Beer may be good for your health!

[monkeymath]

Just for fun, I found this: Relationship of Alcohol Consumption to All-Cause, Cardiovascular, and Cancer-Related Mortality in U.S. Adults - PubMed. It is open access so anyone should be able to read it. It is based on quite a large cohort (>300,000 participants) allowing best approximation of matching comparison groups. Here is the TL/DR from the abstract: "Conclusions: Light and moderate alcohol intake might have a protective effect on all-cause and CVD-specific mortality in U.S. adults. Heavy or binge drinking was associated with increased risk of all-cause and cancer-specific mortality."

The very basic question to ask yourself when looking at an observational study such as this one: in the society from which the participants are drawn, who abstains from alcohol? Alcohol is ubiquitous in most of Europe and, I imagine, the United States. To abstain from alcohol is usually an active decision which may often even have a negative impact on your social life, so you'll probably have some reason for it.
Now, some people simply do not like any alcoholic beverages, but one major impetus to eliminate your alcohol consumption entirely is health issues.
I don't think the people in this study died because they didn't drink, but the other way around.

 

[hopjuice_71]

The very basic question to ask yourself when looking at an observational study such as this one: in the society from which the participants are drawn, who abstains from alcohol? Alcohol is ubiquitous in most of Europe and, I imagine, the United States. To abstain from alcohol is usually an active decision which may often even have a negative impact on your social life, so you'll probably have some reason for it.
Now, some people simply do not like any alcoholic beverages, but one major impetus to eliminate your alcohol consumption entirely is health issues.
I don't think the people in this study died because they didn't drink, but the other way around.

I posted it so that people could draw whatever conclusions they want from it. However, the point of these large cohort studies is that they match the comparator groups on as many lifestyle factors as possible. They discuss this in the paper, including the handling of "abstainer bias". The lack of doing this is a criticism of many, many past studies, but they are better at it now . The presumption is that in this group of US adults that the reference group (abstainers) have as close to the same lifestyle factors as the other groups of drinkers. Other than that, take from it what you will. It doesn't influence my choices.

 

[pc_trott]

For more fun, here is the graphical abstract that shows the J-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and all-risk mortality which hits a minimum at ~7 drinks per week.

According tothe findings of this meta-analysis of the existing literature on the subject, a misclassification of former drinkers as non-drinkers accounts for the J-curve:

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/Is-It-Better-to-Drink-Little-Alcohol-Than-None-at-All/

 

[hopjuice_71]

According tothe findings of this meta-analysis of the existing literature on the subject, a misclassification of former drinkers as non-drinkers accounts for the J-curve:

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/Is-It-Better-to-Drink-Little-Alcohol-Than-None-at-All/

The paper I posted even discusses this meta-analysis and the misclassification. It was one of their justifications for the re-investigation and more thorough experimental design/analysis. They still got the J-curve. The paper is open access, so anyone can read it.

Edit: Geez, I just realized this sounds like I'm defending or promoting this study or something. This isn't the case. I'm really just highlighting how truly complex these kind of issues/studies are and that there is an aspect of "unknowability" when they are so complex.

 

[RyPA]

It's the only reason I drink it.

 

[BigDave1303]

Yeah but part of the short life span could be attributed to constant pointless wars started by tyrants.....beer helped them find purpose in their lives....

200 years ago the average life expectancy was 45ish. Most of the illnesses they died of then have now been eradicated. ATM it's cancer, when they find a cure for that we will all die of whatever comes along next. We will all live to be 200 but we will have to work until we are 150 to pay for everything.
But we will still die in the end. I need another beer to take my mind off it.