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Is Moderate Drinking okay?
- By Colonoscopy
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“Every drink takes five minutes off your life.” Maybe the thought scares you. Personally, I find comfort in it.
By Derek Thompson
www.theatlantic.com
Here’s a simple question: Is moderate drinking okay?
Like millions of Americans, I look forward to a glass of wine—sure, occasionally two—while cooking or eating dinner. I strongly believe that an ice-cold pilsner on a hot summer day is, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, suggestive evidence that a divine spirit exists and gets a kick out of seeing us buzzed.
But, like most people, I understand that booze isn’t medicine. I don’t consider a bottle of California cabernet to be the equivalent of a liquid statin. Drinking to excess is dangerous for our bodies and those around us. Having more than three or four drinks a night is strongly related to a host of diseases, including liver cirrhosis, and alcohol addiction is a scourge for those genetically predisposed to dependency.
If the evidence against heavy drinking is clear, the research on my wine-with-dinner habit is a wasteland of confusion and contradiction. This month, the U.S. surgeon general published a new recommendation that all alcohol come with a warning label indicating it increases the risk of cancer. Around the same time, a meta-analysis published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded that moderate alcohol drinking is associated with a longer life. Many scientists scoffed at both of these headlines, claiming that the underlying studies are so flawed that to derive strong conclusions from them would be like trying to make a fine wine out of a bunch of supermarket grapes.
I’ve spent the past few weeks poring over studies, meta-analyses, and commentaries. I’ve crashed my web browser with an oversupply of research-paper tabs. I’ve spoken with researchers and then consulted with other scientists who disagreed with those researchers. And I’ve reached two conclusions. First, my seemingly simple question about moderate drinking may not have a simple answer. Second, I’m not making any plans to give up my nightly glass of wine.
Alcohol ambivalence has been with us for almost as long as alcohol. The notion that booze is enjoyable in small doses and hellish in excess was captured well by Eubulus, a Greek comic poet of the fourth century B.C.E., who wrote that although two bowls of wine brought “love and pleasure,” five led to “shouting,” nine led to “bile,” and 10 produced outright “madness, in that it makes people throw things.”
In the late 20th century, however, conventional wisdom lurched strongly toward the idea that moderate drinking was healthy, especially when the beverage of choice was red wine. In 1991, Morley Safer, a correspondent for CBS, recorded a segment of 60 Minutes titled “The French Paradox,” in which he pointed out that the French filled their stomachs with meat, oil, butter, and other sources of fat, yet managed to live long lives with lower rates of cardiovascular disease than their Northern European peers. “The answer to the riddle, the explanation of the paradox, may lie in this inviting glass” of red wine, Safer told viewers. Following the report, demand for red wine in the U.S. surged.
The notion that a glass of red wine every night is akin to medicine wasn’t just embraced by a gullible news media. It was assumed as a matter of scientific fact by many researchers. “The evidence amassed is sufficient to bracket skeptics of alcohol’s protective effects with the doubters of manned lunar landings and members of the flat-Earth society,” the behavioral psychologist and health researcher Tim Stockwell wrote in 2000.
Today, however, Stockwell is himself a flat-earther, so to speak. In the past 25 years, he has spent, he told me, “thousands and thousands of hours” reevaluating studies on alcohol and health. And now he’s convinced, as many other scientists are, that the supposed health benefits of moderate drinking were based on bad research and confounded variables.
A technical term for the so-called French paradox is the “J curve.” When you plot the number of drinks people consume along an X axis and their risk of dying along the Y axis, most observational studies show a shallow dip at about one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men, suggesting protection against all-cause mortality. Then the line rises—and rises and rises—confirming the idea that excessive drinking is plainly unhealthy. The resulting graph looks like a J, hence the name.
The J-curve thesis suffers from many problems, Stockwell told me. It relies on faulty comparisons between moderate drinkers and nondrinkers. Moderate drinkers tend to be richer, healthier, and more social, while nondrinkers are a motley group that includes people who have never had alcohol (who tend to be poorer), people who quit drinking alcohol because they’re sick, and even recovering alcoholics. In short, many moderate drinkers are healthy for reasons that have nothing to do with drinking, and many nondrinkers are less healthy for reasons that have nothing to do with alcohol abstention.
Read: Not just sober-curious, but neo-temperate
When Stockwell and his fellow researchers threw out the observational studies that were beyond salvation and adjusted the rest to account for some of the confounders I listed above, “the J curve disappeared,” he told me. By some interpretations, even a small amount of alcohol—as little as three drinks a week—seemed to increase the risk of cancer and death.
