soda, no fruit juices, rarely have dessert, etc. Also all things considered healthy. I really have loads and loads of behaviours generally considered quite healthy. I sleep as long as my body lets me almost every night. I never wake up to alarms.
Why the heck am I not super healthy?!?!?
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I guess, in reality, I say I'm not healthy because I'm overweight and it's just what overweight people say. But my only actual ailments of any type are caused by things like past broken bones or other physical injury, not a lack of general health. I've not had a real checkup in decades, never get sick, never take medicine, etc. All of my health issues are like "broken thumb from car incident" or "wife dropped loaded palette jack on foot" or "stepped backwards onto a blade damaging the ligiment in my foot" rather than "high blood pressure" or "gets ill often".
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@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
All of the "pro alcohol" studies say the same thing... If you have a healthy drink a day, you will see the health benefits of that drink, even if it contains a small amount of alcohol.
That's not what the studies I've seen (and linked) claim. Maybe that's what they measured, but it is not what they state as the result. The words and meaning you are using are explicitely different than the words and meaning that they use.
I'm not debating what they are claiming. I'm saying what they are claiming is incorrect and inconclusive based on the study they did. You can see that for yourself if you bother to check.
That's fine, just be clear that you are saying that they are lying and falsifying the results. Which I agree they likely do, they are doctors mostly and I don't trust the field (I don't trust the process that they have to agree to to become doctors.) But those same problems exist with the studies that say that alcohol is bad. So you can't make that claim, either. If you are going to claim that you have studies that say that all alcohol is bad, then you are stuck accepting these more numerous, more rigous, and less political studies as being even more meaningful. you can't have it both ways.
As much as I don't trust doctors, the study from the UK gov't is far, far more useless as it shows nothing at all based on the complete lack of data collected.
So the bottom line is, until someone does an actual study, what we know is that alcohol poses so little health risk that there is no rational reason to be concerned about it as no one can find conclusive evidence of its risk except in extreme amounts that are not normal and that applies to all things, even things we know are healthy in small dosages. What we don't know is if alcohol in "proper" amounts is actually healthy, unhealthy, or neutral. But we do know that it is so close to neutral that modern medicine can't agree on which side it falls.
No, what we know is that minute amounts of alcohol in an otherwise healthy drink shows the healthy benefits of that drink... and that too many drinks with alcohol shows the negatice impact of alcohol. There is no study on JUST the alcohol alone.
We also know for a fact alcohol itself is a poison. It's well known that alcohol is bad. The amount is beyond the point. Just like gasoline is bad, but a little bit won't kill you, especially if you mask a little bit (proper amount) it in a V8 drink.
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@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
I also drink no soda, no fruit juices, rarely have dessert, etc. Also all things considered healthy. I really have loads and loads of behaviours generally considered quite healthy. I sleep as long as my body lets me almost every night. I never wake up to alarms.
Why the heck am I not super healthy?!?!?
Maybe a lifetime of alcohol consumption? You can't rule it out... Just saying.
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@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
I guess, in reality, I say I'm not healthy because I'm overweight and it's just what overweight people say. But my only actual ailments of any type are caused by things like past broken bones or other physical injury, not a lack of general health. I've not had a real checkup in decades, never get sick, never take medicine, etc. All of my health issues are like "broken thumb from car incident" or "wife dropped loaded palette jack on foot" or "stepped backwards onto a blade damaging the ligiment in my foot" rather than "high blood pressure" or "gets ill often".
Sure, if you have such a small amount of alcohol that it just chemically doesn't matter... like smoking one cigarette every 10 years... (exaggerated to make point clear), then no problem. If it's not enough, it's simply just not enough. But that's not what this discussion is about really.
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
We also know for a fact alcohol itself is a poison.
That's just a silly thing said in that British fluff piece. You can call alcohol a poison, but all that it means is that poisons in the quantity are fine, maybe even good. Just like how radiation is good for us, until we get too much of it. Water toxicity can kill, too, but we don't call water a poison. Tons of things that we eat, some that are necessary for life, become dangerous at elevated levels.
PsychologyToday talks about the American denial of the science behind the value of alcohol and how calling it a toxin is pseudoscience to pander to uniquely American anti-alcohol ideals.
Actually a quite good article looking at it from the American social side.
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
All of the "pro alcohol" studies say the same thing... If you have a healthy drink a day, you will see the health benefits of that drink, even if it contains a small amount of alcohol.
That's not what the studies I've seen (and linked) claim. Maybe that's what they measured, but it is not what they state as the result. The words and meaning you are using are explicitely different than the words and meaning that they use.
I'm not debating what they are claiming. I'm saying what they are claiming is incorrect and inconclusive based on the study they did. You can see that for yourself if you bother to check.
