>It turns out that two drinks per day, which might be considered ‘moderate’ from a social standpoint, is associated with a substantially elevated risk of a premature death caused by alcohol, they explain.
Two drinks sounds moderate to me. Averaging two drinks a day does not.
triceratops•50m ago
2 drinks a day is approaching Mad Men levels of alcohol consumption.
ChrisLTD•39m ago
more like 2 drinks per meal in Mad Men
triceratops•32m ago
2 and 6 are the same order of magnitude.
adjejmxbdjdn•14m ago
Alcohol education classes promote (or used to promote…I had to attend one a couple of decades ago in college), the 1-2-3 system.
Not more than 1 unit an hour, don’t average more than 2 units a day over a week, and never exceed 3 units a day.
The caveat here is that a unit is much less than a regular serving size. A pint of beer is usually closer to 2 units.
So the recommendation was to not average more than a pint of beer a day, and to never drink more than about 1.5 pints in a day.
It’s much more stringent than people imagine.
utdoctor•41m ago
You can spend your entire life minimizing risk, maximizing safety, and avoiding discomfort, or you can actually live. Either way you’re going to end up dead.
Moderation > abstinence in most things.
Mathnerd314•26m ago
So I'm looking at Figure 2 of the study and it shows that risk is negative (I.e. it's a benefit) below 7 drinks per week or 1 drink per day. And then they say "There was no protective net effect of alcohol observed at any level of alcohol consumption." And then they discuss the observed protective effects and just say "this body of evidence [that we used] has substantial limitations". They also say "Readers should therefore consider both the point estimates and their associated CIs when interpreting the risk thresholds presented in this study." but then their CI indicates only 2+ drinks per day can cause statistically significant issues.
Overall, a very boring study. It would be more interesting if they published the code and we could play with the numbers, seeing as all the data they used is public, but we can't even do that.
1shooner•59m ago
Two drinks sounds moderate to me. Averaging two drinks a day does not.
triceratops•50m ago
ChrisLTD•39m ago
triceratops•32m ago
adjejmxbdjdn•14m ago
Not more than 1 unit an hour, don’t average more than 2 units a day over a week, and never exceed 3 units a day.
The caveat here is that a unit is much less than a regular serving size. A pint of beer is usually closer to 2 units.
So the recommendation was to not average more than a pint of beer a day, and to never drink more than about 1.5 pints in a day.
It’s much more stringent than people imagine.