Major study debunks myth that moderate drinking can be healthy

[webfact]

Major study debunks myth that moderate drinking can be healthy

By Kate Kelland

 

FILE PHOTO: An employee pours whisky in a glass at a restaurant in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, October 18, 2018. REUTERS/Samrang Pring

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Blood pressure and stroke risk rise steadily the more alcohol people drink, and previous claims that one or two drinks a day might protect against stroke are not true, according to the results of a major genetic study.

 

The research, which used data from a 160,000-strong cohort of Chinese adults, many of whom are unable to drink alcohol due to genetic intolerance, found that people who drink moderately - consuming 10 to 20 grams of alcohol a day - raise their risk of stroke by 10 to 15 percent.

 

For heavy drinkers, consuming four or more drinks a day, blood pressure rises significantly and the risk of stroke increases by around 35 percent, the study found.

 

"The key message here is that, at least for stroke, there is no protective effect of moderate drinking," said Zhengming Chen, a professor at Oxford University's Nuffield Department of Population Health who co-led the research. "The genetic evidence shows the protective effect is not real."

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 2.3 billion people worldwide drink alcohol, with average per person daily consumption at 33 grams of pure alcohol a day. That is roughly equivalent to two 150 ml glasses of wine, a large (750 ml) bottle of beer or two 40 ml shots of spirits.

 

This latest study, published in The Lancet medical journal, focused on people of East Asian descent, many of whom have genetic variants that limit alcohol tolerance.

 

Because the variants have specific and large effects on alcohol, but do not effect other lifestyle factors such as diet, smoking, economic status or education, they can be used by scientists to nail down causal effects of alcohol intake.

 

"Using genetics is a novel way ... to sort out whether moderate drinking really is protective, or whether it's slightly harmful," said Iona Millwood, an epidemiologist at Oxford who co-led the study. "Our genetic analyses have helped us understand the cause-and-effect relationships."

 

The research team - including scientists from Oxford and Peking universities and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said it would be impossible to do a study of this kind in Western populations, since almost no-one there has the relevant alcohol-intolerance gene variants.

 

But the findings about the biological effects of alcohol should be the same for all people worldwide, they said.

 

Europe has the highest per person alcohol consumption in the world, even though it has dropped by around 10 percent since 2010, the WHO says, and current trends point to a global rise in per capita consumption in the next 10 years.

 

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-04-05

[observer90210]

With sensible moderation, one need not fear and thus appreciate the fine tastes and tipsyness of good quality booze !!!

[quandow]

Just stay away from that devil Sangsom!

[bluesofa]

2 hours ago, webfact said:

The research, which used data from a 160,000-strong cohort of Chinese adults, many of whom are unable to drink alcohol due to genetic intolerance

An excellent basis for for research then.

 

A lot of these 'studies' suggest what's good or bad. In six months a similar 'study' could probably 'suggest' the opposite.

 

Just like waiting for a bus - there will be another along in a minute.

 

[JRG23]

The bottom line is no one knows how much anyone can drink safely. In my book moderation is good.

[sanemax]

2 minutes ago, JRG23 said:

The bottom line is no one knows how much anyone can drink safely. In my book moderation is good.

Its against forum rules to discuss moderation on here

[Chomper Higgot]

9 minutes ago, sanemax said:

Its against forum rules to discuss moderation on here

I nearly choked on my breakfast when I read that.

 

Funniest post on here for months.

[Proboscis]

1 hour ago, bluesofa said:

An excellent basis for for research then.

 

A lot of these 'studies' suggest what's good or bad. In six months a similar 'study' could probably 'suggest' the opposite.

 

Just like waiting for a bus - there will be another along in a minute.

 

Reading this study, it is done on Chinese subjects many of whom have a genetic intolerance to alcohol for genetic reasons. Of course you are going to have severe reactions and higher mortality in such groups.

 

But in populations where there is no genetic intolerance or allergy to alcohol, low average consumption of red wine has been shown in studies to benefit health - see the following link among many https://universityhealthnews.com/daily/nutrition/the-health-benefits-of-red-wine-scientific-evidence-is-compelling/

 

It is not just that the studies suggest this to us and we don't know how or why. We actually know the reasons why low consumption of red wine helps with reduction of the diabetes (in conjunction with a good diet), for example. Same with other chronic diseases.

 

So shame on TV for reproducing a report that actually has little relevance to anyone on the board other than a possible tiny minority who are genetically intolerant and who therefore do not drink anyway.

[sammieuk1]

The cocktail of outrageous wine prices and a Brexit pound has a remarkable effect on consumption????

[zydeco]

The resources of Oxford University being used for medical research that is only of benefit to Chinese. Yes, Britain, you're a colony, now, doing the bidding of what is good for your masters.

