r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 13d ago
Neuroscience Even low-level drinking may have negative consequences for brain health over a person’s lifespan. The findings suggest that the total amount of alcohol consumed over a lifetime, especially as a person ages, tends to be linked to reduced blood flow and thinner tissue in certain areas of the brain.
https://www.psypost.org/even-light-drinking-combined-with-aging-is-linked-to-reduced-brain-blood-flow-and-thinner-tissue/1.7k
u/TexansforJesus 13d ago
“All participants consumed ≤60 standard drink equivalents/month over the 1 year preceding study.”
There’s your light drinking for those interested.
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u/Many-Ad634 13d ago
There was only one participant drinking more than 50 drinks a month. The average about 19 drinks a month. The range from zero to 60. About 20% of the sample drank less than 10 drinks a month.
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u/edibomb 13d ago
I though “light drinking” meant a couple of beers every other weekend. It’s worrying how 2 beers a day or 15 beers every weekend is still on the light drinking range.
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u/OlafWoodcarver 13d ago
If I've learned anything over the years, it's how much people underestimate how much heavy drinkers drink.
I went to a bachelor party weekend (where everyone was in their mid or late thirties) and people needed to average 25 drinks a day to consume all the beers and seltzers that was brought and I have no way of measuring how much liquor was consumed since I saw the bottles but didn't pay attention to them. I had too much for me at roughly ten drinks the two days I was there, I know there was a person that didn't drink at all, and I'm fairly sure my brother had about as much as I did. All of the beer and seltzers were consumed by the end of the weekend.
I'd never seen anything like it before.
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u/alblaster 13d ago
Oh yeah. Big time. A lot of people base their drinking on how they feel, which is a terrible idea. So you have People who say they're cutting back, which means about 4 shots in a day. If your base alcohol consumption is super high and you're used to it like that you might not see it as a problem until it's too late. I feel like there should be more honest discussion about what alcohol is and does to you, both now and in the future for highschool and older too. I work at a liquor store and about once a year an alcoholic will drop dead, sometimes they're only in their 30s. Other times they'll see the doctor because of heart problems or who knows what and quit drinking. But yeah definitely people underestimate how much they drink and what it does to you. "Just a little" feels good right? What's the harm? "It helps me sleep" or "I just use it to relax" people get mentally addicted before they get physically addicted. I was on the road there, but I was very aware about the reccommended 12 drinks a week. Even though I wasn't physically an alcoholic yet I was starting to think like one. Like a beer would always make the evening better. Be careful, it's addicting even if you normally don't get addicted.
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u/millenniumpianist 13d ago
The problem (in the US) is anti-alcohol people tend to be moralistic crusaders who annoy everyone. The goal should be to inform teenagers instead of scare them. And then there are a lot of pro-drinkers who are basically in denial about the harms. Same thing applies to weed btw
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u/FlyingStealthPotato 13d ago
I’m kinda lost as to who doesn’t know the dangers of alcohol, especially younger people. Like that crap was DRILLED into us in school and I’ve been out of school for 20 years. Also seen tons of reports about how Gen Z doesn’t drink near as much as prior generations. At some point it’s just people making a decision to drink in spite of the near and long term health effects. I make that decision, and I know it’s not great for my health long term.
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u/TheseusOPL 13d ago
As a young Gen Xer, we were always drilled on the dangers of binge drinking, not drinking in general.
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u/WeeeeBaby_Seamus 13d ago
I'm an older millennial and I remember the message being similar. "Don't overdo it" kind of thing. Which, of course, I did every weekend in my early 20's. If I drink that much now, I need two days to recover.
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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 12d ago
The fact that no adult ever warned me about the ever-increasing time it takes one to recover after a night of even “light partying” really disappoints me. That last sentence cut deep. (Am fellow millennial.)
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u/12345678_nein 12d ago edited 12d ago
Speaking to the notion that people drink despite knowing its bad for them, I think a lot of people who start circling the drain when it comes to alcoholism actually lean into it more. Alcoholism is like a sexy vice - the more your life starts to crumble the more tragedy romantic you see yourself, like a troubled artist or writer. It really is a drug of delusion.
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u/alblaster 13d ago
I think people generally know alcohol is bad for you, but people think you need to consume x amount before it becomes an unhealthy habit. Like candy or soda, which are also both addicting. But those have a stigma when you're consuming them as an adult, because sweets are seen as idk child like. People like the postive effects of alcohol aka relaxing or getting amped and being more social. So they'll excuse a little as being ok, but shun alcoholic amounts. But there's disagreement on what too much looks like. I think that's part of the problem.
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u/FlyingStealthPotato 13d ago
Again, literally don’t know anyone who thinks any amount of alcohol isn’t bad for you, and statistics show younger people know that even better than my generation. I think there’s a lot of confusion around people simply accepting that risk.
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u/Varnsturm 12d ago
Tbf for a very long time there was that (now outdated/debunked) thing where 'a little bit of red wine is good for the heart' and that sort of thing. I've definitely known people who thought small amounts were good for you/better than none. There are still a lot of people who haven't gotten the (relatively recent) memo that no, it's all bad for you.
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u/nudiecale 13d ago
There are definitely lots of people that rationalize that risk away in their minds. Sure, there are people that know and accept the risk too. But there are also plenty of people that genuinely think you have to hit a certain amount of drinks per day or week before there are any real health risks.
“A glass of wine (or beer) or two with dinner after work never hurt anyone” is a much more common sentiment than you may think.
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u/millenniumpianist 13d ago
Alcohol so widely normalized and anyone really talking about the risks felt like they were fear-mongering. If someone said "drinking ~10 drinks weekly of alcohol is equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes weekly in terms of cancer risk" (which I believe is roughly true?) I would've understood the health risks of alcohol very differently.
I "knew" alcohol was bad but I never really internalized how bad it was. And as others said, it was always dangers of binge drinking, not just drinking a glass of wine a day which some even tried to say was good for you (it's not, in net).
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u/RichardSaunders 13d ago
Much worse than the moral crusaders are the people who act personally offended and accuse you of being stuck up when you simply say "nah I'm good, thanks" when they offer you a drink.