The demise of the J curve is profoundly affecting public-health guidance. In 2011, Canada’s public-health agencies said that men could safely enjoy up to three oversize drinks a night with two abstinent days a week—about 15 drinks a week. In 2023, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction revised its guidelines to define low-risk drinking as no more than two drinks a week.
Here’s my concern: The end of the J curve has made way for a new emerging conventional wisdom—that moderate drinking is seriously risky—that is also built on flawed studies and potentially overconfident conclusions. The pendulum is swinging from flawed “red wine is basically heart medicine!” TV segments to questionable warnings about the risk of moderate drinking and cancer. After all, we’re still dealing with observational studies that struggle to account for the differences between diverse groups.
Read: Is a glass of wine harmless? Wrong question.
In a widely read breakdown of alcohol-health research, the scientist and author Vinay Prasad wrote that the observational research on which scientists are still basing their conclusions suffers from a litany of “old data, shitty data, confounded data, weak definitions, measurement error, multiplicity, time-zero problems, and illogical results.” As he memorably summarized the problem: “A meta-analysis is like a juicer, it only tastes as good as what you put in.” Even folks like Stockwell who are trying to turn the flawed data into useful reviews are like well-meaning chefs, toiling in the kitchen, doing their best to make coq au vin out of a lot of chicken droppings.
The U.S. surgeon general’s new report on alcohol recommended adding a more “prominent” warning label on all alcoholic beverages about cancer risks. The top-line findings were startling. Alcohol contributes to about 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year, the surgeon general said. The guiding motivation sounded honorable. About three-fourths of adults drink once or more a week, and fewer than half of them are aware of the relationship between alcohol and cancer risk.
But many studies linking alcohol to cancer risk are bedeviled by the confounding problems facing many observational studies. For example, a study can find a relationship between moderate alcohol consumption and breast-cancer detection, but moderate consumption is correlated with income, as is access to mammograms.
One of the best-established mechanisms for alcohol being related to cancer is that alcohol breaks down into acetaldehyde in the body, which binds to and damages DNA, increasing the risk that a new cell grows out of control and becomes a cancerous tumor. This mechanism has been demonstrated in animal studies. But, as Prasad points out, we don’t approve drugs based on animal studies alone; many drugs work in mice and fail in clinical trials in humans. Just because we observe a biological mechanism in mice doesn’t mean you should live your life based on the assumption that the same cellular dance is happening inside your body.
Read: The truth about breast cancer and drinking red wine—or any alcohol
By Derek Thompson
Is Moderate Drinking Okay?
“Every drink takes five minutes off your life.” Maybe the thought scares you. Personally, I find comfort in it.
Here’s a simple question: Is moderate drinking okay?
Like millions of Americans, I look forward to a glass of wine—sure, occasionally two—while cooking or eating dinner. I strongly believe that an ice-cold pilsner on a hot summer day is, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, suggestive evidence that a divine spirit exists and gets a kick out of seeing us buzzed.
But, like most people, I understand that booze isn’t medicine. I don’t consider a bottle of California cabernet to be the equivalent of a liquid statin. Drinking to excess is dangerous for our bodies and those around us. Having more than three or four drinks a night is strongly related to a host of diseases, including liver cirrhosis, and alcohol addiction is a scourge for those genetically predisposed to dependency.
If the evidence against heavy drinking is clear, the research on my wine-with-dinner habit is a wasteland of confusion and contradiction. This month, the U.S. surgeon general published a new recommendation that all alcohol come with a warning label indicating it increases the risk of cancer. Around the same time, a meta-analysis published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded that moderate alcohol drinking is associated with a longer life. Many scientists scoffed at both of these headlines, claiming that the underlying studies are so flawed that to derive strong conclusions from them would be like trying to make a fine wine out of a bunch of supermarket grapes.
I’ve spent the past few weeks poring over studies, meta-analyses, and commentaries. I’ve crashed my web browser with an oversupply of research-paper tabs. I’ve spoken with researchers and then consulted with other scientists who disagreed with those researchers. And I’ve reached two conclusions. First, my seemingly simple question about moderate drinking may not have a simple answer. Second, I’m not making any plans to give up my nightly glass of wine.
Alcohol ambivalence has been with us for almost as long as alcohol. The notion that booze is enjoyable in small doses and hellish in excess was captured well by Eubulus, a Greek comic poet of the fourth century B.C.E., who wrote that although two bowls of wine brought “love and pleasure,” five led to “shouting,” nine led to “bile,” and 10 produced outright “madness, in that it makes people throw things.”
