This was effective in stopping me from drinking til age 20. Too drunk to google it right now, can someone enlighten me about this phrase?

In that vein, I propose another slogan: "Capitalism kills brain cells."

  • RedDawn [he/him]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Even moderate drinking absolutely has a negative effect on cognition, as well as a negative effect on pretty much every other aspect of your health. "Kills brain cells" probably isn't medically accurate language but the idea is generally correct.

    • Pezevenk [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      There is no evidence for that.

      The pooled dose-response relationship showed a maximum standardised mean difference (SMD) indicating slightly better cognition among women with moderate alcohol consumption compared to current non-drinkers (SMD 0.18, 95%CI 0.02 to 0.34, at 14.4 grams/day; 5 studies, very low certainty evidence), and a trivial difference for men (SMD 0.05, 95% CI 0.00 to 0.10, at 19.4 grams/day; 6 studies, very low certainty evidence).

      Actually there is some slight evidence to the contrary.

      In this cohort study of 19 887 participants from the Health and Retirement Study, with a mean follow-up of 9.1 years, when compared with never drinking, low to moderate drinking was associated with significantly better trajectories of higher cognition scores for mental status, word recall, and vocabulary and with lower rates of decline in each of these cognition domains.

      • RedDawn [he/him]
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        edit-2
        4 years ago

        One study being totally inconclusive is not the same as "there's no evidence." Here's evidence from the first page of Google results lol.

        https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2353

        Conclusions: Alcohol consumption, even at moderate levels, is associated with adverse brain outcomes including hippocampal atrophy. These results support the recent reduction in alcohol guidance in the UK and question the current limits recommended in the US.

        There are so many very obvious issues with the routinely published studies that show "light drinking actually is good for your______" and get immediately printed across all the media outlets and a segment on local news.

        The one you cited for example seems to suggest that light drinking protects cognitive abilities from the effects of aging, but only in white people? Does that make any sense or is it likely that there's a confounding variable (like white people who drink one glass of wine each night are better off financially and spent their whole lives in comfort).

        One of the major issues is that a lot of such studies compare "current non drinkers" to current light drinkers, neglecting to account for the fact that many current non drinkers are either former alcoholics who already did damage to their bodies or don't drink because of other health conditions.

        • Pezevenk [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          One study being totally inconclusive is not the same as “there’s no evidence

          It clearly means there are conflicting studies. Like I can find tons of studies saying the exact opposite of what that one you posted showed. The one I already posted after that one for instance. Even the definition of moderate quantities in that research is kind of weird. Like if you drink 14-21 drinks per week, that's kind of a lot in my book.

          • RedDawn [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Alcohol is straight up one of the least healthy things you can put in your body and it's weird that people are determined to think that "just a little bit of this highly toxic and addictive drug is actually good for you!" But I guess not that weird when you consider that it's a multi billion dollar industry which largely depends on people not taking the health effects seriously. It's also a carcinogen that increases your risk of all types of cancer in even moderate amounts, yet many people seem to not realize that either.

            • Pezevenk [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              Yeah so weird that people don't lose their shit over weird clickbait articles explaining to you how you will literally die if you do x on one day and then shout about how you will literally die if you don't do x the next day for completely innocuous and normal things.

              • RedDawn [he/him]
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                4 years ago

                Alcohol isnt innocuous, the health effects are well studied. This is almost as ridiculous as trying to argue that smoking a little bit is good for you, which to be fair is something people did try to argue until fairly recently, because there's a lot of money to be made by deceiving people about that as well.

                • Pezevenk [he/him]
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                  edit-2
                  4 years ago

                  Alcohol isnt innocuous, the health effects are well studied.

                  Yes, and never had it been shown that low or moderate consumption carries any sort of serious risk anywhere near conclusively.

                  because there’s a lot of money to be made by deceiving people about that as well.

                  Uhhhh I'm very sorry to inform you that there is tons of money to be made by doing the opposite too. Making people panic about everything is how a lot of media as well as the health and fitness industry survive on.

                  • RedDawn [he/him]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    You're just factually wrong, moderate drinking severely raises your risk of cancer among many other adverse health effects, this isn't some open question, it's a settled matter. Alcohol has been well known as a carcinogen for literally decades.