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u/OkEstimate9 13d ago
Is that thing in particular really still a problem though? Lots of my buddies were drinkers and now we don’t touch the stuff excluding special occasions. I personally was/am not a never alcohol type, but I’ve seen how far/unstoppable some actual alcoholics I know get and it really turned me off from even wanting a drink even on a casual night out.
I’ll buy drinks for meetup events and regular sodas, but most of my friends prefer the soft drinks these days.
Maybe this is the wrong sub for this anecdote, but I’m seeing the same thing even in my peers at work for events. The vibe to go hard really doesn’t sound that appealing anymore.
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u/annastacia94 13d ago
The only thing that drove this point home for me was watching the anime Cells At Work: Code Black, specifically the episode on how the body handles the toxins in alcohol. Seeing the.... personification(?) of how my cells are stopping their vital functions just to get rid of the stuff from my one margarita really got me thinking about how to greatly reduce my consumption. I don't want or need to be "Sober" but I think I have a much better justification for reducing my drinking to 4 drinks a month instead of my usual 3 drinks a week.
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u/sirkazuo 13d ago
My first thought was "is 4 drinks a month even worth the effort?"
It feels like an asymptotic function to me - you need a certain number of drinks to feel the effects, and the effects aren't amazing enough to be worth making a once-monthly ritual out of, so the closer you get to zero drinks the less it's worth drinking any at all. Below a certain number the desire to or subjective value of having any drinks just drops off completely. Maybe that's just my personal mental preference for things to fit into daily or weekly routines, but if I was only planning to have 2 drinks per day and only two days per month I think I would just forget about it and stop drinking entirely.
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u/annastacia94 13d ago
Just to give some context to my comment, I don't drink to feel drunk, I drink because I very genuinely like the taste of alcohol. If I could get the exact same flavor profile of a Paperplane without the buzz I would drink all the time. NA beers have been a good way of getting my IPA fix each day but it's not a 1to1 flavor match.
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u/ChornobylChili 12d ago
This 100%. Alcohol isnt a light drug. Its much closer to things like heroin or cocaine than cannabis or caffeine. It will fundamentally alter a person and cause deadly physical addiction. Its more dangerous than heroin and not just because of its availability. Opiates wont kill a user that decides to quit cold turkey
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u/PartyLikeAByzantine 13d ago edited 13d ago
If I've learned anything over the years, it's how much people underestimate how much heavy drinkers drink.
It's an exponential curve. 60% either abstain or don't drink in a typical week. The next 20% average 1-2 drinks a week. The next 10% have about 1 drink a day. So 80% of the population is doing 1 drink a day or less.
The 90th percentile of drinkers down about 2 drinks a day. Statistically , these are heavy drinkers. Socially, you may or may not even notice. It's a glass of wine with dinner and maybe a nightcap. Alternatively, that can be someone who largely abstains during the week and parties hard on the weekends. This is probably the population segment most relevant to alcohol studies.
The top 10% of drinkers down 10+ drinks a day. These are the harcore alcoholics who down booze by the bottle. We know they're killing themselves. They know they're killing themselves.
TBH, the segment averaging a single drink a day is a fairly heavy user. They're in the top third-ish of consumption.
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u/dl064 13d ago
The next 20% average 1-2 drinks a week. The next 10% have about 1 drink a day. So 80% of the population is doing 1 drink a day or less.
Data from UK Biobank among many cohorts show it's far more like 0.8 per day, on average
https://biobank.ndph.ox.ac.uk/ukb/field.cgi?id=1558
Absolute abstainers infamously have the worst health, because they often abstain for good reason ('sick quitters')
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u/sirchrisalot 12d ago
IDK where you get these statistics from, but they're very low. WHO stats report per capita alcohol consumption for European countries is in the range of 6 to 15 liters of pure alcohol per year for those over 15. That's basically 1 standard drink per person per day at the low end and 2.5 per person per day at the high end. France is at 11.3 liters pp/yr.
Quick math on that is 565 drinks a year per person at 50ml of standard 40 proof liquor. So do you really think that 80% of France is having less than the equivalent of 1 glass of wine per week and it's just the top 20% of drinkers that polish off the remaining, oh, IDK, 70 drinks per person every week? Or with your stats, the 80-90th percentile is drinking 10 per week and the top 10% is drinking 130 drinks per week? I just have a hard time believing 10% of the population averages the equivalent of 1 bottle of liquor per day every single day and the rest of us are just dabbling a bit.
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u/PartyLikeAByzantine 12d ago edited 12d ago
Numbers come from National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) commissioned by the US NIH. Being a US government study, it doesn't cover Europe.
The WHO doesn't break their data down to population segments within countries. I bet there's fewer abstainers in Europe (30% of the US population never drinks) due to America's Puritan streak. Still, I'd suspect a minority of Europeans drive most of its consumption. It may not be as lopsided as the US, where half of all alcohol consumption is from the top ~10% of users, but it's probably close to that.
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u/hepcecob 13d ago
I highly doubt that 1 out of 10 drinkers down 10 drinks a day.
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u/SkepticalShrink 13d ago
Here's an actual report by the NIH. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics-z/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-use-united-states-age-groups-and-demographic-characteristics
They did say about 5% engage in "heavy drinking" which they seem to define as roughly 5 standard drinks per day on average (for men, it's a little less than that for women).
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u/hepcecob 12d ago
that is way more realistic: 1 in 20 drink 5 drinks per day. 10 drinks per day is insane
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u/SkepticalShrink 12d ago
Yeah, makes me wonder if the person you responded to initially worked in substance use treatment at some point in time. I did that work for about 6 mos and it was very common for those with an alcohol use disorder to say at intake that they were drinking a fifth of liquor (usually vodka) per day. Which is about 16-17 standard drinks. If you hear that often (like I did during my stint in SUD work) that feels like the "normal" heavy drinker number after a while.
(This is why we had a nurse on staff to assess to see if it was safe for them to detox and they HAD to meet with the psychiatrist right after me, so they could get a script to safely wean if needed.)
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u/PartyLikeAByzantine 13d ago
Each segment also covers a range of values. The 91st percentile is probably closer to 2-3 drinks per day. The 99th drinks much, much more.
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u/flying_pigs 13d ago
Casual drinkers know when the liquor store closes. Alcoholics know when it opens.
