<story><title>NIH Courted Alcohol Industry to Fund Study on Benefits of Moderate Drinking</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/health/nih-alcohol-study-liquor-industry.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tabeth</author><text>This should shock no one. Health wise, alcohol is bad for you. Period. However the potential decrease in loneliness and potential resulting friendships may negate the health negatives somewhat. However the increased likelihood of injuring yourself and&amp;#x2F;or others with too much consumption may negate that, and so forth.&lt;p&gt;This is exactly why it&amp;#x27;s difficult to properly control for the supposed &lt;i&gt;moderate&lt;/i&gt; drinking that&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;healthy&amp;quot;. Sooo many ways to explain why &amp;quot;moderate&amp;quot; drinkers are healthier:&lt;p&gt;1. Maybe they&amp;#x27;re a self selected group of people who can properly moderate usage of something that&amp;#x27;s bad in order to get the benefits, in this case, friendships and social activity.&lt;p&gt;2. Maybe drinking is bad and moderate drinkers know it. Therefore moderate drinkers intentionally moderate their drinking and overcompensate in other miscellaneous healthy activity.&lt;p&gt;etc etc etc</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brownbat</author><text>There was a good meta analysis in 2016 on this, you lose the mortality benefits of moderate drinking once you correct for study design, which can basically dictate results here. One big confound, a lot of current strict abstainers are former heavy drinkers with serious health problems:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;m&amp;#x2F;pubmed&amp;#x2F;26997174&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;m&amp;#x2F;pubmed&amp;#x2F;26997174&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>NIH Courted Alcohol Industry to Fund Study on Benefits of Moderate Drinking</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/health/nih-alcohol-study-liquor-industry.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tabeth</author><text>This should shock no one. Health wise, alcohol is bad for you. Period. However the potential decrease in loneliness and potential resulting friendships may negate the health negatives somewhat. However the increased likelihood of injuring yourself and&amp;#x2F;or others with too much consumption may negate that, and so forth.&lt;p&gt;This is exactly why it&amp;#x27;s difficult to properly control for the supposed &lt;i&gt;moderate&lt;/i&gt; drinking that&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;healthy&amp;quot;. Sooo many ways to explain why &amp;quot;moderate&amp;quot; drinkers are healthier:&lt;p&gt;1. Maybe they&amp;#x27;re a self selected group of people who can properly moderate usage of something that&amp;#x27;s bad in order to get the benefits, in this case, friendships and social activity.&lt;p&gt;2. Maybe drinking is bad and moderate drinkers know it. Therefore moderate drinkers intentionally moderate their drinking and overcompensate in other miscellaneous healthy activity.&lt;p&gt;etc etc etc</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>seanmcdirmid</author><text>The same could be said about smoking. Bad for you without a doubt, but the social aspects are undeniably attractive (and I don’t mean looking cool, but having reasons to take and socialize during breaks). It made giving it up that much tougher.</text></comment>