I'm under the impression that these results are skewed by the fact that people with chronic and deadly health conditions are much more likely to be (medically necessary) teetotalers, thus dragging down their average in all health-related metrics. Hate to quote the NYT times, but:
Absolutely; you may also remember the obesity paradox, which is now generally believed to have been caused by individuals suffering from terminal illnesses losing weight before dying, thus leaving survivors at higher BMI.
But there are two further things I can say on the subject:
1. The results of these meta-analyses could just as easily be skewed by people drinking more to cope with difficulties and stress. If people drink more after the death of a spouse, the loss of a job, financial difficulty, or conflict at work, or the onset of a pandemic, then drinking should be associated with *worse* health outcomes, not better ones. For instance, if you like the New York Times, drinking rose during COVID: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/well/mind/covid-pandemic-drinking.html If drinking were even neutral, then this pairing of drinking with stress should have made it seem as though drinking were unhealthy. However, that's not what the data show.
2. What would cognitively flexible, fair-minded thinkers do when presented with very clear and consistent scientific results that don't match their preconceptions? Would they look around - as I admittedly did myself, if that came through in the article - trying to find countervailing evidence to substantiate an original stance? Would they try to imagine ways to avoid the conclusion? Or would they make an effort to emotionally and intellectually accommodate the new evidence?
You can absolutely reason however you like, and embrace or ignore whatever evidence comes your way on whatever grounds make sense to you. As a general rule, however, I think it is extremely important to defer to evidence of the kind I see here, coming from large scale studies and meta-analyses that replicate across countries. Doing this won't guarantee that I am never wrong, but it will guarantee that I have enough flexibility to be able change my mind whenever that becomes necessary.
Thank you for your points--of course intellectual humility is always a good thing. That being said, I am still not sold on your thesis. Here's why:
If you buy my premise, there are there is still a possible confounder to your argument. My objection is that lots of sickly and unhealthy people stop drinking, thus skewing the results and your counterpoint is that people drinking more due to stress or other bad outcomes would lead to (equivalently) bad outcomes.
I don't think these two carry equal weight for the following reasons. (1) People with chronic (and potentially deadly) illnesses are at a much greater risk for death than people who have suffered the death of spouse, loss of a job etc. I do not doubt that this second cohort will probably suffer many more poor health outcomes, but not at the level of people suffering from co-morbidities that lead to teetotaling.
I'm using Bayesian logic here as well, my priors being that imbibing what is essentially a poison will not ultimately lead to longer life. As to humanity's long relationship with alcohol, it's noteworthy that the Chinese (arguably one of the first civilizations to imbibe alcohol) clearly underwent process of genetic adaptation in which those individuals who were *worse* at metabolizing alcohol were more able to have descendants, thus spreading the so-called "Asian red face" gene. This combined with the long lives of teetotaling populations in the United States (Puritans, Mormons, etc) gives me more confidence that not consuming alcohol is best.
Finally, while I salute your Scott Alexander-like examination of various meta-analyses, I still have to ask what is it about alcohol that would make us live longer? We know that the body treats it as a poison, to the point that it taxes the liver. What, if anything, makes it good? I recall the craze for resveratrol in red wine, but that seems like a very thin claim. And it's not in other forms of alcohol.
So, while I think that moderate drinking is probably fine and won't do that much damage to the imbiber, all things being equal it's still best not to drink. Certainly if you haven't been a drinker, you shouldn't start in order to improve your health.
Hold your horses here. I am very reasonable. And your analysis misses an important section, namely a cost-benefit analysis. My non-consumption of ethanol based beverages is foremost a matter of great stinginess. Alcohol is expensive (especially so in high-tax socities) and, for me at least, simply not worth the cost.
Anders! It's good to see you. I'm sorry I neglected a cost-benefit analysis; I'll provide that here:
I read that you have a wife who produces apples by the barrel. So many apples that she has had to be creative about finding ways to get the family to eat them. Well, all that's needed is to prepare the apples as though you're making kräm, but strain out the solids and throw them away: https://www.freshoffthegrid.com/homemade-apple-cider/
The main costs are the time, apples, sweetener, and effort which would have been spent making kräm. You save on potato starch, though you do lose on yeast and discarded apple solids (and bottles if you don't already have them). Ultimately however your main benefit is that unlike kräm, you can drink the cider for the entire year, which - in moderation - would presumably offer some minor improvements to your health and longevity. There could conceivably be an increase in your post output as well, though arguably that's a benefit that accrues to your #1 fan more than it does to you.