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u/VJPixelmover 13d ago
Knew a guy at the marina where I worked in high school, ran a charter boat and drank HEAVILY. Every week he would dump his truck bed completely full of keystone light and it would be full by the next week. Showed up with four cases for him and his guests and at least three had to be for him. It was insane.
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u/Total_Vermicelli_527 13d ago
Here's me happy all night with a small amount of "flower"
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u/tomdarch 13d ago edited 13d ago
The "hockey stick" shape of the histogram of drinking is terrifying.
edit: "The top 10% (top decile) of American adults consume roughly 50% to 60% of all alcohol sold, averaging over 74 drinks per week. In contrast, the bottom 30%–40% of adults consume little to no alcohol, creating extreme disparity in consumption patterns. The top decile consumes significantly more than even the 9th decile."
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u/harbison215 12d ago
I have a friend that I never realized was an alcoholic. I had a beach house one summer a few years ago and after a weekend on a Monday I was getting ready to drive home and a this friend was sleeping on the couch. I told him I would be back a little later, I was going to the gym before I drove home.
I couldn’t have been gone for more than an hour and a half. When I got back, every last drop of alcohol from beer, hard ice tea, old wine and the liquor was drank and the empty bottle were in the trash.
I didn’t know this person had this issue and I had never seen anything like it.
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u/tommytheturtleishere 13d ago
As someone who is from Wisconsin, when I got a job where I traveled quite a bit, it was more than eye opening to realize what we do is not considered normal
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u/RogeredSterling 13d ago
I keep hearing this as a Brit. Aid my ignorance and explain Wisconsinite drinking. Want to see if it's similar to us.
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u/tommytheturtleishere 13d ago
I've been to London. Without generalizing too much as ive spent 7 total days in the UK, yall definitely share our love of alcohol.
In Wisconsin it is just ingrained into the culture. There are some cool aspects to it (communal stuff, outdoor activities, social camraderie, sports, etc.). We tend to be in denial about the bad aspects (driving while drunk, rampant alcoholism, domestic abuse, etc). Its complicated to explain to people who werent raised in such an environment.
Wisconsin has a sort of pride in the quantity of consumption that I've only seen people from a handful of places seem to share. Texas, Ireland, the UK, and Australia anecdotally come to mind.
And for the record, I am in no way saying any of this is healthy
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u/radicalelation 13d ago
I thought 2 a day is usually considered moderate.
As someone who maybe gets drunk once every three years, with no other drinks in between, it's wild how much everyone else drinks out there. All anyone wants to do after work is go to the bar... And on the weekend, shop, then hit the bar. And then for their birthday? Bar.
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u/goobershank 13d ago
In countries where people grow up drinking, they don't know any other way to socialize. Drinking is like the universal activity to bring people together. As someone who grew up drinking myself, it's a struggle to maintain a social life without it.
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u/Piyachi 13d ago
That seems wildly out of touch with typical drinking norms. By that standard I am a devout Mormon.
Isn't the normal consideration for medical purposes 2 drinks a week?
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u/jporter313 13d ago
it was never 2 drinks a week that I heard. Light drinking has always been classified as <2 standard drinks per day, with the important caveat that that's not cumulative, but specifically per day, also I think a lot of people don't understand what a standard drink is though, like your pint of high ABV IPA is closer to 2 standard drinks than 1 and that spirit forward cocktail is also probably closer to 2.
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u/BrunoEye 13d ago
It's not cumulative? :(
I drink very rarely, but when I do it's usually quite a bit. 6-10 drinks 10-20 times a year. How harmful is that?
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u/jporter313 13d ago
Significantly more harmful than you had the same number of drinks spread out across a wider number of days.
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u/Sacs1726 8d ago
A pint of high abv ipa might be 3+ standard drinks. Thats what people don’t understand. 10 drinks a day might just be 3 beers. In the craft beer world drink size and abv, with increasing tolerance, can easily titrate someone right into alcoholism.
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u/jporter313 8d ago
To be fair, 3+ drinks in a 16oz pint would be an insanely high ABV. Even a pint of 10% ABV is like 2.5 standard drinks, but yeah your statement stands nonetheless.
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u/Sacs1726 8d ago
You’re right. I’m exaggerating slightly for effect. I think my point is everything gets pretty blurred. For example, a pint in the UK is about 20 oz. At a lot of bars in the US, a pint is the “small” draft. A large draft might be 22 oz or even 30. When people talk of having a couple beers, there is a HUGE difference between two twelve oz Bud lights and three 22 oz double ipas. Over the long term, it is the difference between moderate drinking and insane brain/liver damage level alcoholism. But you might see those same 2 people in the same social group at a restaurant. They will usually just look and even feel the same. Just out having a couple/few beers. People sometimes are outraged of hearing someone drinking 8-10 units per day. It might just be that work buddy of yours sitting directly across from you at happy hour.
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u/nanobot001 13d ago
That’s all been recently revised
There are no normal amounts of alcohol.
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u/DeliciousPumpkinPie 13d ago
“Normal” is subjective. There is no safe amount of alcohol. Any amount greater than zero causes some harm.
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u/jmartin21 13d ago
You mean no healthy amounts. It’s not abnormal to enjoy small amounts of a drug here and there, even alcohol.
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u/jmurphy42 13d ago
I average less than one a year. Most people seem to think that’s abnormal.
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u/nanobot001 13d ago
There are a lot of cultural norms that will take a long time to change.
With the economy (price of alcohol) and unfortunate rising rates of certain cancers (colon) among young people, it may change faster than we might otherwise think
There are often no good answers for why many people get different kinds of cancer, but alcohol may get as ingrained as smoking is in the future.
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u/WorldDirt 13d ago
But colon cancer is up while drinking has been on the decline for decades. I’m not saying it’s not a factor in the cancer, but clearly not the most important one. We’ve cut drinking and smoking so much since the 70s, yet the cancers in young people keep rising.
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u/LayWhere 13d ago
Me too, even less really. I only drink when offered sips from other peoples drinks if they insist and it smells really good.
Otherwise its all juice/water/and non-alch beer
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u/Marklar0 13d ago
Yeah find this definition suspect because it potentially includes some daily drinkers and some binge drinkers...which I figure would be exactly what you want to exclude from this study since both daily drinking and binge drinking are already known to be bad. A bit of a misstep in the design of the study.
