Five reasons it's actually okay to drink
- 12 minutes ago
- 5 min read
***Note that we are referring to 7 ounces/week or less. And not all consumed in the same sitting, please.***
You’ve likely read all the hullabaloo about the dangers of any amount of alcohol, like:
Here are five reasons why this conclusion is completely wrong.
The study reaching these conclusions is crap (Part 1)
It claims that drinking even small quantities of alcohol (a minimum of one drink a week was termed “regular” drinking, which it isn’t) to 61 diseases, including 33 that had never been linked to alcohol before.
Before you start teetotalling (and far be it from us to discourage that), consider:
literally tens of billions of people have been drinking hundreds of billions of ounces of alcohol every year for centuries
alcohol is one of the most thoroughly studied topics in all of epidemiology.
So how is it that every single study on alcohol consumption has missed 33 diseases? It’s possible that one or two or three might have been overlooked until now…but 33?
The study reaching these conclusions is crap (Part 2)
The study says (emphasis ours):
There was evidence for a dose-dependent causal effect on the identified alcohol-related diseases collectively, with every four drinks per day associated with a 14% higher risk of established alcohol-related diseases, 6% higher risk of diseases not previously known to be alcohol-related.
Let me see if I can explain something to these very stable geniuses. They say that quintupling the amount of alcohol to an alcohol-use-dependency level (from one drink to five drinks – which is way over the threshold for alcohol use disorder) raises the risk of diseases (other than cirrhosis, of course, which would go up a zillion percent) by only 6% to 14%.
News flash: that is conclusive proof of a non-dose-dependent relationship – exactly the opposite of a dose-dependent relationship. Their own conclusions are their own worst enemy.
A dose-dependent relationship requires proportionality, and this relationship is anything but proportional. Also it is very likely that anyone drinking that much has all sorts of other issues that increase their risk as well. Indeed, it is surprising that cumulative risk of 61 diseases rose only by that trivial a percentage.
The study reaching these conclusions is crap (Part 3)
Let's talk some more about dose dependency. What did I just say about cirrhosis incidence going up a zillion percent if you quintuple alcohol consumption?
Well, the study inexplicably says the opposite: cirrhosis incidence merely doubles if you quintuple alcohol consumption.
Not sure where these researchers got their degree, but their colleges could lose their accreditation over their graduates making this rookie mistake. Cirrhosis is almost unknown in light drinkers while heavy drinkers have a 10% to 20% chance of developing it. Probably a thousand times greater chance, not double the chance.
The other study reaching the same conclusion is also crap
As with the first one, this study is its own worst enemy. One need not "challenge the data" to invalidate it. One need only read their data. It will invalidate itself.
(1) The study confuses absolute risk with relative risk. We don’t.
The study identifies bad outcomes (like car accidents and certain illnesses) associated with alcohol use. It finds that even one drink a day increases the relative risk of these bad outcomes — but by only 0.5%. In other words, light drinkers are only 0.5% more likely to have a bad outcome than people who don't.
That’s fairly trivial to begin with as far as relative risk goes. But let's look at absolute risk. The increase in absolute risk per 100,000 people is from 914 to 918 such events. That means that, despite the alarming headline, 100,000 light drinkers would have only four more unfortunate events in an entire year compared to the same number of non-drinkers.
If indeed they correct defined “light drinkers,” which they didn’t...
(2) ...The study misattributes hazards of heavy drinking to light drinking.
The authors say:
Alcohol is a leading risk factor for death and disease worldwide, and is associated with nearly one in 10 deaths in people aged 15-49 years old…
We make two observations about that comment. First, very few U.S. employees die between those ages, so “nearly” 10% of that trivial number would be a much more trivial number still. Second, virtually all alcohol-related deaths in that cohort stem from acute or chronic alcohol abuse, not the one-drink-a-day indulgence the authors are trying to stigmatize.
Leaving the studies aside, let’s look the demographics
If something as widely consumed as alcohol were truly as hazardous as these two studies claim, one would expect countries that consume the most alcohol would generally have the lowest life expectancy and vice-versa. And yet, with the exception of Russia, the correlation goes in the opposite direction. Europeans, Japanese and Australians consume the most, but also having the highest life expectancies. (This is not to say that alcohol helps one live longer, of course. Just that the hazards of drinking are not a major enough risk factor to outweigh drivers of good health, such as wealth.)
Three other reasons Quizzify does not discourage all drinking
These studies ignore three factors that Quizzify considers when urging only moderation rather than abstention.
(1) We lose our audience if we demonize every bad habit, every gram of sugar...and every ounce of alcohol
One of the many mistakes conventional wellness programs make is to spank employees for everything they do wrong, all at once. That, of course, means no one makes any change. Those "behavior change" lectures are mostly ignored.
By contrast, Quizzify encourages changes that are actually doable. Like instead of "no added sugar," we teach that if you are going to eat sugar, do it for dessert (particularly at lunch), before or right after exercise, in the presence of fat or protein etc. In those instances, your blood sugar will spike much less than (for example) drinking a soda between meals. And we help people identify added sugars they may not even realize they are consuming.
It is much more effective for us to let people learn for themselves, via our quizzes, the importance of adhering to a safer level of alcohol consumption than to lecture people on how any consumption is bad.
(2) What would people drink instead?
Mocktails? Mostly full of sugar. Soda? Ditto, or artificial sweeteners that are likely hazardous as well. A 12-ounce can has a day's worth of added sugar. Orange juice? Also a major source of sugar.
We'd like to see a study comparing one alcoholic beverage/day to one added soda/day. We think we know which is more likely to harm people.
(3) Socializing
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.
Loneliness is an epidemic, and is as harmful to health as 15 cigarettes a day. Going out for a drink (and we do mean a drink, not many) after work or with friends is a way to get to know and build bonds with others. This was not considered at all in any study.
If you want real behavior change and high engagement, Quizzify is your best option. We don't charge for people who don't engage. We charge only or people who complete the quizzes...and we don't charge at all for quiz-completers who answer our one-question "Did you learn something new?" survey in the negative. So...
If they don't play, you don't pay
If they don't learn, we don't earn.
