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"...among 100 women who have less than one drink per week, about 17 will develop an alcohol-related cancer."

How does this insane number get unnoticed for so long. I really find it hard to believe. < One drink per day more dangerous than smoking a pack per day?

Edit: Ok, looked into the reference and it's a bit more subtle, though I can't find numbers for people not consuming anything, allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers.

"For example, a study of 226,162 individuals reported that the absolute risk of developing any alcohol-related cancer over the lifespan of a woman increases from approximately 16.5% (about 17 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume less than one drink per week, to 19.0% (19 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume one drink daily on average to approximately 21.8% (about 22 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume two drinks daily on average (Figure 5). That is about five more women out of 100 who would have developed cancer due to a higher level of alcohol consumption."

Pretty significant, although "less than one drink per day" is a bit vague.

> allthough one would think they'd get 0% alcohol related cancers

I assume "alcohol related" in this context means that alcohol consumption increases the risk for those types of cancers, but you might still get those types of cancers even if you have never consumed any alcohol. And "less than once drink per week" is assumed to be almost the same as never consuming any alcohol at all, so 17% is the risk for women who never consume any alcohol.

Hahaha there's the rub.

This data is self reported of course, and "one drink daily" are people who actually drink a lot more.

If you actually drink less than daily, very little to worry about AFAICT.

I imagine it's because they count any cancer that could be caused by heavy-drinking as an "alcohol-related cancer", regardless of whether it was actually caused by alcohol or not.
How did they establish causality, or is it just a correlation potentially resulting from hidden variables? E.g., I do not know many smokers that do not touch alcohol, but plenty of non smoking abstinates. I also know plenty of sedentary obese heavy drinkers, where a higher percentage of the teetotal lot are more health obsessed in other ways.
If I recall correctly (and I might not), the idea that moderate drinking is healthy came from a faulty study where people who didn't drink at all were less healthy.

But the people who didn't drink at all often didn't drink because they self-excluded because of alcoholism or disease.

They weren't less healthy because they didn't drink, they didn't drink because they were less healthy.

I think you're broadly correct. But it's not one "faulty study". Every attempt to do a broad population-based study of alcohol use vs health outcomes finds this effect.

Controlling for why people don't drink is difficult to do without introducing bias. So there are still two competing theories: either the non-drinkers were a less healthy cohort to begin with, or moderate drinking has net health benefits.

I wonder if the same applies to exercise and physical activity in general.
I wish the popular and completely absurd phrase "drugs and alcohol" would become outdated.

Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/whatever use healthy?"

>Somehow alcohol always gets separate consideration and categorisation, while most people would laugh if asked "is moderate tobacco/meth/ecstasy/

The "drugs" of alcohol and caffeine are more deeply integrated into public social life. Wine is mentioned in the Bible. Beer is sold at family outings like baseball games. The White House serves alcohol at official state dinners. President Obama had the famous "beer summit" https://www.google.com/search?q=Obama+beer+summit&tbm=isch

Also, the existence of alcohol is caused by common natural processes. E.g. leaving apples or pears out on the kitchen counter too long and it naturally ferments which creates alcohol. I remember leaving some old pears in the kitchen and they eventually smelled like alcohol. I ate the pears and they definitely tasted like alcohol. The point is, alcohol can come into existence without even doing anything.

In contrast, the White House isn't handing out crystal meth or heroin at state dinners and there aren't any natural decaying processes that turns random food into ecstasy. Marijuana is natural but it isn't culturally accepted by the public. (President Clinton's "Yes, but I didn't inhale.")

Alcohol/caffeine have a lot of acceptable functional uses that the other drug categories don't have which is why society continues to talk about them as a separate class.

while the special treatment of alcohol is due to cultural,historical and commercial reasons, from a toxicology point of view it makes sense to treat them all separately. But I agree with your sentiment.
Because alcohol is not a medicine. Tobacco also gets excluded for that reason.
As far as I understand, the aftereffects of alcohol are due to its poisonous effects on organs, receptors and neurons. Drugs act on receptors directly by binding to them or restricting binding.
Moderate nicotine use is fine if you aren't using a carcinogenic method to get it into your body.

Moderate meth use, uh, what does moderate mean? But when I laugh it's more that I doubt the very premise.

Moderate ecstacy use, go for it.

That's what "substances" are.
It's poison. If it never existed and someone tried to bring it to market today it would never fly. Should have skull and crossbones on it. Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline.
Sure, but so is society on our psychological health in general. Apparently, we're so anxious that a lot of us subconsciously feel we need to drink in order to just have an actual conversation.

Social anxiety is the true poison in society. Without it, we wouldn't drink nearly as much.

I have nuanced takes that don't agree with the take that I just wrote, but I find there to be a kernel of truth in it. I've fought social anxiety for years, and started out clubbing sober when I was 17. I did start drinking around 18 but mostly out of curiosity. It was only around the age of 30 that I really noticed that by then I did it to alleviate social anxiety. It caught me off-guard since my teenage self would scoff at the idea of it. I'd never need alcohol to alleviate my social anxiety, I'd just grit through it and talk to whomever I want. I think I just became a bit comfortable and soft. It's easy-ish for me to switch back though due to the reference experiences I have being a teen, dealing with social anxiety sober. So that's a huge blessing. Not everyone is that lucky.