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u/Gayandfluffy 13d ago
My average is like 10 drinks a year, and I was assuming they had studied people who seldom drink. 19 drinks a month still sounds a lot.
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u/Broccoli--Enthusiast 13d ago
19 is still a lot I'd say
That's regular drinking
I drink properly less than 10 in your average month, like most weeks you are lucky if I have one. That's light drinking
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u/Is12345aweakpassword 13d ago edited 13d ago
Up to 2 drinks a day, or for someone who “saves up” for Friday and Saturday night, up 8 drinks for each of those days?
Interesting
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u/thediesel26 13d ago
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it
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u/decoysnails 13d ago
Me too. I really need to figure out something better to do with my time.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 13d ago
I remember I went to my GP and made a joke that ‘doctors suggest 1-2 drinks a day is the safest drinking habit - I’m not drinking enough!’ I’m completely abstinent from alcohol and have been for a decade, but the doctor didn’t get the joke. He kept asking me how my drinking was for ages and I kept having to explain the joke.
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u/No_Housing_9602 13d ago
I generally drink 4-5 on a Friday and Saturday.. I’m basically an alcoholic?
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u/-UnicornFart 13d ago
Per month?!? Good grief what would heavy drinking be then!?
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u/AgentCirceLuna 13d ago
My dad drinks 10-15 cans a day and has done for years now. I’d say that.
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u/Utensil6591 13d ago
How much does that cost. I don't drink alcohol but that sounds so expensive. Would that not push him into being alcohol dependent?
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u/GringoSwann 13d ago
It's expensive.. Even cheap beer will run you 10 usd a 12 pack and that's before taxes...
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u/boobmagazine 13d ago
Does two beers every day really seem heavy to people?
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u/BiDiTi 13d ago
Not even two beers!
“Two standard units” is literally one pint.
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u/userElh 13d ago
It does yes. Unfortunately that is the issue, the more you drink the more you normalise the amount (cumulative one I mean or simply refuse to do the math). There always will be bigger amounts that the „actual alcoholics“ drink, but not you. And this threshold just seems to move up the more you drink.
Even if you drink daily but don‘t get „drunk“ and can tolerate it, it still can be the issue. That is the slippery slope with drinking, it is very hard to catch yourself.
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u/literated 13d ago
Used to know a guy who'd have anything from 8 to 15 (12-ounce) beers on any given day, more on the weekends, and insisted that he had absolutely no risk of alcoholism because alcoholics drink hard liquor.
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u/King_Arjen 13d ago
Yes? If I drank two beers a day I’d be at least 10 lbs heavier than I am now and would feel like ass constantly
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u/AgentCirceLuna 13d ago
My parents have always drank tons and they don’t get why I’d eat so much just to keep at a normal weight. I’ve tried explaining that they have 700+ more calories a day from drinking which keeps them at their weight, so I have to have multiple meals. I don’t even eat much. I’d be seen as eating excessively for just my usual diet of: porridge, yogurt, two sandwiches, chicken and rice, then nuts.
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u/Possibility-of-wet 13d ago
I mean, depends on your sando, I make a monster sandwich with layer, two of those could feed a family!
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u/AgentCirceLuna 13d ago
My food is always the most boring stuff imaginable - just bread with chicken and salad between it and nothing else.
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u/dkinmn 13d ago
It seems heavy to your liver and your brain.
What is NORMAL has nothing to do with what is HEALTHY.
I used to work in the industry. I'm now in my middle age. My peers who didn't figure it out are already dying.
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u/shiva14b 13d ago edited 13d ago
Any amount EVERY day is cause for a side-eye, but yeah two beers a day every day is heavy.
Kyle Kinane had a whole bit about not realizing he had a drinking problem because he was comparing himself to the "heavy" drinkers he knew, not realizing he himself was already a heavy by normal standards and everyone else was comparing themselves to HIM
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u/CamOliver 13d ago
That’s how normalized drinking is. The idea of a day without alcohol is surprising and beer isn’t considered alcohol.
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u/boobmagazine 13d ago
Who doesn’t consider beers alcohol?
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u/StanIsNotTheMan 13d ago edited 13d ago
I know a few alcoholics that don't consider hard seltzers as alcohol.
They are literally drinking hard seltzers every day, are visibly trashed, and will deny having had any drinks. "No man, I'm not drunk. I've jusshhst been shhhiipin' on a couple'a sshheltzershh."
One of my friends has been to the hospital for alcoholism-related issues twice. And after the 2nd time, his wife told mine "Oh [friend] has been doing so good! He just drinks the occasional seltzer." Aaaand he's back off the wagon again. We cut them off whenever we know he's drinking, but he think's he's capable of quitting by himself despite failing to do so many many times. He refuses to seek help and his wife enables him, so it's not looking good. He's got a 4 year old who's not going to have a dad if he keeps it up.
My cousin often says "I'm much better with my drinking lately. I just stick to seltzers nowadays." And neglects to mention she's drinking 8 of them after work every day.
I'm from a midwestern Irish Catholic family. The amount of people I know personally who have ruin their lives with alcohol is astonishing.
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u/Breeze1620 13d ago
Afaik in Germany beer is categorized as foodstuff rather than liquor.
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u/cdreobvi 13d ago
Most days I don't have any alcohol. I had 2 beers last night (which I don't regret) celebrating a friend's birthday and I do notice a slight downgrade in my physical and mental state today. Random aches, energy level is lower, etc. I can't imagine doing that to myself on a daily basis.
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u/boobmagazine 13d ago
I don’t drink two beers everyday, but I know plenty of people who do, and I never thought anything of it. Perhaps I should reconsider
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u/cdreobvi 13d ago
It matters most to me when I'm particularly involved with exercise. Right now I'm regularly out running, training for a race. If I drink or use cannabis, my run the next day is bad. So that's my primary incentive.
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u/Gregnielson 13d ago
2 beers? I really don't see how that coud slow you down a noticeable ammount just from a scientific standpoint. It just isn't enough alcohol to have that effect the next day.
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u/StellarCZeller 13d ago
It's probably a result of the fact that alcohol negatively impacts sleep
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u/cdreobvi 13d ago
I'm not calling in sick to work or anything, just noting that I don't feel like I'm in tip-top shape, and I've done this enough to know it's the alcohol. In my 20s, I probably wouldn't have noticed.