(I want you to know that I resisted the temptation to joke about this in an effort to give you a very sober analysis of the costs and benefits of drinking.)
I have recommended caffeine. Anders claims that I'm naturally on speed. I should never take amphetamines, he says, because I have it in my blood already. It struck me that it would have been a good idea if he took some speed then, because then we would be more even. After a moment of reflection, I think he shouldn't start with speed. First he should try caffeine, the light version of speed used by most Western adults.
The trouble may have been that your recommendation was too direct, and too unserious, to produce any lasting change. Mine admittedly came without a cost benefit analysis, but used car salesmen and telemarketers do say you shouldn't give all your arguments at once; to overcome hesitation you have to be seen to have a stronger position than was initially obvious.
"Coming from someone whose alcohol consumption over the last few days was a single glass of watered rosé (you know, the way the ancient Athenians drank it; I’m not a barbarian), the idea of having five glasses a day on average is surreal. I don’t know about you, but for most of my life I doubt I’ve had the time, desire, or money for more than 1800 glasses of wine a year.'
we match here, I particularly like to water down the wine opened the other night as a refreshment after weekend labours in the garden, occasionally even with ice
You spend a lot of time in the garden, don't you? What kind of things do you grow? Mostly I use my own irregularly mowed lawn as a source of dandelions for soups, salads, and stir fries. And while that tree drops absolutely wonderful crab apples early in the season, I didn't plant it; it was just there.
it's partly a bush block so what I most want to do is encourage that without creating a bushfire fuel-zone, currenttly I am learning about mechanical removal (we burn sticks as fuel in our woodstove in winter) and gaining insight into de-structuring the fuel load so it doesn't stand up, introduced weed blackberries are a major concern in this regard. Because of the possums (though the electric fence did help a little this last winter) we don't get a lot fruit on the fruit trees, so I am happy to grow potatoes (the forest rats do get some) and have a small all enclosed herb garden. Geese and wallabies take care of a lot of the grass as a fuel zone. We work near full time so the gardening takes 3rd place after shed & house improvements. Though today I did finish an wooden A5 booklet & section template for my piercing cradle that I made about 3 weeks ago (these are bookbinding tools). I have access to them at work, but then I am at work and not on my own time....
Off topic: Thank you very much for the elaborate caption. It helps a lot for uncultured people like me who haven't even watched Star Trek.
On topic: I agree with Esme that we have a cause-and-effect problem. Why do people abstain from alcohol? There are different reasons. But one is that they are in bad health and do lot tolerate it well. It is the same thing with coffee. In many cultures, almost all adults who can tolerate it drink coffee. If people don't drink coffee, they can be suspected of having weak constitutions.
For that reason I would also like to see comparisons between populations. How about the Mormons, for example? Their religion discourages not only alcohol, but also coffee and tea. As far as I can see from a quick search, Mormons tend to live considerably longer than the average American. There should be many more such examples of populations that are rather similar, but have completely different rules around alcohol. Such a comparison would complete the picture a bit more.
I think your data shows one interesting thing: Alcohol is not that dangerous. But is it healthy enough that also those of us who don't even like to be inebriated in our everyday life should use it? I'm not convinced.
Compare the warm-colored and cool-colored images: Canada has less disability than the US with the same amount of drinking. Similarly, England has more disability than Ireland for the same amount of drinking. Whether any of this is really meaningful I can't say, as I haven't poked around with the data collection methods and so on.
> I think your data shows one interesting thing: Alcohol is not that dangerous. But is it healthy enough that also those of us who don't even like to be inebriated in our everyday life should use it? I'm not convinced.
What if I told you that ultimately it may be that what's good about alcohol is precisely that it makes people feel good? Alcohol is a social lubricant, an anxiolytic, a religious ritual, even a game that people play. Positive feelings, personal connection, and a sense of meaning all have health benefits. If you don't get that from alcohol, it may be that alcohol won't have benefits for you.
(On the other hand, our ancestors have been drinking the stuff for so long, it really does make sense that we'd have developed a physiological expectation for it- that's how we lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C for ourselves, because it was everywhere in our diet.)
> Then shouldn't different ways of feeling good be compared? Like praying five times a day and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol?