> and someone tried to bring it to market today it would never fly

In a regulatory domain? Perhaps not; however, we did try prohibition. It didn't go well.

> Should have skull and crossbones on it.

Which didn't work. So some people go the idea to poison it. Then people learned to re-distill it to avoid the blindness it would otherwise cause.

> Makes about as much sense as huffing gasoline

Most people don't regularly drink to the kinds of excess that would make this an apt comparison.

Nah, it is just one of many wonders found in mother natures kitchen. Like all things, moderation is in your best life.

It makes far more sense than huffing gas.

It makes the most sense a couple maybe few times a year.

The worst thing to do is over hype the downsides. People tune out and then have no real guidance to draw from.

I admire your passion, but it's not such a strong argument. Lots of medicines are also poisons. Oxygen is kinda a poison. What alcohol is is a drug.
In Italy, cigarette packs carry shocking pictures of diseased lungs, tumors, and other severe health effects, yet they fail to deter smokers. It’s essentially a cultural problem.
Maybe. But zyn is a thing breathing new life into tobacco companies
It's poison... developed by fungi to kill bacteria. Largely irrelevant to humans.
Humans have been drinking alcohol for like 10,000 years. The real question is who cares if it’s healthy.

Caring about the health effects of casual drinking is like counting the calories in a cupcake. If it matters to you, it’s probably not for you.

Elephants consume alcohol, so the first drinker in our line was probably not even a hominid.

Birds do as well. Trout do not (in the wild). The LCU drinker might be "some tetrapod".

The fallacy of appeal to tradition.
I care.
No worries, all the kids ditched alcohol a while ago and are on n2o these days. On my morning walks I see a few 3L+ tanks discarded around my block of flats, there are new ones almost every day

https://www.quickwhip.de/collections/miami-magic/products/mi...

Alcohol is a toxin that your liver must work to break down, provides empty calories with no nutritional value, disrupts sleep quality, impairs judgment and coordination, and even moderate consumption increases risks of cancer, heart disease, and other health problems. Any perceived benefits are vastly outweighed by these inherent harms.
You have argued one half of the equation, and stated that the other side cannot possibly add up that high.

You've just replicated the "Watchmaker" argument of creationists: "Random chance can't account for these low probabilities that we can't yet quantified."

Lots of empty calories: 7 kcal/g.
Here's an example of the "moderate drinking is healthy" risk curves that the article refers to: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmsc...

This newer work seems basically to be arguing that the effect on the lefthand size of the curve is because drinking alcohol is so common that people who drink nothing are likely to be in poor health already.

I remember the exploration of alcohol consumption stats from one of Michael Hobbes' podcasts and how hard it is to untangle both self-reporting and confounding factors. Like, the population of reported non-drinkers is dominated by both religious abstainers who may otherwise differ culturally from the broader population, and alcoholics who've needed to cut out drinking entirely
I don't drink it for the taste. It makes problems go away until you wake up and the problems are still there.
What about hormesis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

There's a paragraph about alcohol.

Wikipedia isn't a reputable source of health information.
You’d be hard pressed to convince me to consume a class 1 carcinogen in moderation for health benefits.
Class 1 just means "confirmed" with absolutely nothing stated about what the risk level is. You'd be hard pressed to convince me to make any decision based on that alone.
Cell byproducts are known carcinogen, and definitely ingested for health benefits (not for themselves, but en masse).
Sunlight is a class 1 carcinogen too. Dracula is the only person that avoids it.
There is no amount of alcohol that is good for you. It is a toxin that only harms your body. The rising popularity and creativity of mocktails shows that people can still have a fun drink that doesn’t involve poisoning their body.

And if you use alcohol for social lubrication, you only screw yourself over by never learning how to truly socialize and let go of inhibition naturally.

Seeing the amount of sugar and sweeteners in the "mocktails" and alcohol free beers/wines, I'd say it most certainly does involve poisoning your body.
> if you use alcohol for social lubrication, you only screw yourself over by never learning how to truly socialize and let go of inhibition naturally

That's probably the least true comment in this entire thread.

I'm not going to say alcohol is therapeutic, but it is considered a rite of passage the world over for a reason. For many it's their first time experiencing lowered inhibitions and handling adult consequences. That doesn't imply an addiction will follow, but it is very likely to expand their mind regarding what they believe about themselves and their identity. Those questions are at the heart of social anxiety.

I really don't know where society would be without alcohol. Probably much worse off. People would have their heads so far up their own asses they'd probably be even more anxious all the time.

Avoiding alcohol completely would need to exclude things other than just alcoholic drinks, I think.
this is why I avoid ripe fruit, it only harms my body!
Alcohol is lindy
I'll drink to that.

More state sponsored propoganda to make us miserable. They don't like you having a few drinks with friends and speaking truths. It makes you hard to control and govern.