In the late 20th century, however, conventional wisdom lurched strongly toward the idea that moderate drinking was healthy, especially when the beverage of choice was red wine. In 1991, Morley Safer, a correspondent for CBS, recorded a segment of 60 Minutes titled “The French Paradox,” in which he pointed out that the French filled their stomachs with meat, oil, butter, and other sources of fat, yet managed to live long lives with lower rates of cardiovascular disease than their Northern European peers. “The answer to the riddle, the explanation of the paradox, may lie in this inviting glass” of red wine, Safer told viewers. Following the report, demand for red wine in the U.S. surged.
The notion that a glass of red wine every night is akin to medicine wasn’t just embraced by a gullible news media. It was assumed as a matter of scientific fact by many researchers. “The evidence amassed is sufficient to bracket skeptics of alcohol’s protective effects with the doubters of manned lunar landings and members of the flat-Earth society,” the behavioral psychologist and health researcher Tim Stockwell wrote in 2000.
Today, however, Stockwell is himself a flat-earther, so to speak. In the past 25 years, he has spent, he told me, “thousands and thousands of hours” reevaluating studies on alcohol and health. And now he’s convinced, as many other scientists are, that the supposed health benefits of moderate drinking were based on bad research and confounded variables.
A technical term for the so-called French paradox is the “J curve.” When you plot the number of drinks people consume along an X axis and their risk of dying along the Y axis, most observational studies show a shallow dip at about one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men, suggesting protection against all-cause mortality. Then the line rises—and rises and rises—confirming the idea that excessive drinking is plainly unhealthy. The resulting graph looks like a J, hence the name.
The J-curve thesis suffers from many problems, Stockwell told me. It relies on faulty comparisons between moderate drinkers and nondrinkers. Moderate drinkers tend to be richer, healthier, and more social, while nondrinkers are a motley group that includes people who have never had alcohol (who tend to be poorer), people who quit drinking alcohol because they’re sick, and even recovering alcoholics. In short, many moderate drinkers are healthy for reasons that have nothing to do with drinking, and many nondrinkers are less healthy for reasons that have nothing to do with alcohol abstention.
Read: Not just sober-curious, but neo-temperate
When Stockwell and his fellow researchers threw out the observational studies that were beyond salvation and adjusted the rest to account for some of the confounders I listed above, “the J curve disappeared,” he told me. By some interpretations, even a small amount of alcohol—as little as three drinks a week—seemed to increase the risk of cancer and death.
The demise of the J curve is profoundly affecting public-health guidance. In 2011, Canada’s public-health agencies said that men could safely enjoy up to three oversize drinks a night with two abstinent days a week—about 15 drinks a week. In 2023, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction revised its guidelines to define low-risk drinking as no more than two drinks a week.
Here’s my concern: The end of the J curve has made way for a new emerging conventional wisdom—that moderate drinking is seriously risky—that is also built on flawed studies and potentially overconfident conclusions. The pendulum is swinging from flawed “red wine is basically heart medicine!” TV segments to questionable warnings about the risk of moderate drinking and cancer. After all, we’re still dealing with observational studies that struggle to account for the differences between diverse groups.
Read: Is a glass of wine harmless? Wrong question.
In a widely read breakdown of alcohol-health research, the scientist and author Vinay Prasad wrote that the observational research on which scientists are still basing their conclusions suffers from a litany of “old data, shitty data, confounded data, weak definitions, measurement error, multiplicity, time-zero problems, and illogical results.” As he memorably summarized the problem: “A meta-analysis is like a juicer, it only tastes as good as what you put in.” Even folks like Stockwell who are trying to turn the flawed data into useful reviews are like well-meaning chefs, toiling in the kitchen, doing their best to make coq au vin out of a lot of chicken droppings.
The U.S. surgeon general’s new report on alcohol recommended adding a more “prominent” warning label on all alcoholic beverages about cancer risks. The top-line findings were startling. Alcohol contributes to about 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year, the surgeon general said. The guiding motivation sounded honorable. About three-fourths of adults drink once or more a week, and fewer than half of them are aware of the relationship between alcohol and cancer risk.
But many studies linking alcohol to cancer risk are bedeviled by the confounding problems facing many observational studies. For example, a study can find a relationship between moderate alcohol consumption and breast-cancer detection, but moderate consumption is correlated with income, as is access to mammograms.