[Pilotman]

Yep, these 'studies' are all very useful.  In the last few years its been, milk is good for you, oh wait, milk is bad for you.  Cheese is good for you, oh wait, cheese is bad for you. Beef is bad, pork is okay, no wait, pork is also bad, but seafood is good, no wait........., not all seafood is good. Chicken is okay,, says one;  no its not, its full of all kinds of crap says another. Red wine is good for you, no it's not says another study. Salt is okay in moderation, no its not someone says, no salt is good. Ah I know, coffee is good and tea........ but is it?  Some nerd in University is proving that coffee is the Anti Christ as we speak.  We will all be told to end up Vegan, until they prove that it causes cancer.  The truth is, most of the time, the scientists don't know and can't definitely prove a damn thing. 

Edited April 5, 2019 by Pilotman

[from the home of CC]

If you look at the funding patterns for research you'll see how harmful substances are given clean/promotional bills of health till they're overridden by uninfluenced peers. The above study is limited but many others clearly point out the flaws in past 'positive' findings that the beverage industries funded. Hey nobody lives for ever anyway and some people deserve to pay for excesses. 

Edited April 5, 2019 by from the home of CC

[Lucius verus]

Load of media rubbish as usual.

You are who you are the moment you're conceived.

Many fitness nuts drop dead from heart attacks and strokes in their twenties and thirties.

Alot of guys drink whiskey everyday and smoke and live into their seventies.

Look at Keith Richards. Booze, binge drinker , heroin, acid,coke, cigarettes, sex with anyone .

He's still alive and about 73.

There will be a 40 y/old non drinker and marathon runner drop dead somewhere this weekend. 

[KKr]

this study has a strong bias, so albeit interesting information, not a relevant result in a larger context.

a population with genetically determined intolerance reacts badly to alcohol.
now, that is a great scientific breakthrough.

cohorts with a different composition, with less genetically determined intolerance, may show different results.
Also, wonder how behaviour of 160.000 participants was tested and monitored and what the size of the control group was.

Edited April 5, 2019 by KKr

[Mac98]

Live the life you want or the life you are told to live. Up to you.

[natway09]

And here I was worrying about Brexit.

This report tells me that I am in real trouble

[Pilotman]

1 hour ago, natway09 said:

And here I was worrying about Brexit.

This report tells me that I am in real trouble

we all are.  Apparently, we will all be dead by Christmas from the poison in one form of food and drink or another,  so it doesn't really matter about Brexit. 

[wgdanson]

10 hours ago, webfact said:

FILE PHOTO: An employee pours whisky in a glass at a restaurant in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, October 18, 2018. REUTERS/Samrang Pring

 

Edited April 5, 2019 by wgdanson

[55Jay]

4 hours ago, Pilotman said:

Yep, these 'studies' are all very useful.  In the last few years its been, milk is good for you, oh wait, milk is bad for you.  Cheese is good for you, oh wait, cheese is bad for you. Beef is bad, pork is okay, no wait, pork is also bad, but seafood is good, no wait........., not all seafood is good. Chicken is okay,, says one;  no its not, its full of all kinds of crap says another. Red wine is good for you, no it's not says another study. Salt is okay in moderation, no its not someone says, no salt is good. Ah I know, coffee is good and tea........ but is it?  Some nerd in University is proving that coffee is the Anti Christ as we speak.  We will all be told to end up Vegan, until they prove that it causes cancer.  The truth is, most of the time, the scientists don't know and can't definitely prove a damn thing. 

 

Ha ha, yup, I remember in the US, mid-1980s, (chicken) eggs were studied, found to be harmful and thus, the recommendation was to limit intake - think it was 3 or 4 eggs a week.  It got a lot of traction and from it, the OCD Extremists went on a Zero Tolerance for Eggs crusade. 

 

The Egg industry countered with television commercials, people dressed in egg suits acting like martyrs, "Come on folks, remember us?  Sniff Sniff.  We're not so bad!".   The moderating view worked, because most folks are moderate, and they like eggs. 

 

Just when things got back to "normal", the Egg industry was mortified by Nancy Reagan and the War on Drugs.

 
"Oh fer fark's sake, come on!  Give us a break, will ya'!!!"  ????

 

 

[rumak]

5 hours ago, Lucius verus said:

Look at Keith Richards. Booze, binge drinker , heroin, acid,coke, cigarettes, sex with anyone .

He's still alive and about 73.

There will be a 40 y/old non drinker and marathon runner drop dead somewhere this weekend

in all fairness,  I think Keith has been in a few marathons himself,  though not running ones

[attrayant]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the fact that a glass of wine contains 130 million parts per billion (13% by volume) of a class-1 carcinogen, yet nobody seems to mind.

[Pilotman]

1 minute ago, attrayant said:

I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the fact that a glass of wine contains 130 million parts per billion (13% by volume) of a class-1 carcinogen, yet nobody seems to mind.

I would guess that nobody takes any notice because virtually everything we consume, every environment we are in. every chemical we come into contact with, including in toothpaste, toilet cleaner, washing up liquid, has some carcinogenic properties. As the scientific world still has no real idea how many cancers are triggered, it's rather useless to worry about every little thing, such as the odd glass of wine. 

[attrayant]

40 minutes ago, Pilotman said:

I would guess that nobody takes any notice because virtually everything we consume, every environment we are in. every chemical we come into contact with, including in toothpaste, toilet cleaner, washing up liquid, has some carcinogenic properties.