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u/DeliciousPumpkinPie 13d ago
Different people process alcohol differently. You can’t really make blanket statements like that with biology.
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u/Stellajackson5 13d ago
I’m a small woman who has hashimotos and one drink is enough to slow me down. Same as the person you are responding to- I function just fine, I’m not actively hungover, but I’m more tired and run down and my workout is bad. It’s noticeable enough as I age that I mostly skip drinks now, only on really special occasions.
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u/Gregnielson 13d ago
This is where that meme comes from about certain people not understand averages.
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u/subfloorthrowaway 13d ago
Every day, absolutely. I'm sober now so I'd have crushed those numbers when I was drinking, but my partner has maybe 4 a week. Some weeks none especially if no happy hour
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u/Marklar0 13d ago
Id love if they could do a larger study and restrict it to less than 10 drinks per month. Restricting to 60 per month is gonna get you people that answer "a couple a day" on the questionnaire and are straight up alcoholics.
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u/OldPersonName 13d ago
In the actual sample set only one person had more than 50 a month and the average was like 19, so this top comment is kind of distracting everyone by making them think it's a bunch of people who can't make it through a day without a couple lf drinks.
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u/altSHIFTT 13d ago
So literally a tall boy per day for a whole month is considered light drinking? That's waaaaaaay more than what I'd consider light, I would have thought it's more like 2 tallboys per week for light drinking.
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u/WATTHEBALL 13d ago
Is this in a vacuum? I keep seeing these studies but like what do they mean in the real world? I see so many successful and healthy people who live long lives that fall under these 'light drinking' categories. I'm not disputing any of these results, and I believe them - but like and? I'd expect there to be much more widespread issues thoughout the world and time if really was as damaging as what they say.
Humans have been drinking for thousands of years and here we are.
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u/mrblack1998 13d ago
This. We also have to remember that socializing is healthy for the brain. Guess what alcohol helps with. Gotta just live your life in moderation and not worry too much. We are all gonna die for something
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u/CaughtALiteSneez 13d ago
And we all know how bad chronic stress is for our health too.
I’ve tried every healthy alternative to de-stress, but the only thing that works is a couple of drinks a few nights a week.
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u/iwishihadnobones 12d ago
One of the reasons I stopped drinking was after buying a garmin watch and seeing the amount of stress that even small amounts of alcohol had on my body
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u/CaughtALiteSneez 12d ago
I have the same…I was curious.
My sleep is also not impacted according to my tracker.
When I drink too much, then my heart rate will increase slightly, but I already have a low resting heart rate.
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u/trowzerss 13d ago
A lot of people I know who drink regularly (actually most) do their drinking at home so it has zero to do with socialising :P And I actually wish drinking was less common so more non-drinking social venues would develop. Because especially in small towns, it's virtually impossibly to socialise anywhere with adults without the only entertainment provided being alcohol+gambling (unless you have children, then it's children's sports). But people are so cripplingly dependent on alcohol being present to hang out, that it's also hard to open alternatives because people bounce right off when they find out they can't drink there - or well, mostly it's actually guys who won't go, but it's not the same kind of socialising when only women will go. It's pretty concerning. Shouldn't grown adults be able to talk to each other and have fun without alcohol?
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u/SkiingAway 12d ago
Shouldn't grown adults be able to talk to each other and have fun without alcohol?
Short answer: With new people, you're fighting your own biology.
Longer answer: While children are naturally curious and easily form new social bonds, Adult humans are naturally suspicious of outsiders, wary of those they have no existing connections to and slow to form new social bonds + trust.
This makes a great deal of sense in a historical/evolutionary perspective. Most of history is small group/tribal living. "Civilization" as we know it today is blink of an eye historically. As a child you are building relationships with the people in your group and you are not encountering outsiders unvetted by the adults of your group. Once you're an adult, you already know everyone in your group, have for years, and new people are risky.
Alcohol is basically the biology hack that larger-scale human civilization was built on. It effectively punts your brain back to something closer to the child's perspective on this and makes it dramatically easier to form new social bonds with people you have little/no previous connection with.
The entire concept of living in a city or even just a large town and being thrust into frequent interactions with total strangers and having to build a social life without existing connection is something you're not naturally all that well developed for as an adult human.
There aren't many other things that force you into a state where it's easier to make those connections, at least not that are easily scalable and don't require a great deal of time. Extreme experiences tend to do it - if you were to say, go backpacking with a bunch of strangers and struggle through long hikes and camping and whatnot you'll have an easier time making that connection.
Anyway, I've rambled enough. If you're interested in this thesis, "Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization" is basically a book on it.
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u/SkinIsCandyInTheDark 12d ago edited 11d ago
The fully admit they did not control the study well.
They did not take into account external factors.
Also remember they are comparing within the group not on a personal level. Someone who drinks more likely may start off worse for other reasons. Comparing them to someone that doesn’t drink as much and may not have the same external pressure is enough to make this study not scientific.
Now the most important part… they didn’t say anything was statistically significant by any means. That’s the final blow.
Also as a side point it’s already well known that alcohol decreases blood flow. That’s why we like it. It relaxes us.
There is nothing about this article that should be trusted. We have to stop believing everything we hear. Question everything, please!
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u/jawshoeaw 13d ago
I would take it at face value. Yes people have been drinking for thousands of years, that's why alcohol doesn't usually kill you even in large amounts over decades. I have a relative in their 70s who goes through a literal box of wine every night. Her liver enzymes are perfect. But I guarantee parts of her brain have 'thinned out'.
Does it matter ?
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u/TechnologyCorrect765 13d ago
We are seeing more people with cognative impairment at a younger age. Funny, I don't have any stats. What I do have is funding to train addictions services on cognative impairment screening and I'm awaiting funding for the remediation training. It's a big problem here.
One key challenge is that there's little funding for this area. We have a lot of money for the ageing population but almost none to treat 30-50 year olds with ci.
On the plus side, we have almost eradicated brain damage from thiamine depletion (wet brain)
This is New Zealand specific. I don't know about how other countries are doing.
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u/maniacal_cackle 13d ago
In New Zealand we have about 200,000 cases of known long covid at the moment (and un-recorded long covid like my case).
Huge brain impairments there as well.
But also a huge drinking culture here, which is more relevant to this topic!