OK, that makes sense. Tell you what, if I do an analysis comparing Muslim nations to nations drinking moderately, and the results show a longevity benefit to the moderate drinkers, will you convince Anders to post more often? (I mean by giving him hard cider, obviously)
> With me, n=2. I also think that life without alcohol feels great.
Life without meditation isn't bad either, but there are known benefits to meditation which (if I recall correctly) were similar in magnitude to the benefits of moderate drinking.
>>Tell you what, if I do an analysis comparing Muslim nations to nations drinking moderately, and the results show a longevity benefit to the moderate drinkers, will you convince Anders to post more often? (I mean by giving him hard cider, obviously)
The only way to make Anders eat or drink something in particular is to say "I don't like this, you have to drink it or I will throw it away". But seriously, do people actually write well on alcohol? One of my foremost reasons to stay sober is that I want to use my evenings to write and read. My bet is that he needs caffeine. Or just more writing time and fewer problems.
>>Life without meditation isn't bad either, but there are known benefits to meditation which (if I recall correctly) were similar in magnitude to the benefits of moderate drinking.
Then I will definitely choose the drinking. Alcohol makes me a worse thinker. But thinking badly is at least better than deliberately not thinking at all. And I like the taste of beer!
> The only way to make Anders eat or drink something in particular is to say "I don't like this, you have to drink it or I will throw it away".
I am very familiar with this, only in my case nobody warns me they're going to waste their food, it's "Wait, this food is sitting here cold, did nobody want this?"
> But seriously, do people actually write well on alcohol?
Absolutely, most definitely! In the halcyon days of yore when I didn't have a zillion responsibilities, I would retreat into the cool darkness of my cubby, stare out the window, have a couple glasses of watered wine and a quick meal, listen to music, and write fiction in a state of rapturous absorption. I am my own favorite writer, and being able to read these things again after the fact is really wonderful.
> One of my foremost reasons to stay sober is that I want to use my evenings to write and read. My bet is that he needs caffeine.
Worth a try, but watch as it enhances his inhibitions. He's dismissive of his own good essays, which is a sign of a writer who is too self critical.
> Or just more writing time and fewer problems.
Be a good wife. Solve those problems, Tove!
> Then I will definitely choose the drinking. Alcohol makes me a worse thinker. But thinking badly is at least better than deliberately not thinking at all. And I like the taste of beer!
Something that might explain why moderate drinking seems to correlate with less heart disease is that many women (myself included) find that during perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause we become quite alcohol-intolerant. Even a single drink will result in poor sleep, hot flashes, etc., so many of us decide it isn’t worth the discomfort at all. At the same time, the abrupt drop in estrogen during menopause makes us increasingly vulnerable to cardiovascular disease. I’m a nonsmoking, healthy weight athlete who has just been diagnosed with moderate atherosclerosis - and this is not at all uncommon in my age group. My conjecture is that those of us who are predisposed to heart disease (family history) are also the ones who find that alcohol induces unpleasant symptoms; and recent research shows that women who experience hot flashes are at a higher risk of heart disease. So it may be not so much that alcohol has a protective effect, but rather that the only people who can keep consuming alcohol through middle age and beyond are the ones without underlying genetic propensity for heart disease.
That's very interesting! A lot of the research I've been quoting is with people in middle age and older, and very possibly this kind of thing might relate to hints in the data that women as a group do less well than men with alcohol.
my wife has just gone through this and gets either an instant migraine or delyaed migraine the next day, i.e. past the hangover period, not first thing/waking, such that I have to drink watered down wine days later if we have guests and the bottle is not finished.
I'm under the impression that these results are skewed by the fact that people with chronic and deadly health conditions are much more likely to be (medically necessary) teetotalers, thus dragging down their average in all health-related metrics. Hate to quote the NYT times, but:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/well/mind/alcohol-health-effects.html
Also, if you look at the life expectancy of Mormon populations, you see that they do quite well--though obviously it's not just the teetotaling.
Absolutely; you may also remember the obesity paradox, which is now generally believed to have been caused by individuals suffering from terminal illnesses losing weight before dying, thus leaving survivors at higher BMI.
But there are two further things I can say on the subject:
1. The results of these meta-analyses could just as easily be skewed by people drinking more to cope with difficulties and stress. If people drink more after the death of a spouse, the loss of a job, financial difficulty, or conflict at work, or the onset of a pandemic, then drinking should be associated with *worse* health outcomes, not better ones. For instance, if you like the New York Times, drinking rose during COVID: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/well/mind/covid-pandemic-drinking.html If drinking were even neutral, then this pairing of drinking with stress should have made it seem as though drinking were unhealthy. However, that's not what the data show.
