The current WHO and IARC guidance is that there's no safe level of alcohol consumption that doesn't affect health and that alcohol is a clear carcinogen.
I don't know how that could have health benefits.
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> I don't know how that could have health benefits.
Well, it doesn't seem so far fetched. Moderate alcohol use could definitely have a stress reducing effect and stress has well documented health impacts. And social drinking could easily have beneficial second order effects from social interaction.
Who knows if this is what's happening, but it's easy to spitball some benefits.
>how that could have health benefits
It's not the alcohol (ethanol) that has the health benefits, but the solution it's in. I think it applies mainly to wine, which has a bunch of anti-oxidants
"I don't know how" isn't proof of anything.|
You're probably right, but science doesn't advance by saying, "Let's just assume I'm right, and go from there."
That's true of course. But I also think for practical arguments like this, we don't need exact science.
There's a good theory why moderate drinking is still unhealthy (self-exclusion of non-drinkers). There's no proven theory as to why moderate drinking should somehow increase health.
So while it's not perfect science, for the practical purpose of making life decisions, that's enough for me.
There's a pretty clear theory of alcohol as social lubricant, and people with more active social lives having better mental health and slower cognitive decline in old age.
There's also a surprisingly strong link between alcohol use and exercise, that persists even when you look at "heavy drinking levels" [0].
In fact, given the fact that alcohol use has such a high effect on certain medical conditions, but such a low impact on all-cause mortality, you can be certain that alcohol use has some strong positive health effects. And it's down to individual circumstances whether the positives are likely to outweigh the negatives.
> There's a pretty clear theory of alcohol as social lubricant, and people with more active social lives having better mental health and slower cognitive decline in old age.
Sure, but you can have an active social life without consuming alcohol and have the benefits of not drinking AND having an active social life.
> There's also a surprisingly strong link between alcohol use and exercise, that persists even when you look at "heavy drinking levels" [0].
Couldn't this be the same fallacy? i.e. the people who don't drink self-exclude from drinking AND exercise because they're sick or injured or whatever?
Or could it be that people who are more active in general just do both things more?