 

I agree with some but not all of this - we do have a good idea of what kinds of things a mutagenic and what things are not, and many things fall somewhere in between.  Making matters worse, our ability to detect scary-sounding "chemicals" at miniscule levels has become so good that it's now possible to find traces of almost anything in samples of almost anything.

 

The laugh-or-cry part was because hardly a day goes by when I don't hear some holistic vegan soccer mom on facebook screaming about 10 ppb of pesticides on her kale, while holding a big glass of wine that contains 130 million ppb of ethanol.

 

Quote

it's rather useless to worry about every little thing, such as the odd glass of wine. 

 

130 million ppb surely is not a "little thing", is it?

 

 

Edited April 5, 2019 by attrayant

[Lacessit]

IMHO moderate drinking is better than excessive drinking.

I only drink on weekends now. At my age, drinking every day is no longer sensible. Too many side effects.

[Dap]

13 hours ago, sanemax said:

Its against forum rules to discuss moderation on here

Very witty

[Ulic]

15 hours ago, quandow said:

Just stay away from that devil Sangsom!

An occasional dance with the devil is A-OK as far as I am concerned. YUM-YUM

[Prissana Pescud]

3 hours ago, Lacessit said:

IMHO moderate drinking is better than excessive drinking.

I only drink on weekends now. At my age, drinking every day is no longer sensible. Too many side effects.

IMHO, moderate drinking ends when I fall off my chair.

I only drink during the week now, at my age I can't afford the cost of drinking 7 days a week. 

[mommysboy]

17 hours ago, JRG23 said:

The bottom line is no one knows how much anyone can drink safely. In my book moderation is good.

You mean you want it to be good?  It's not but I think it's important to have at least one bad habit in life.  Yes, the trick is to keep it as least damaging as possible, and this is why exercise is so important.

[bendejo]

Whoever released the report was drunk.

 

 

18 hours ago, Lucius verus said:

Look at Keith Richards. Booze, binge drinker , heroin, acid,coke, cigarettes, sex with anyone .

He's still alive and about 73.

Keith died about 25 years ago, doesn't he look it?

 

To me, Keith's epitaph is his lyric:

wasn't lookin' too good

But I was feelin' real well

 

As for age comparison, Dick Cheney looked like he was old enough to be Clinton's father back in the 1990s.  Bill is only five years younger.

 

 

[FarangDoingHisThing69]

Major study debunks myth that moderate drinking can be healthy

By Kate Kelland

 

FILE PHOTO: An employee pours whisky in a glass at a restaurant in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, October 18, 2018. REUTERS/Samrang Pring

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Blood pressure and stroke risk rise steadily the more alcohol people drink, and previous claims that one or two drinks a day might protect against stroke are not true, according to the results of a major genetic study.

 

The research, which used data from a 160,000-strong cohort of Chinese adults, many of whom are unable to drink alcohol due to genetic intolerance, found that people who drink moderately - consuming 10 to 20 grams of alcohol a day - raise their risk of stroke by 10 to 15 percent.

 

For heavy drinkers, consuming four or more drinks a day, blood pressure rises significantly and the risk of stroke increases by around 35 percent, the study found.

 

"The key message here is that, at least for stroke, there is no protective effect of moderate drinking," said Zhengming Chen, a professor at Oxford University's Nuffield Department of Population Health who co-led the research. "The genetic evidence shows the protective effect is not real."

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 2.3 billion people worldwide drink alcohol, with average per person daily consumption at 33 grams of pure alcohol a day. That is roughly equivalent to two 150 ml glasses of wine, a large (750 ml) bottle of beer or two 40 ml shots of spirits.

 

This latest study, published in The Lancet medical journal, focused on people of East Asian descent, many of whom have genetic variants that limit alcohol tolerance.

 

Because the variants have specific and large effects on alcohol, but do not effect other lifestyle factors such as diet, smoking, economic status or education, they can be used by scientists to nail down causal effects of alcohol intake.

 

"Using genetics is a novel way ... to sort out whether moderate drinking really is protective, or whether it's slightly harmful," said Iona Millwood, an epidemiologist at Oxford who co-led the study. "Our genetic analyses have helped us understand the cause-and-effect relationships."

 

The research team - including scientists from Oxford and Peking universities and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said it would be impossible to do a study of this kind in Western populations, since almost no-one there has the relevant alcohol-intolerance gene variants.

 

But the findings about the biological effects of alcohol should be the same for all people worldwide, they said.

 

Europe has the highest per person alcohol consumption in the world, even though it has dropped by around 10 percent since 2010, the WHO says, and current trends point to a global rise in per capita consumption in the next 10 years.

 

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

 

-- [emoji767] Copyright Reuters 2019-04-05

Sorry, but I’ll keep my eternal beer goggles. Better than the ulcer that comes with accepting the current state of the world.

 

The averages are alarming though. since many drinkers just drink socially, who are the outliers that drink 2+ glasses of wine daily ritually? Those folks must be covered in liver spots.

 

 

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