2. What would cognitively flexible, fair-minded thinkers do when presented with very clear and consistent scientific results that don't match their preconceptions? Would they look around - as I admittedly did myself, if that came through in the article - trying to find countervailing evidence to substantiate an original stance? Would they try to imagine ways to avoid the conclusion? Or would they make an effort to emotionally and intellectually accommodate the new evidence?
You can absolutely reason however you like, and embrace or ignore whatever evidence comes your way on whatever grounds make sense to you. As a general rule, however, I think it is extremely important to defer to evidence of the kind I see here, coming from large scale studies and meta-analyses that replicate across countries. Doing this won't guarantee that I am never wrong, but it will guarantee that I have enough flexibility to be able change my mind whenever that becomes necessary.
Thank you for your points--of course intellectual humility is always a good thing. That being said, I am still not sold on your thesis. Here's why:
If you buy my premise, there are there is still a possible confounder to your argument. My objection is that lots of sickly and unhealthy people stop drinking, thus skewing the results and your counterpoint is that people drinking more due to stress or other bad outcomes would lead to (equivalently) bad outcomes.
I don't think these two carry equal weight for the following reasons. (1) People with chronic (and potentially deadly) illnesses are at a much greater risk for death than people who have suffered the death of spouse, loss of a job etc. I do not doubt that this second cohort will probably suffer many more poor health outcomes, but not at the level of people suffering from co-morbidities that lead to teetotaling.
I'm using Bayesian logic here as well, my priors being that imbibing what is essentially a poison will not ultimately lead to longer life. As to humanity's long relationship with alcohol, it's noteworthy that the Chinese (arguably one of the first civilizations to imbibe alcohol) clearly underwent process of genetic adaptation in which those individuals who were *worse* at metabolizing alcohol were more able to have descendants, thus spreading the so-called "Asian red face" gene. This combined with the long lives of teetotaling populations in the United States (Puritans, Mormons, etc) gives me more confidence that not consuming alcohol is best.
Finally, while I salute your Scott Alexander-like examination of various meta-analyses, I still have to ask what is it about alcohol that would make us live longer? We know that the body treats it as a poison, to the point that it taxes the liver. What, if anything, makes it good? I recall the craze for resveratrol in red wine, but that seems like a very thin claim. And it's not in other forms of alcohol.
So, while I think that moderate drinking is probably fine and won't do that much damage to the imbiber, all things being equal it's still best not to drink. Certainly if you haven't been a drinker, you shouldn't start in order to improve your health.
Maybe I should respond to this with a post; I don't have the time right now to give this the kind of treatment I think it deserves
Hold your horses here. I am very reasonable. And your analysis misses an important section, namely a cost-benefit analysis. My non-consumption of ethanol based beverages is foremost a matter of great stinginess. Alcohol is expensive (especially so in high-tax socities) and, for me at least, simply not worth the cost.
Anders! It's good to see you. I'm sorry I neglected a cost-benefit analysis; I'll provide that here:
I read that you have a wife who produces apples by the barrel. So many apples that she has had to be creative about finding ways to get the family to eat them. Well, all that's needed is to prepare the apples as though you're making kräm, but strain out the solids and throw them away: https://www.freshoffthegrid.com/homemade-apple-cider/
Then bottle the juice with some yeast so that it ferments to the meager Swedish home brewing limit of 3.5%: https://deviantspirits.com/is-home-brewing-legal-in-sweden/
The main costs are the time, apples, sweetener, and effort which would have been spent making kräm. You save on potato starch, though you do lose on yeast and discarded apple solids (and bottles if you don't already have them). Ultimately however your main benefit is that unlike kräm, you can drink the cider for the entire year, which - in moderation - would presumably offer some minor improvements to your health and longevity. There could conceivably be an increase in your post output as well, though arguably that's a benefit that accrues to your #1 fan more than it does to you.
(I want you to know that I resisted the temptation to joke about this in an effort to give you a very sober analysis of the costs and benefits of drinking.)
I have recommended caffeine. Anders claims that I'm naturally on speed. I should never take amphetamines, he says, because I have it in my blood already. It struck me that it would have been a good idea if he took some speed then, because then we would be more even. After a moment of reflection, I think he shouldn't start with speed. First he should try caffeine, the light version of speed used by most Western adults.