One of the best-established mechanisms for alcohol being related to cancer is that alcohol breaks down into acetaldehyde in the body, which binds to and damages DNA, increasing the risk that a new cell grows out of control and becomes a cancerous tumor. This mechanism has been demonstrated in animal studies. But, as Prasad points out, we don’t approve drugs based on animal studies alone; many drugs work in mice and fail in clinical trials in humans. Just because we observe a biological mechanism in mice doesn’t mean you should live your life based on the assumption that the same cellular dance is happening inside your body.
Read: The truth about breast cancer and drinking red wine—or any alcohol
Hawks in the new InterMat Rankings - Jan 21
- By Todd Conner
- Iowa Wrestling
- 0 Replies
Hawks in the new InterMat Rankings
InterMat released updated rankings this morning. Iowa remained #2 in both the Tournament and Dual Meet Rankings. It is Penn State-Iowa-Oklahoma State in both rankings for several weeks for the top three. Ohio State moved up to #4 in the Dual Meet Rankings. The Buckeyes come to town for a 1 PM...
iowawrestlingblog.com
It is great to be an Iowa Wrestling fan.
Go Hawks!
The Iowa GOP just can't help themselves at this point, bill to require teaching in public schools that life starts at conception advances
- By Chishawk1425
- Off Topic
- 6 Replies
IA Republicans advance bill to make schools teach that life begins at conception
A bill requiring educators to teach students that life begins at conception was passed through a Senate subcommittee on Thursday by Sens. Jeff Taylor (R-Sioux Center) and Sandy Salmon (R-Janesville).
iowastartingline.com
Many Americans doubt Donald Trump will be able to lower prices in his first year, an AP-NORC poll shows
- By cigaretteman
- Off Topic
- 50 Replies
Worries about everyday expenses helped return President-elect Donald Trump to the White House. But with his second term quickly approaching, many U.S. adults are skeptical about his ability to bring down costs.
Only about 2 in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” confident that Trump will be able to make progress on lowering the cost of groceries, housing or health care this year, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, while about 2 in 10 are “moderately” confident.
Faith in Trump’s ability to create jobs is a little higher — about 3 in 10 are extremely or very confident the Republican will make progress on this in 2025 — but the poll indicates that despite his sweeping promises about lowering prices, a substantial chunk of his own supporters don’t have high confidence in his ability to quickly alleviate the economic pressures that continue to frustrate many households.
Those tempered expectations haven’t dampened Republicans’ hopes for Trump’s second presidential term, though. And Democrats’ pessimism about his return to office is more muted than it was when he exited the White House in 2020. About 8 in 10 Republicans say Trump will be a “great” or “good” president in his second term, according to the poll.
And while Democrats’ assessments are much more negative — about 8 in 10 say he will be a “poor” or “terrible” president — they are less likely to say he’ll be a “terrible” president in his second term than they were at the end of his first.
As Trump takes office, though, the poll shows that many Americans don’t anticipate that he will be able to immediately bring costs down. That includes some of his own supporters. Less than half of Republicans are at least “very” confident that Trump will make progress on lowering food costs, housing costs or health care costs, although about 6 in 10 are at least “very” confident in his ability to create jobs.
Confidence in Trump’s ability to handle the broader economic situation is also fairly low. Only about one-third of Americans are “extremely” or “very” confident in his ability to handle the economy and jobs. Nearly 2 in 10 are “moderately” confident, and about half are “slightly confident” or “not at all confident.”
Here, Republicans have more faith in Trump’s abilities — about 7 in 10 are at least “very” confident in his ability to handle the economy in general.
But there are other policy areas where expectations for Trump aren’t high across the board. Similar to the economy and jobs, about one-third of Americans are at least “very” confident in Trump’s ability to handle immigration and national security, while about 2 in 10 are “moderately” confident and about half are “slightly” or “not at all” confident.
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During the presidential campaign, Trump said he would look at alternatives to the Affordable Care Act. He has not offered a concrete plan of what his changes to the health care law would be, but he spent a lot of energy during his first term on efforts to dismantle it that were ultimately unsuccessful.
Only about half of Republicans are extremely or very confident in Trump’s ability to handle health care, and about one-third are at least very confident he’ll make progress on lowering the cost of heath care.