That's fine, just be clear that you are saying that they are lying and falsifying the results. Which I agree they likely do, they are doctors mostly and I don't trust the field (I don't trust the process that they have to agree to to become doctors.) But those same problems exist with the studies that say that alcohol is bad. So you can't make that claim, either. If you are going to claim that you have studies that say that all alcohol is bad, then you are stuck accepting these more numerous, more rigous, and less political studies as being even more meaningful. you can't have it both ways.
As much as I don't trust doctors, the study from the UK gov't is far, far more useless as it shows nothing at all based on the complete lack of data collected.
So the bottom line is, until someone does an actual study, what we know is that alcohol poses so little health risk that there is no rational reason to be concerned about it as no one can find conclusive evidence of its risk except in extreme amounts that are not normal and that applies to all things, even things we know are healthy in small dosages. What we don't know is if alcohol in "proper" amounts is actually healthy, unhealthy, or neutral. But we do know that it is so close to neutral that modern medicine can't agree on which side it falls.
No, what we know is that minute amounts of alcohol in an otherwise healthy drink shows the healthy benefits of that drink... and that too many drinks with alcohol shows the negatice impact of alcohol. There is no study on JUST the alcohol alone.
Alcohol is never consumed alone. I'm not saying that as an excuse, it's just important to understand that alcohol consumed alone isn't the same thing. So even a study on that, wouldn't be useful. Because we don't know if it is the alcohol itself, or a drink with SOME alcohol (no one drinks straight alcohol, it hurts), or that alcohol acts as a tincture and makes us absord other nutrients, etc.
Same with salt. no one has ever done a study of salt to show its health benefits without that salt being a part of other food.
Yes we know, or everyone agrees, that some salt is good for us and too much is highly toxic. Even though we can't study someone that eats only salt.
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
I guess, in reality, I say I'm not healthy because I'm overweight and it's just what overweight people say. But my only actual ailments of any type are caused by things like past broken bones or other physical injury, not a lack of general health. I've not had a real checkup in decades, never get sick, never take medicine, etc. All of my health issues are like "broken thumb from car incident" or "wife dropped loaded palette jack on foot" or "stepped backwards onto a blade damaging the ligiment in my foot" rather than "high blood pressure" or "gets ill often".
Sure, if you have such a small amount of alcohol that it just chemically doesn't matter... like smoking one cigarette every 10 years... (exaggerated to make point clear), then no problem. If it's not enough, it's simply just not enough. But that's not what this discussion is about really.
My point was that with symptoms of radiation poisoning (my mother was killed from radon exposure they believe, and I grew up with it at lower levels) and a life time of drinking, I'm actually quite healthy. Quite healthy and overweight. Maybe the alcohol helps keep me healthy even with my weight up.
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The UT study that PT quotes, takes into account a lifetime of drinking habits (it was done over decades) and adjusted for correlations specifically because they wanted to tackle the belief that healthy people drink, rather than drinking makes you healthy (which was a really reasonable thing to think might have been true) and found that it was the alcoholic drinks that was tied to people being healthier. And it wasn't wine, it was only drinking that was studied.
What they found is that abstraining and heavily over drinking were the two most dangerous categories.
What we know from our best research, is that drinking in moderation is important to good health. Studies have shown that abstaining is actively unhealthy.
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@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
All of the "pro alcohol" studies say the same thing... If you have a healthy drink a day, you will see the health benefits of that drink, even if it contains a small amount of alcohol.
That's not what the studies I've seen (and linked) claim. Maybe that's what they measured, but it is not what they state as the result. The words and meaning you are using are explicitely different than the words and meaning that they use.
I'm not debating what they are claiming. I'm saying what they are claiming is incorrect and inconclusive based on the study they did. You can see that for yourself if you bother to check.
That's fine, just be clear that you are saying that they are lying and falsifying the results. Which I agree they likely do, they are doctors mostly and I don't trust the field (I don't trust the process that they have to agree to to become doctors.) But those same problems exist with the studies that say that alcohol is bad. So you can't make that claim, either. If you are going to claim that you have studies that say that all alcohol is bad, then you are stuck accepting these more numerous, more rigous, and less political studies as being even more meaningful. you can't have it both ways.
As much as I don't trust doctors, the study from the UK gov't is far, far more useless as it shows nothing at all based on the complete lack of data collected.
So the bottom line is, until someone does an actual study, what we know is that alcohol poses so little health risk that there is no rational reason to be concerned about it as no one can find conclusive evidence of its risk except in extreme amounts that are not normal and that applies to all things, even things we know are healthy in small dosages. What we don't know is if alcohol in "proper" amounts is actually healthy, unhealthy, or neutral. But we do know that it is so close to neutral that modern medicine can't agree on which side it falls.
