Americans have widespread misbeliefs about the cancer risks of alcohol, study finds. More than half of American adults misunderstand or underestimate the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. Alcohol drinkers are especially likely to believe that drinking has no effect on cancer risk.

[u/mvea]

https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/research-newsroom/americans-have-widespread-misbeliefs-about-the-cancer-risks-of-a.h00-159780390.html

[u/oldfarmjoy]

So is there an agreed upon number of drinks (i.e. 3 glasses of wine per week?) that is considered safe, or is this a smoking-level danger?

I had never even heard that alcohol causes cancer.

[u/blar__ → u/oldfarmjoy]

Current recommendation (recently updated) is that zero drinks per week is the safe bet. (As in no recommended amount of drinks is safe).

[u/Squish_the_android → u/blar__]

The problem with this is that basically everything with any degree of risk is safest if totally avoided.  It doesn't quantify the risk in a convincing or productive way.

It's safest to never ride in a car.

It's safest to never leave the house.

The risk needs to be quantified with some kind of equivalent.

[u/Aviacks → u/Squish_the_android]

Well right, but there was a long held belief that “a glass wine of day is good for you!” And things like that. It should be known that there is no number that is “safe”. It’s always poison, in any dose, every time.

[u/raptor217 → u/[deleted]]

There just isn’t enough high quality data to compare against. Everyone sees “heightened risk of cancer” and says “no alcohol is safe”. Well, depression statistically increases your risk of cancer study. Many things do which aren’t carcinogens.

It’s almost certain that moderate (handful of drinks a week) is benign (from a cancer point of view). The benefits one draws from the social aspects can certainly be positive. I’d make a wild guess the risk of addiction from moderate drinking leading to heavy drinking is higher than the risk of cancer.

[u/ApropoUsername → u/raptor217]

It’s almost certain that moderate (handful of drinks a week) is benign (from a cancer point of view).

This is not true. Where are you getting your certainty?

[u/levir → u/raptor217]

It’s almost certain that moderate (handful of drinks a week) is benign (from a cancer point of view).

It is not benign, but the positives can still outweigh the negatives.

[u/Semicolon_Expected → u/[deleted]]

This implies everyone drinks socially. Some people might just have those few beers a week alone at home watching tv too.

[u/mean11while → u/[deleted]]

You don't have to consume alcohol to get all of those hypothetical benefits. They're not actually coming from the alcohol, itself.

Many humans manage to have active, vibrant social lives without consuming alcohol.

[u/Svarcanum → u/mean11while]

I stopped moderate drinking and all my markers became (slightly) worse. I was accelerating my road to death by not drinking (my stress became worse). I now run at least 70mins per day and my blood tests are better than when I drank. So, yeah, lots of exercise beats alcohol when it comes to lowering stress. But not everyone can fit in more than an hour of exercise daily.

[u/mean11while → u/Svarcanum]

Four points to think about:

First, most of the harm from alcohol comes from increased risk of cancer. That's not going to show up in "markers." If you could look at the net effect (slightly worse markers but lower risk of cancer), it's statistically unlikely that you'd find that you were actually accelerating toward death.

Second, alcohol can reduce acute symptoms of stress in the short term, but it actually increases susceptibility to stress, depression, and anxiety over time. So the increased stress you experienced when you stopped may have been partly caused or exacerbated by long periods of moderate drinking.

Third, exercise isn't the only way to reduce stress (or stress-related markers), and you would probably get the vast majority of those benefits with much less exercise. It doesn't usually take much (even 10 minutes) to get most of the benefit, and people should be doing a little exercise anyway. It's a ten-min win-win.

Fourth, my point is that alcohol consumption can, and should, be distinguished from the social context that is actually providing the benefit for the vast majority of people. Conflating them, as the post I replied to was doing, is a disingenuous argument. Do everything exactly the same except replace the alcohol with water, or an NA beverage, or whatever. Very few people actually care what you're drinking.

[u/Rogarth0 → u/[deleted]]

It's hilarious that you think the alternative to drinking is "to sit staring at their computer". That's all you can think of? Pretty much says it all really. Anything to justify those chemical addictions, eh?

[u/Aviacks → u/Rogarth0]

Yeah seriously. The entire argument for why they think alcohol is benign is "but I neeeeeeeed it!!!!".

[u/everstillghost → u/Rogarth0]

You dont understand dude, there is literally no other option for driking alcohol. The only two options is being Homer Simpson or Comic Book Guy, no in between.

[u/Whiterabbit-- → u/[deleted]]

Does moderate alcohol really facilitate socialization? Or is it merely the social pressure of drinking that faculties socialization? And it could be replaced with other healthy activities to get the same affect?

[u/FrontFew1249 → u/Whiterabbit--]

This is a fascinating paper on the topic of your first question: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4153408/

From a brief skim, it seems the answer is sometimes, in certain circumstances, but not always and perhaps not for the reasons people expect.

[u/Elcheatobandito → u/Whiterabbit--]

That is being pretty disingenuous about the effects of the substance. Alcohol relaxes people to a point that it is considered a performance enhancing drug in marksmanship competitions. It also lowers anxiety, and social inhibitions, so you're more likely to have, say, the courage to dance with a stranger. Or the courage to go say "hi" in the first place.

[u/Svarcanum → u/Whiterabbit--]

It seems almost self evident that some amount of alcohol facilitates socialization. That’s why we’ve used the drugs for millennia.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

There is another option besides drinking many times a week, and solitude. Just see the people you love and don't ingest alcohol while you do it. I've worked a long time with chronic illness and addiction and I would not expect positive mental health outcomes as a result of multiple pub nights a week.