But Republicans are expecting even bigger things from Trump this time, while Democrats’ fears appear to be a little more muted. About half of Republicans say they think Trump will be a “great” president in his second term, while about 4 in 10 Republicans described him as a great president at the end of his first term. Democrats still overwhelmingly expect that Trump will be a “terrible” president, but that concern has lessened. About 6 in 10 Democrats think Trump will be a terrible president in his second term, down from three-quarters who said he was a terrible president at the end of his first term.
www.chicagotribune.com
Only about 2 in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” confident that Trump will be able to make progress on lowering the cost of groceries, housing or health care this year, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, while about 2 in 10 are “moderately” confident.
Faith in Trump’s ability to create jobs is a little higher — about 3 in 10 are extremely or very confident the Republican will make progress on this in 2025 — but the poll indicates that despite his sweeping promises about lowering prices, a substantial chunk of his own supporters don’t have high confidence in his ability to quickly alleviate the economic pressures that continue to frustrate many households.
Those tempered expectations haven’t dampened Republicans’ hopes for Trump’s second presidential term, though. And Democrats’ pessimism about his return to office is more muted than it was when he exited the White House in 2020. About 8 in 10 Republicans say Trump will be a “great” or “good” president in his second term, according to the poll.
And while Democrats’ assessments are much more negative — about 8 in 10 say he will be a “poor” or “terrible” president — they are less likely to say he’ll be a “terrible” president in his second term than they were at the end of his first.
Only about 3 in 10 are highly confident in Trump’s handling of the economy
Much of the 2024 presidential campaign revolved around prices — whether President Joe Biden, a Democrat, was to blame for inflation and whether Trump could fix it. AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of voters and nonvoters that aims to tell the story behind election results, showed that about 4 in 10 voters in the November election identified the economy and jobs as the most important issue facing the country and that about 6 in 10 of those voters cast their ballot for Trump.As Trump takes office, though, the poll shows that many Americans don’t anticipate that he will be able to immediately bring costs down. That includes some of his own supporters. Less than half of Republicans are at least “very” confident that Trump will make progress on lowering food costs, housing costs or health care costs, although about 6 in 10 are at least “very” confident in his ability to create jobs.
Confidence in Trump’s ability to handle the broader economic situation is also fairly low. Only about one-third of Americans are “extremely” or “very” confident in his ability to handle the economy and jobs. Nearly 2 in 10 are “moderately” confident, and about half are “slightly confident” or “not at all confident.”
Here, Republicans have more faith in Trump’s abilities — about 7 in 10 are at least “very” confident in his ability to handle the economy in general.
But there are other policy areas where expectations for Trump aren’t high across the board. Similar to the economy and jobs, about one-third of Americans are at least “very” confident in Trump’s ability to handle immigration and national security, while about 2 in 10 are “moderately” confident and about half are “slightly” or “not at all” confident.
Health care is a particularly weak spot for Trump
Americans are especially skeptical of Trump’s ability to bring down health care costs or handle the issue of health care at all, the poll found. Only about 2 in 10 Americans are extremely or very confident in his ability to tackle health care issues, and 16% are confident in his ability to make progress on lowering health care costs.Sign up for the Spin: Your essential take on local politics.
By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and to receive emails from Chicago Tribune.
During the presidential campaign, Trump said he would look at alternatives to the Affordable Care Act. He has not offered a concrete plan of what his changes to the health care law would be, but he spent a lot of energy during his first term on efforts to dismantle it that were ultimately unsuccessful.
Only about half of Republicans are extremely or very confident in Trump’s ability to handle health care, and about one-third are at least very confident he’ll make progress on lowering the cost of heath care.
About half of Republicans expect a ‘great’ second term from Trump
Trump’s favorability rating has remained steady through four indictments, a criminal conviction and two attempted assassinations, and the new survey shows that Americans’ expectations for his second term match their assessment of his first four years in office. Slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults expect Trump will be a “terrible” or “poor” president in his second term, essentially unchanged from when he left the White House in 2021.But Republicans are expecting even bigger things from Trump this time, while Democrats’ fears appear to be a little more muted. About half of Republicans say they think Trump will be a “great” president in his second term, while about 4 in 10 Republicans described him as a great president at the end of his first term. Democrats still overwhelmingly expect that Trump will be a “terrible” president, but that concern has lessened. About 6 in 10 Democrats think Trump will be a terrible president in his second term, down from three-quarters who said he was a terrible president at the end of his first term.
Many Americans doubt Donald Trump will be able to lower prices in his first year, an AP-NORC poll shows
Worries about everyday expenses helped return President-elect Donald Trump to the White House. But with his second term quickly approaching, many U.S. adults are skeptical about his ability to brin…
www.chicagotribune.com