The trouble may have been that your recommendation was too direct, and too unserious, to produce any lasting change. Mine admittedly came without a cost benefit analysis, but used car salesmen and telemarketers do say you shouldn't give all your arguments at once; to overcome hesitation you have to be seen to have a stronger position than was initially obvious.
"Coming from someone whose alcohol consumption over the last few days was a single glass of watered rosé (you know, the way the ancient Athenians drank it; I’m not a barbarian), the idea of having five glasses a day on average is surreal. I don’t know about you, but for most of my life I doubt I’ve had the time, desire, or money for more than 1800 glasses of wine a year.'
we match here, I particularly like to water down the wine opened the other night as a refreshment after weekend labours in the garden, occasionally even with ice
Mind you, I was buying rather a lot of brandy for a while after my wife fell a few months ago https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/four-things-i-learned-by-being-a
You spend a lot of time in the garden, don't you? What kind of things do you grow? Mostly I use my own irregularly mowed lawn as a source of dandelions for soups, salads, and stir fries. And while that tree drops absolutely wonderful crab apples early in the season, I didn't plant it; it was just there.
it's partly a bush block so what I most want to do is encourage that without creating a bushfire fuel-zone, currenttly I am learning about mechanical removal (we burn sticks as fuel in our woodstove in winter) and gaining insight into de-structuring the fuel load so it doesn't stand up, introduced weed blackberries are a major concern in this regard. Because of the possums (though the electric fence did help a little this last winter) we don't get a lot fruit on the fruit trees, so I am happy to grow potatoes (the forest rats do get some) and have a small all enclosed herb garden. Geese and wallabies take care of a lot of the grass as a fuel zone. We work near full time so the gardening takes 3rd place after shed & house improvements. Though today I did finish an wooden A5 booklet & section template for my piercing cradle that I made about 3 weeks ago (these are bookbinding tools). I have access to them at work, but then I am at work and not on my own time....
Off topic: Thank you very much for the elaborate caption. It helps a lot for uncultured people like me who haven't even watched Star Trek.
On topic: I agree with Esme that we have a cause-and-effect problem. Why do people abstain from alcohol? There are different reasons. But one is that they are in bad health and do lot tolerate it well. It is the same thing with coffee. In many cultures, almost all adults who can tolerate it drink coffee. If people don't drink coffee, they can be suspected of having weak constitutions.
For that reason I would also like to see comparisons between populations. How about the Mormons, for example? Their religion discourages not only alcohol, but also coffee and tea. As far as I can see from a quick search, Mormons tend to live considerably longer than the average American. There should be many more such examples of populations that are rather similar, but have completely different rules around alcohol. Such a comparison would complete the picture a bit more.
I think your data shows one interesting thing: Alcohol is not that dangerous. But is it healthy enough that also those of us who don't even like to be inebriated in our everyday life should use it? I'm not convinced.
My favorite capitalist, Marc Andreessen, has written an interesting post on drinking alcohol. https://pmarca.substack.com/p/on-pausing-alcohol
> Off topic: Thank you very much for the elaborate caption. It helps a lot for uncultured people like me who haven't even watched Star Trek.
Are you serious? The informative caption was meant as a joke.
> For that reason I would also like to see comparisons between populations.
Your friendly neighborhood Wikipedia has you covered:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism#Epidemiology
Compare the warm-colored and cool-colored images: Canada has less disability than the US with the same amount of drinking. Similarly, England has more disability than Ireland for the same amount of drinking. Whether any of this is really meaningful I can't say, as I haven't poked around with the data collection methods and so on.
> I think your data shows one interesting thing: Alcohol is not that dangerous. But is it healthy enough that also those of us who don't even like to be inebriated in our everyday life should use it? I'm not convinced.
What if I told you that ultimately it may be that what's good about alcohol is precisely that it makes people feel good? Alcohol is a social lubricant, an anxiolytic, a religious ritual, even a game that people play. Positive feelings, personal connection, and a sense of meaning all have health benefits. If you don't get that from alcohol, it may be that alcohol won't have benefits for you.
(On the other hand, our ancestors have been drinking the stuff for so long, it really does make sense that we'd have developed a physiological expectation for it- that's how we lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C for ourselves, because it was everywhere in our diet.)
> My favorite capitalist, Marc Andreessen, has written an interesting post on drinking alcohol. https://pmarca.substack.com/p/on-pausing-alcohol
Oof. He does have a sense of humor, but I get the impression that he comes to conclusions on the basis of n = 1.