No, what we know is that minute amounts of alcohol in an otherwise healthy drink shows the healthy benefits of that drink... and that too many drinks with alcohol shows the negatice impact of alcohol. There is no study on JUST the alcohol alone.
Alcohol is never consumed alone. I'm not saying that as an excuse, it's just important to understand that alcohol consumed alone isn't the same thing. So even a study on that, wouldn't be useful. Because we don't know if it is the alcohol itself, or a drink with SOME alcohol (no one drinks straight alcohol, it hurts), or that alcohol acts as a tincture and makes us absord other nutrients, etc.
Same with salt. no one has ever done a study of salt to show its health benefits without that salt being a part of other food.
Yes we know, or everyone agrees, that some salt is good for us and too much is highly toxic. Even though we can't study someone that eats only salt.
Then you need to be clear on what you say is healthy. You don't know if alcohol is healthy. There's no study on alcohol.
We do know that red wine has health benefits if no more than on small drink daily. 7 drinks in One night is not the same thing.
But that's never what you say. You say alcohol is healthy, and I see nothing that says so.
I do see that salt is an essential nutrient that your body needs and you have health issues without it. Not so with alcohol.
So to say alcohol is healthy is baseless. To justify drinking more than what we know is baseless. I didn't see any studies on one beer a day, just that it's the alcohol equivalent of a 8oz glass of wine.
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@scottalanmiller said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
All of the "pro alcohol" studies say the same thing... If you have a healthy drink a day, you will see the health benefits of that drink, even if it contains a small amount of alcohol.
That's not what the studies I've seen (and linked) claim. Maybe that's what they measured, but it is not what they state as the result. The words and meaning you are using are explicitely different than the words and meaning that they use.
I'm not debating what they are claiming. I'm saying what they are claiming is incorrect and inconclusive based on the study they did. You can see that for yourself if you bother to check.
That's fine, just be clear that you are saying that they are lying and falsifying the results. Which I agree they likely do, they are doctors mostly and I don't trust the field (I don't trust the process that they have to agree to to become doctors.) But those same problems exist with the studies that say that alcohol is bad. So you can't make that claim, either. If you are going to claim that you have studies that say that all alcohol is bad, then you are stuck accepting these more numerous, more rigous, and less political studies as being even more meaningful. you can't have it both ways.
As much as I don't trust doctors, the study from the UK gov't is far, far more useless as it shows nothing at all based on the complete lack of data collected.
So the bottom line is, until someone does an actual study, what we know is that alcohol poses so little health risk that there is no rational reason to be concerned about it as no one can find conclusive evidence of its risk except in extreme amounts that are not normal and that applies to all things, even things we know are healthy in small dosages. What we don't know is if alcohol in "proper" amounts is actually healthy, unhealthy, or neutral. But we do know that it is so close to neutral that modern medicine can't agree on which side it falls.
No, what we know is that minute amounts of alcohol in an otherwise healthy drink shows the healthy benefits of that drink... and that too many drinks with alcohol shows the negatice impact of alcohol. There is no study on JUST the alcohol alone.
Alcohol is never consumed alone. I'm not saying that as an excuse, it's just important to understand that alcohol consumed alone isn't the same thing. So even a study on that, wouldn't be useful. Because we don't know if it is the alcohol itself, or a drink with SOME alcohol (no one drinks straight alcohol, it hurts), or that alcohol acts as a tincture and makes us absord other nutrients, etc.
Same with salt. no one has ever done a study of salt to show its health benefits without that salt being a part of other food.
Yes we know, or everyone agrees, that some salt is good for us and too much is highly toxic. Even though we can't study someone that eats only salt.
Then you need to be clear on what you say is healthy. You don't know if alcohol is healthy. There's no study on alcohol.
PT says that there is and that it is shown to be healthy. They've accounted for the exact things you are stating as coincidental and say that that's false rumours and not substantiated.
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@tim_g said in Red Wine is good for you: Myth busted!:
But that's never what you say. You say alcohol is healthy, and I see nothing that says so.
That's what PT said you would say. It actually says that in the article...
"Lifehacker and Wired readers can now safely feel that if they go to parties or out to dinner with friends and behave socially, but drink only ginger ale and fruit juice, they'll live just as long as those who actually drink alcohol.
They won't. This has been disproven time and again by the best science we can come up with. But the rejection of science in this case is presented regularly by leading popular scientific and medical publications and spokespeople - and the idea that alcohol prolongs life will certainly never be spoken in schools. And you will (on average) die sooner if you believe them.
What can we say; we know alcohol's a toxin. We'll never believe alcohol can be good for you. This is America, for chrissake! We're willing to die for our true beliefs!"