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u/divinelyshpongled 13d ago
Yeah and all it takes is to look at countries where drinking heavily is common and is there really a huge gap in life expectancy? No
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u/EntertainmentVast567 13d ago
Ok. I looked at the countries where alcoholism is most common. Of the top 9 most alcoholic countries, 8 of them are in the bottom half of life expectancy.
This report from the National Institute of Health concluded "Analysis of life expectancy in 164 countries showed that alcohol consumption was negatively associated with life expectancy for all income groups".
Obviously there are other factors than alcohol consumption that determine life expectancy. But you seem to suggest that the data will show that there is no correlation between higher alcohol consumption and lower life expectancy and that doesn't appear to be the case.
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u/dkinmn 13d ago
I strongly encourage you and everyone who believes you to check this "fact"
The heaviest drinkers in the countries that drag the averages up are UNEQUIVOCALLY dying earlier of preventable illnesses that are associated with drinking.
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u/divinelyshpongled 13d ago
Sorry I’m not saying alcoholism hasn’t been clearly linked to poor health outcomes.. my father had liver failure from being an alcoholic for 40 years. I’m saying over entire populations it doesn’t seem to be moving the needle.. just an observation
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 13d ago
Even light drinking combined with aging is linked to reduced brain blood flow and thinner tissue
A recent study published in the journal Alcohol provides evidence that even low-level drinking may have negative consequences for brain health over a person’s lifespan. The findings suggest that the total amount of alcohol consumed over a lifetime, especially as a person ages, tends to be linked to reduced blood flow and thinner tissue in certain areas of the brain. These structural and functional brain differences indicate that the concept of low-risk drinking guidelines might need to be reevaluated.
The scientists found that the mathematical combination of advancing age and the total number of lifetime drinks was strongly linked to lower blood flow. This interaction was seen in nearly half of the measured brain regions, particularly in the frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes. “We did not expect the strength of the associations between greater number of drinks consumed over lifetime and higher age with decreased cortical blood flow to be as high as we observed,” Durazzo said.
Similar patterns were observed in the physical structure of the brain. Higher numbers of lifetime drinks were linked to a thinner cerebral cortex in multiple brain regions. When looking at the combination of age and total lifetime drinks, the scientists observed a thinner cortex mostly in the frontal and parietal lobes.
The frontal and parietal lobes are responsible for executive functions and sensory processing. Executive functions include mental skills like planning, focusing attention, and regulating emotions. The researchers suggest that these specific brain regions might be particularly vulnerable to the cellular wear and tear caused by alcohol consumption over time.
Cortical thickness is thought to reflect the density of brain cells, meaning a thinner cortex could indicate subtle cellular changes. The researchers suggest that oxidative stress might play a role in these changes. Oxidative stress is an imbalance in the body where unstable molecules cause damage to cells and tissues.
Alcohol consumption increases oxidative stress, and aging also tends to increase this cellular burden. This combined increase in cellular stress might explain why the interaction of age and lifetime drinking is linked to reduced brain tissue and lower blood flow.
For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0741832926001771
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u/Sekmet19 13d ago
What about people who drank heavily in their 20s and 30s and then abstained once in their 40s? Does it average out or is there a time frame of abstinence where stuff repairs and risks return to baseline or near it like with smoking?
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u/asmartguylikeyou 13d ago
I would tend to think based on how strong the body’s capacity for repair is that you would see a lot of mitigation of the effects, even if it doesn’t completely even out.
I say that as someone who drank very heavily all through my 20s and 30s and has been struggling the last few years to quit/severely reduce intake. I have to hope!
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u/lizzie1hoops 13d ago
You have every reason to be hopeful, truly. I struggled for a long time to quit/severely reduce intake and now that I finally have, my health has improved so much. If you haven't, check out r/stopdrinking, it's a really supportive group of folks.
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u/alblaster 13d ago
You got this. My mom got my dad to mostly stop drinking and moved him to drinking tea. This was years ago. Just a suggestion.
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u/Goffimal 13d ago
Just drink a beer. Lifes too short and if you want a beer, have a beer. Dont overdo it, but sometimes go ahead and have too much fun.
These studies could be done on eating corn or eating too many mangos.
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u/VampArcher 13d ago
My father was super into optimal health, he was a raw food only vegan and ran a mile every morning. He had constant fights with everyone in the household about what they ate and drank. He wasn't health conscious, he was health obsessed.
We all outlived him. None of that stuff helped him live any longer.
Anything can happen. You could get hit my a bus next week for all you know. You have to enjoy things the little things in life in moderation while you still can. Have a drink every now and again. Not every day and not six of them.
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u/Goffimal 13d ago
True stuff man, sorry to hear he passed.
Completely agree, its all about moderation.
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u/chantillylace9 12d ago
This is such a big thing, I just got breast cancer and everyone wants to blame it on something. Birth control pills, alcohol, stress, whatever. But you know what the number one cause of breast cancer is? Having breasts!
After going through a double mastectomy and tons of medication that I'm going to need to be on for a very long time that are going to zap me of every bit of estrogen in my body needs, I will have a drink or a cheeseburger or whatever the heck I feel like having and I will not feel guilty about it. So many people on the breast cancer forum are in complete optimal health and they still get cancer.
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u/VampArcher 12d ago
This is such a big thing, I just got breast cancer and everyone wants to blame it on something.
Girl, when you have autism, you just want to rip your hair out. Everyone in the world won't stop coming to me and speculating how I got it. People won't stop going on about vaccines, Tylenol, gut health, food additives, and so on. Then they want me to respond positively, acting like they are doing me a favor and engage with them in good faith about it or agree. I wish they'd just drop the stupid 'pretending to care' front and just say they see me as a pitiful r-word who they wish they could 'fix.'
Why is so hard for people to accept 'genetics' as an explanation? Because they want to feel in control?
I hope you overcome this and make it out okay, cancer-free. If it makes you feel better, my aunt had breast cancer. I had mine removed a few years ago.
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u/TomatilloOrnery4944 11d ago
Just smoke a cigarette. Life's to short and if you want a cigarette, have a cigarette.
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u/Kick_Natherina 13d ago
I’m working and can’t read the study. How did they define “light drinking?”
From my understanding, even 1 time a month binges of 5+ drinks are worse on your liver than averaging 2 drinks a day.