>>Are you serious? The informative caption was meant as a joke.
Yes, I'm serious. Your caption was helpful. I didn't recognize that face.
>>What if I told you that ultimately it may be that what's good about alcohol is precisely that it makes people feel good?
Then shouldn't different ways of feeling good be compared? Like praying five times a day and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol?
>>Oof. He does have a sense of humor, but I get the impression that he comes to conclusions on the basis of n = 1
With me, n=2. I also think that life without alcohol feels great.
> Then shouldn't different ways of feeling good be compared? Like praying five times a day and drinking moderate amounts of alcohol?
OK, that makes sense. Tell you what, if I do an analysis comparing Muslim nations to nations drinking moderately, and the results show a longevity benefit to the moderate drinkers, will you convince Anders to post more often? (I mean by giving him hard cider, obviously)
> With me, n=2. I also think that life without alcohol feels great.
Life without meditation isn't bad either, but there are known benefits to meditation which (if I recall correctly) were similar in magnitude to the benefits of moderate drinking.
>>Tell you what, if I do an analysis comparing Muslim nations to nations drinking moderately, and the results show a longevity benefit to the moderate drinkers, will you convince Anders to post more often? (I mean by giving him hard cider, obviously)
The only way to make Anders eat or drink something in particular is to say "I don't like this, you have to drink it or I will throw it away". But seriously, do people actually write well on alcohol? One of my foremost reasons to stay sober is that I want to use my evenings to write and read. My bet is that he needs caffeine. Or just more writing time and fewer problems.
>>Life without meditation isn't bad either, but there are known benefits to meditation which (if I recall correctly) were similar in magnitude to the benefits of moderate drinking.
Then I will definitely choose the drinking. Alcohol makes me a worse thinker. But thinking badly is at least better than deliberately not thinking at all. And I like the taste of beer!
> The only way to make Anders eat or drink something in particular is to say "I don't like this, you have to drink it or I will throw it away".
I am very familiar with this, only in my case nobody warns me they're going to waste their food, it's "Wait, this food is sitting here cold, did nobody want this?"
> But seriously, do people actually write well on alcohol?
Absolutely, most definitely! In the halcyon days of yore when I didn't have a zillion responsibilities, I would retreat into the cool darkness of my cubby, stare out the window, have a couple glasses of watered wine and a quick meal, listen to music, and write fiction in a state of rapturous absorption. I am my own favorite writer, and being able to read these things again after the fact is really wonderful.
> One of my foremost reasons to stay sober is that I want to use my evenings to write and read. My bet is that he needs caffeine.
Worth a try, but watch as it enhances his inhibitions. He's dismissive of his own good essays, which is a sign of a writer who is too self critical.
> Or just more writing time and fewer problems.
Be a good wife. Solve those problems, Tove!
> Then I will definitely choose the drinking. Alcohol makes me a worse thinker. But thinking badly is at least better than deliberately not thinking at all. And I like the taste of beer!
LOL
Something that might explain why moderate drinking seems to correlate with less heart disease is that many women (myself included) find that during perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause we become quite alcohol-intolerant. Even a single drink will result in poor sleep, hot flashes, etc., so many of us decide it isn’t worth the discomfort at all. At the same time, the abrupt drop in estrogen during menopause makes us increasingly vulnerable to cardiovascular disease. I’m a nonsmoking, healthy weight athlete who has just been diagnosed with moderate atherosclerosis - and this is not at all uncommon in my age group. My conjecture is that those of us who are predisposed to heart disease (family history) are also the ones who find that alcohol induces unpleasant symptoms; and recent research shows that women who experience hot flashes are at a higher risk of heart disease. So it may be not so much that alcohol has a protective effect, but rather that the only people who can keep consuming alcohol through middle age and beyond are the ones without underlying genetic propensity for heart disease.
That's very interesting! A lot of the research I've been quoting is with people in middle age and older, and very possibly this kind of thing might relate to hints in the data that women as a group do less well than men with alcohol.
my wife has just gone through this and gets either an instant migraine or delyaed migraine the next day, i.e. past the hangover period, not first thing/waking, such that I have to drink watered down wine days later if we have guests and the bottle is not finished.
the circle is complete.
It’s very, very common; at least
according to my highly unscientific and anecdotal research (ie, talking to other women my age!)