Moderation Questions and General Chat Thread

After the novelty wore off even raucous bohemian parties began to feel pretty repetitive. I am more of an introvert by nature though so that’s probably part of it. The next day recovery was a big part of the drudgery as well.

It seems aa though the negative effects of alcohol on the human body that we’ve been hearing about are almost negligible?

Living is carcinogenic

I think it’s pretty dose dependent as I’ve mentioned. There are some studies that suggest that drinking in moderation might even be a health benefit, but it’s not clear that that’s not coming from confounding factors like more social contact or something. It is uncontroversial that excess alcohol intake is terrible for your health though and we’re talking amounts less than what I think many people here find problematic.

Those studies are increasingly being abandoned these days, but it happens somewhat slowly. Alcoholic drinks are a big part of many cultures and it is also big business, so it is not an easy thing to argue against.

Still, even the older views rarely link the health benefits to alcohol or alcohol metabolism itself. They wouldn't really recommend people to do small shots of ethanol. So even if we were to accept these outdated views, we would have to concede that from a health perspective there are better ways to imbibe grain, grapes, rice or whatnot.

Basically, the reason to drink alcohol is that you like it or think it is fun. Given that we are a social species and we like fun, those aren't necessarily bad reasons. However, it is also an addictive substance, so caveat emptor.

What if you suddenly limit it to a few pints a month and start eating healthily? That must undo the worst of the physiological damage of the previous 30 years, right?

That amount of drinking is basically inconsequential of course but whether that plus a healthy diet can undo previous damage probably depends more on how much damage you did in the first place.

Teetotallers are more often ill than people who drink sometimes

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/healt...

And especially more often mentally ill (as if moderate drinking could work as a modest self medication for minor mental health issues , who might have thought that a psychotropic substance could achieve that, i wonder)

/

People who don’t drink at all are more likely to take sick days off work than their peers who drink a moderate amount, a new study has found.

Researchers investigating the “U-shaped” relationship between alcohol and absenteeism in the UK, France and Finland, found sickness rates were higher in people who drank heavily or not at all.

The study, from the researchers at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health found, this effect was most significant in mental health. People who avoided alcohol completely were about 50 per cent more likely to take have a mental health-related absence.

"no health benefit ever from alcohol itself" lol

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As for what they define as moderate, up to 2 glasses of wine PER DAY for men (one for women)

The study found the “low risk” threshold was between one and 34 UK units (roughly 12 pints of strong lager, or 15 glasses of wine) a week for men, and up to 17 UK units for women

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Then ofc we should acknowledge ethnicity matters for alcohol digestion, some human groups can consume more than others ceteris paribus (sex/weight/age)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article...

Some ethnic groups have higher rates of alcohol consumption, putting them at greater risk of drinking harms. However, other ethnic minorities experience health harms from drinking that are disproportionate to their consumption. Differences in social and socioeconomic factors and biological differences related to alcohol metabolism also could contribute to alcohol’s varying effects across populations

As if your ancestors having access to abundant quantitities of alcohol or not, and so your ethnicity selecting for genes that help digesting it better, have lower negative effects and so on, could matter a lot (who could have thought that, i wonder).

But let's use native american reactions to alcohol to claim that whites whose ancestor drank heavile for millennia are at risk the same sure.

Other studies consider low risk consumption to be lower than this. It doesn’t seem settled what is actually low risk.

Otherwise, it seems completely plausible to me that some level of alcohol consumption results in stress relief without significant health problems otherwise. I’d still argue the non-drinker who finds other avenues for stress relief is better off but again I can imagine it being a wash in real life outcomes at low enough levels of alcohol consumption.

Depends on the avenue. If it's exercise it's quite possible. If it's going to the psychiatrist more often to get prescribed drugs certainly not.

It isn't settled but tamedeuce actually claimed it is, and the reason some people still think the opposite is because of big business lol.

It's quite evident that the decline in consumption of psychotropic substances (nicotine and alcohol) is causally accompanied by a vast increase in the consumption of the exceptionally more dangerous psychotric drugs the "angels in the white coats" can sell to you. Those drugs that typically cause you to gain various kilos of weight among many other things.

The demonization of very common, easy to access, easy to use on demand over the counter self medication /stress relief of alcohol and nicotine are Co-Causing the obesity epidemic and psychotic drug abuses. People need relief.

I share your apprehension regarding pharmaceuticals but I’m skeptical of the connection you’re trying to make between them and the general trend of obesity. That seems more likely connected to calorie intake, food quality, and physical activity.

I had to go back to my craig definition cheat sheet to try and make sense of this question.

So, the question is, "does life or death have more of an existence which I can experience", correct?

Ofc it's caloric intake and consumption (CICO every time).

But nicotine in particular decreases appetite, while psychotic drugs almost always increase it.

They even have a name for it, PDWG (psychotropic drugs weight gain)

And you know what they ("the angels in the white coat") do when you incur in PDWG? they prescribe metformin to you.

So magically you went from smoking some cigarettes to become a permanent customer of not 1, but 2 drugs.

But it's all for your health and smoking is terrrrrrible right

There are some benefits to being fat which is probably why humans store fat so well. Being thin requires food to be readily available. Even assuming we can find food which us lot usually can, it can be a problem to eat/keep ir down when you're ill.

Reserves are very handy when they're needed.

Yes the benefits to being able to store a lot of body fat (and overeating when food is abundant) is to be able to survive prolonged lack of food and nutrients.

So the usefulness of that mechanism doesn't exist anymore for people in first world countries, although when communism arrives and you need some months to flee the country it can still help survive.

So aside as a safety net against communism in first world countries there are no other benefits in our societies.

So obese people could just stop eating for a month and consume that (that's what their obesity was for) and pretend there is a caresty and be done with it.

Well that's just not true. Fat people are funny!

In times of food shortages there are some benefits to being fat but otherwise fatties should starve themselves to death. lol Luciom

Eh, that's probably a minor concern compared to how it affects mood, sleep, weight, and organ function.

That's a pretty standard story for chronic drinking or any depressant: the body's reward system adapts and drinking becomes just another part of the daily/weekly routine. As people settle into adulthood and have to juggle work/family/social demands it becomes harder to sustain or rationalize, and people find they're happier overall not jumping on the dopamine treadmill; life becomes fun and interesting even when they're not kicking back a few obligatory beers.

This explains why heavy smokers and drinkers are famously in great physical and emotional shape.

If you are 30 + kilos overweight you definitely not die if you only drink water for a month

sure because after i link the typical finding which is a U curve , you go with "heavy smokers and drinkers", when the claim is that moderate consumption of alcohol is better than nothing.

As for nicotine, none would be better, but some nicotine is a lot better than gaining weight for most people (not for people who otherwise would be very thin though).

Especially today when we can have nicotine intake without the combustion cancirogenic materials.

In addition to Trolly's post above, which raises a good point, I am going to add that just growing up and getting more emotionally mature contributes to being in a better mood, by itself. Obviously being active and feeling good helps, but the "drudgery" you are describing sounds like a lot of people's early 20s, where people are desperately trying to find their identity and feel frustrated with not having things figured out.

Sure, okay, good luck trying to consume nicotine in moderation; it's one of the most addictive substances known to man.

Without a doubt that’s part of it. Even something simple like my driving habits have noticeably improved and I’d put that entirely on age. I’m just not looking for the dopamine rush like I was when I was younger.