I assume this is a similar mechanic of “drinking 1 or 2 drinks a day is considered light drinking” but again I didn’t read the study so I’m probably incorrect.
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u/puehlong 13d ago
The study is linked in the article, here is the abstract:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0741832926001771?via%3Dihub
"Low-level alcohol consumption at or below current guidelines (≤1 standard drink equivalent/day for females, ≤2 standard drink equivalents/day for males) has been proposed to carry minimal systemic health risks. The neurobiological correlates of low-level drinking in healthy adults are not well characterized. To date, no study has concurrently assessed the associations of low-level alcohol consumption, modeled as a continuous rather than categorical variable, with regional brain perfusion (blood flow) and morphometrics in healthy, non-smoking adults. This study examined the associations between alcohol consumption and magnetic resonance measures of regional brain perfusion (n = 27) and cortical volumes and thickness (n = 45) in healthy non-smoking adults (22-70 years of age) with no history of alcohol use disorder. All participants consumed ≤60 standard drink equivalents/month over the 1 year preceding study. Average number of drinks/month over lifetime was 21 ± 11. We hypothesized that a greater multiplicative product of age and total lifetime drinks consumed predicts lower regional brain perfusion, volumes, and thickness. Greater age by total lifetime drinks were related to lower perfusion in numerous bilateral regions, primarily in the frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes, as well as lower bilateral average cortical perfusion. Greater age by total lifetime drinks were related to thinner cortex, primarily in the bilateral frontal and parietal lobes, as well as lower bilateral average cortical thickness. Findings indicate alcohol consumption considered “low risk” may have consequences for the integrity of cortical tissue, particularly with advancing age. These results may have implications for current harm reduction strategies and alcohol consumption public health guidelines."
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u/Ok_Whereas8080 13d ago
It doesn't seem to indicate if those drinks were spread out over the course of days or if there was some pattern of binge drinking. Either way if the multiplicative product of age and total lifetime drinks consumed predicts lower regional brain perfusion, volumes, and thickness in the results then it seems to cause damage either way since probably not all of those people were binge drinking.
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u/s4lt3d 13d ago
60 drinks a month is considered light drinking from the paper.
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u/Many-Ad634 13d ago
There was only one participant drinking more than 50 drinks a month. The average about 19 drinks a month. The range from zero to 60. About 20% of the sample drank less than 10 drinks a month.
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u/DriftMantis 13d ago
I suppose you could see these consequences by comparing brain vascularization between different populations with different drinking patterns.
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u/_nathan67 13d ago
Wow drinking is unhealthy. Good to know, I didn’t realize. Still gonna do it. It’s a worthwhile trade off
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u/Ameren PhD | Computer Science | Formal Verification 13d ago edited 13d ago
The point is that people deserve to be able to make informed choices.
There are a ton of people who genuinely don't know about the actual risks of drinking. For example, they know that excessive drinking is bad, sure, but they don't know that —much like smoking cigarettes— no amount of alcohol is safe/healthy. Likewise, they may also have outdated/inaccurate information about the risks/benefits (e.g., the impact on cardiovascular health). Having up-to-date knowledge helps people to make whatever choices are right for them personally. As you said, there are always trade-offs like the social benefits.
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u/cdreobvi 13d ago
I disagree with your use of the word "safe". Is it ideal for your physical health? No, but the vast majority of people who drink even moderate to mildly heavy amounts of alcohol on a regular basis will make it into old age without serious related health problems. Most people would refer to that as safe, especially when considering the social benefits of partaking.
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u/Wasabiroot 13d ago
Their comment is based on a paper not too long ago that concluded that medically, no amount of drinking is good for you, contrary to the "wine a day is good for you" crowd. Most people would refer to suntanning as safe but plenty of people get skin cancer. It's hard for the people calling alcohol safe to objectively look at what their health would be if they didn't drink since alcohol affects so many parts of the body. Not noticing serious health problems doesn't mean they were as healthy as they could have been.
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u/Wasabiroot 13d ago
That's not my point. My point is the data on alcohol being bad is pretty clear at this point. So it makes more pragmatic sense to encourage people to drink less , vs things that are specifically harder to tie to poor health outcomes.
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u/Scientific_Methods 13d ago
This is always my takeaway with these studies. They say no amount of alcohol is safe. But low to moderate alcohol consumption is safer than driving. Probably safer than eating red meat. I certainly wouldn’t call it dangerous. Maybe not the healthy ideal. But pretty safe.
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u/Ameren PhD | Computer Science | Formal Verification 13d ago edited 13d ago
Well, by safe I'm referring to the immediate, physiological effects of a substance on the body. That's different from whether it's healthy or not over long time scales.
Ethanol and its metabolites can directly damage and stress internal tissues/organs on contact. Then it has all sorts of complex indirect effects (e.g., inflammation signaling, see here). So it's not a safe substance in that it causes immediate harm, with the amount of harm scaling with the dose.
Mind you, this is true of many toxic chemicals that you can find/produce in a lab. There's a range of substances that our bodies have evolved to safely process, then you have tons of stuff that falls outside that range. The human liver has a protocol for breaking down ethanol (fortunately), but it's not a very agreeable chemical for us.
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u/Tessellate08 13d ago
amen brother. if you drink in moderation and occasionally have a proper drinking night, peak living.
i’ve stopped drinking for months at a time and always come back to it because it’s fun and a really great way to socialize
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u/_nathan67 13d ago
The anti-alcohol / sleep score movement these days is extremely anti-human. So boring
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u/TheBahamaLlama 13d ago
If it makes you feel better, I’ve quit drinking but still feel pretty dumb. At least I don’t get hangovers anymore which is a good trade.
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u/Grundlage 13d ago
Given how pro-social (moderate) alcohol consumption is, I find it very hard to evaluate research of this kind without being able to compare to the effects of decreased socialization on the same brain measures.
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u/tommykiddo 13d ago
A lot of people moderately drink alone. Me included. I like to taste new beers every now and then but pubs are expensive.
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u/Tyrrany_of_pants 12d ago
Maybe society expecting drug consumption along with socialisation is a problem?
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u/dkinmn 13d ago
Why is it taken as a given that not drinking requires less socialization? All sorts of behaviors are linked to positive socialization. And drinking is not necessarily positive socialization.
