I would recommend to everyone to not drink at all. That being said, as far as my consumption, I quit drinking when they invented the funnel.
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A well done New York Times article about how alcohol fell from being benign and healthy in moderation to alcohol is poison. The article should be available as “free” link from my account. See below.
The authors do a bang-up job explaining relative vs absolute risk of drinking.
Stockwell offered me another way of thinking about it, which is even more bottom-line oriented: How much time does a certain amount of drinking shave off your life? For those who have two drinks a week, that choice amounts to less than one week of lost life on average, he said. Consume seven alcoholic beverages a week, and that amount goes up to about two and a half months. Those who push five drinks a day or more face the risk of losing, on average, upward of two years, said Stockwell. He emphasized that all those numbers were averages — and that it was impossible to predict the level of impact an individual person would experience.
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I don’t drink, but if someone feels a few drinks a week makes their quality of life better I wouldn’t stop. Those last few months are likely to be terrible anyway.
Life is more than absolute fitness and diet routines.
Paraphrasing Aunty Mames advice to her nephew:
Life is a banquet and many poor suckers are missing out.
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I love a good drink. It makes me happy. I never regret one drink. And I don’t have a tendency to drink too much. But I wonder …
Certainly some people have an economic interest in me (and you) buying drinks. They spend serious money to make alcohol feel like a natural solution to many of life’s problems.
Alcohol feels like a crutch for a personality trait I should learn to have without alcohol. And for a skill for relaxation that I should learn …to not need alcohol to relax.
I never buy alcohol for my house. But I have a drink a few times a year. I had a glass of wine (cab) with my dinner in downtown Greenville SC 2 weeks ago.
It was so good.
Alcohol plays a role in iron overload. I’m just saying.
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I wonder if anybody else experiences reactive hypoglycemia with alcohol. I rarely drink anymore, but I discovered through the use of a CGM that that ice cream and beer tanked my glucose.
I didn’t know this was a thing until I investigated. Maybe it’s common knowledge among diabetics.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8015820/
Hypoglycemia occurred more frequently after the simultaneous consumption of alcohol plus glucose than after the consumption of glucose alone, suggesting that alcohol in the combination of glucose induces reactive hypoglycemia.
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Alcohol is known to reduce blood sugar. My A1C when I was drinking tested slightly lower than my A1C after I abstained for a year or two.
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It was very dramatic with the ice cream. I was trying to do an experiment to see how much the ice cream would raise my glucose, then it quickly took a nosedive. The beer ruined my experiment. 
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RPS
#169
If that one glass is “so good” when you drink so little in any one year then the positives for you must easily outweigh the negatives.
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@RPS Yes. But it’s a razors edge I’m walking. Every time I enjoy it so much I think I should do it more often….then I have to stop myself until the feeling passes.
I have always found “none” to be easy while “a little” was hard (to avoid turning into a lot). Moderation takes discipline and constant effort while abstinence takes only determination. When I decide I am a person who doesn’t do something, I don’t do it.
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Among individual lifestyle components,
never smoking, exercise, and greater dietary diversity were significantly associated with higher odds
of becoming a centenarian, whereas no significant association was detected for alcohol use or BMI
(eTable 2 in Supplement 1)
I have glanced at eTable 2, but it is not clear what it means so this ideally would have some more work done on it to find out what the implications of alcohol use are.
I myself would assume that the question is mainly one of how much alcohol.
Beth
#172
I’m the same exact way. I find being almost ‘perfect’ is relatively easy, but moderation is so much harder for me because it reminds me of how nice some guilty pleasures are.
I have allowed myself to eat a few meals that are a little naughty lately (and when I say naughty, I mean closer to being a normal human being!) and, for me, all it does it open the flood gates …
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I had a professor who always said “The optimal number of cigarettes per day is 1. But the options you have available are 0 and 20.”
Of course you can quibble with the details, but that really stuck with me over the years. It encapsulates this point really clearly.
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SNK
#174
I guess i had a curse when I was made LOL. I have no problem per se in social situation to remain engaged and relaxed, yet the minute I start drinking it makes me more anxious. Go figure we are all different but the study that said 7 drinks a week would make one lose 2 months, so if I enjoyed drinking I would absolutely do it, if at the end all I’ll lose is only 2 months. Basically, a life of enjoyment for living 101 and 3 months as opposed 101 and 5 months, who cares.
That is why I always felt (anecdotally as I have mentioned many times in here) moderate consumption of alcohol does absolutely nothing negative to longevity. As luck would have it, I am scheduled to attend a funeral visitation this evening of a fellow that passed away at 98. I know for a fact that he drank one shot a brandy per day, and sometimes even two. By same talking I know more than a few that passed away in their 50’s and 60’s that were drinkers, but they didn’t have 7 drinks a week, they actually had 10 drinks per day.
To me this drinking thing is totally settled which is to say there is no negative effect if done moderately and I would absolutely have no problem having one drink daily if that’s what i liked, and obviously very dangerous if overdone. I simply know way too many regular drinkers (daily on shot or tow) who lived to 96-100. In last five years alone, there were five of those that I was related (mostly distantly) to all of them.
Also, some good news for those who are overweight 3 of these long living guys were overweight, one really overweight, so while being few extra pounds overweight may make one not look visually pleasing, it does little or nothing negative to their health nor longevity. But obviously its much better to actually not be overweight especially for those that hope to break the 100-year barrier.
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SNK
#175
@Barnabas Any idea why he thought one cigarette per day was ideal? Was it the nicotine or some other social benefit?
SNK
#177
I think this could be a kin to “the dose determines the poison”. Or as it is now widely accepted certain adverse things/actions in moderation have positive effects on body and health (i.e. cold showers being one)
He was a rational hedonist, not a neuroscientist. His point was about pleasure and self-control—not hormesis.
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So he liked smoking but understood it was bad for his health, if I understand you…
Yes. But he was making a more general point about indulgence with cigarettes as a convenient representative. The point is the same one you and @Beth made—sometimes a “bright line” rule of not indulging at all is achievable in a way that “moderation” is not.
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Okay, rather boring Sunday here, so, I decided to do the alcohol ice cream experiment.
I am currently fasting and I will take my blood sugar before and after the experiment.
I will be drinking a glass of hard seltzer containing approximately 1 ounce of 100-proof alcohol and 3.6 oz of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. The amounts are those in the individual containers.
This will be my first drink of the year.
I will report the results.
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