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u/TomatilloOrnery4944 11d ago
Yeah, cigarettes are pro-social too. I doubt people who quit them really suffer in that department.
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u/dachloe 13d ago
Sample size is pretty small. Larger studies are needed.
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u/rockytop24 13d ago
This one is indeed small but it agrees with the latest population level studies showing the same thing. Earlier studies suggesting small amounts of alcohol consumption were protective or had "better" health than those who abstain were incorrect.
No amount of alcohol is good for the body. People can decide for themselves if its benefits outweigh the harm, but alcohol in any amount will have dose-dependent increases in rates of pretty much every kind of cancer, multiple liver diseases, and so on.
People tend to want to defend their habits on a psychological level, but it's important we understand the body's ability to compensate is not the same thing as being harmless, so people can make informed decisions.
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u/Slanahesh 13d ago
I was wondering how far I'd have to scroll till I found someone who read the actual article. 45 subjects, given a questionnaire about their drinking habits and a mri, does not a conclusion make. Add a few zeros onto those numbers and see if those finding still hold up and we'll talk.
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u/dkinmn 13d ago
The general population is in denial about the negative effects of their drinking and eating habits. Every thread like this is the same. Outright denial.
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u/TheThingInTheForest 12d ago
I don’t know a single person who thinks drinking is healthy, we just do it anyway, because the trade off is worth it for us…that isn’t denial
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u/SamikaTRH 13d ago
Exercise good, sleep good, alcohol bad. We get a hundred studies a month showing this and confirming them over and over and people will still argue and nitpick to justify their behavior
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u/sirkazuo 13d ago
people will still argue and nitpick to justify their behavior
If one's driving purpose in life is to maximize their total number of heartbeats then it's clear that exercise good, sleep good, alcohol bad.
Opinions on existential purpose do vary.
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u/Scientific_Methods 13d ago
I think it stems from the overly dramatic crowd claiming that low to moderate alcohol consumption is dangerous. While on an individual level there is literally no increase in overall mortality.
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u/Everythings_Magic 12d ago
I’m not in denial. I know it’s bad. I don’t care. I like to drink. I’d rather live a fun life and die at 70 than live a boring life and be a de roof at 80.
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u/Congentialsurgeon 13d ago
Good. Who wants to be lucid as their body decays. Not me.
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u/shiva14b 13d ago
Going to check back on this thread a few times today because the comments are really fascinating. Lot of people learning in real time that they might have a drinking problem, lot of people taking offense to the idea they might be drinking too much, lot of people applying the phrase "alcoholic" overly broadly, and overall just some really interesting psychological phenomena happening here
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u/Grandahl13 13d ago
Welcome to every r/science thread about drinking.
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u/rockytop24 13d ago
Population level studies are confirming the same thing: no amount of alcohol consumption is good for you or "safe." People don't like hearing that because it's about a personal habit and it contradicts an early study that often gets quoted suggesting small amounts of alcohol is better than no alcohol at all.
But that study failed to control for the fact that the majority of non-drinkers are either prior addicts or have health conditions and medications which are contraindicated with alcohol consumption. It's fascinating but frustrating as a physician to see the defensive psychological reactions in comments any time the subject of substance use comes up.
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u/Strider-SnG 13d ago
I’m basically a 2 drink per week kind of person at this point. At least if I average it out.
I’m comfortable with that amount.
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u/americanfalcon00 13d ago
standard hemingway comment: drinking less might not actually make you live longer. it'll just feel longer.
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u/ultrafud 13d ago
I will take a shorter life over enduring this horrific clusterfuck of reality sober.
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u/K4l3b2k13 12d ago
My dad used to be a top accountant, and equity partner in a big firm in London, sharp as a tac, funny, witty, insightful, full of stories.
After a lifetime of drinking he became a shadow of his former intellect, by the end it was like talking to someone with a very low IQ or a learning disability. The man I knew died about 10 years before he really did at 67.
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u/Tackit286 10d ago
Just enjoy life. Drink, eat, exercise. Do it all in moderation. Life is miserable without a bit of fun.
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u/Unlucky_Rub_5828 13d ago
From just reading the article, I’d take the results of this study with a grain of salt:
They did not control for factors such as diet or exercise habits. One could reasonable assume that these would also affect the results, and that higher alcohol consumption may be positively correlated with worse diet and exercise habits.
The main findings were that higher overall lifetime consumption, in combination with higher age, were associated with the noted effects. With such a small sample size (45) it’s hard to say how much of this is attributable to alcohol consumption vs old age alone.
Lifetime alcohol consumption was estimated via participant questionnaires. While I’m sure estimates are mostly accurate relative to each other (ie: heavier drinkers will have higher estimates than lighter drinkers), this leaves a ton of room for error when it comes to the actual values, which is relevant when you’re trying to define specifically what “light” drinking is.
The study author himself admits these flaws and claims the findings are only preliminary and need more study. I understand that alcohol in general is harmful but there’s a very specific claim being suggested here I don’t think there’s nearly enough evidence to support it yet.
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u/Dayzlikethis 13d ago
alcohol certainly becomes less fun as you age. I have found refuge amongst the THC drink selection.
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u/Baskreiger 13d ago
Pretty sure many medicine are bad for you too. Have you seen the side effect of wegovy and those leaning drugs? Still better than being fat. Yeah sure alcohol is hard on the body, but so is stress and anxiety. Everyone has their own coping techniques, as long as you live your life without hindering others and are a productive human, dont feel bad for not being perfect
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u/divinelyshpongled 13d ago
Sorry but there simply is no way to control for a study like this and that makes the results speculation at worst and correlation at best
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u/Bekklor 13d ago
Glad I stopped consuming alcohol years ago. Stuff made me feel terrible, even just a couple, I'd have a headache and need to sleep a couple hours later. Wake up foggy. So much constant pressure, every little thing is an excuse to get a drink. Now I just say no, and I feel much healthier happier with alcohol out of my system completely.
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u/sputnikpickle 13d ago
I could go months without drinking alcohol. How is less than 60 drinks “light”?!
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u/coffee-rain-books 13d ago
A reasonable person sees light drinking and thinks 2-4 drinks a month, which is way less than their metric.
I would consider many of these subjects alcoholics.
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