djcb comments on Moderate alcohol consumption inversely correlated with all-cause mortality - Less Wrong

0 Post author: michaelcurzi 11 July 2012 05:41PM

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Comment author: Gastogh 12 July 2012 11:49:40AM *  6 points [-]

Color me unconvinced. These "benefits" may come from any number of things, and taking alcohol as a general remedy may not be an advisable course of action because the problem is likely to be specific. Consider the following (I'll be using "longevity" as shorthand for "improvement WRT total mortality"):

  • Alcohol -> lowered social anxiety -> more socialization -> mental well-being -> longevity
  • Alcohol -> distraction from (seemingly) insurmountable problems -> mental well-being -> longevity
  • Alcohol -> [insert chemical that triggers some elusive beneficial biological process that causes your cells to degenerate slower or whatever] -> longevity

The last one seems least likely to me, and if you can get the social benefits through some other avenue, you may want to consider those first. I do recall reading up on some other classic studies that showed that red wine has some genuine antioxidant properties and such, but a significant impact of general longevity? I 'unno. You may still be better off using your beer bucks to buy supplements or exercise opportunities.

And that's all assuming the researchers were conscientious enough to control for the other stuff in the first place. Apologies in advance if they actually did, but I've been generally unimpressed with the rigor of studies that claim to show correlations between Purportedly-But-Not-Really-Simple Thing X and Complicated Gestalt Such As Total Mortality, and so I deliberately skimped on the conscientiousness myself. Corrections are welcome in case you guys did read the whole article. But in the meantime, try these on for size:

  • Alcohol -> indication that your income level is comfortable enough that you can afford to buy alcohol -> selection bias -> longevity
  • Alcohol -> drink and drive -> don't die yourself, but WHOOPS, you just killed a pedestrian -> the statistics give the cause of death as "car accident" rather than "alcohol" -> longevity
  • Life sucks -> alcohol -> get wasted regularly rather than commit suicide -> getting wasted gets in the way of fixing the actual problem -> improved but still stunted longevity
  • Etc.
Comment author: djcb 13 July 2012 06:19:57PM 3 points [-]

Well said.

It would actually be interesting to see some research on the biological side of alcohol consumption, say, some studies on the longetivity of rats consuming C2H5OH-containing drinks versus their non-alcoholic controls.

(At the very least, the rats might be saved from less pleasant experiments...)

Comment author: dekelron 13 July 2012 11:10:39PM 4 points [-]

This was already done.

Comment author: djcb 14 July 2012 07:36:30AM 3 points [-]

Ah, thanks! The research was about alcohol and clofibrates:

N, normal controls; NA, standard diet + alcohol; C, clofibrate feeding; and CA, clofibrate feeding + alcohol [...]. Life duration (weeks) after the start of the trial was 63.3 ± 3.3 in N, 73 ± 2.6 in NA, 77.7 ± 4.3 in C, and 90.3 ± 2.8 in CA. There were no alcohol-related liver findings in NA and CA. [...] Voluntary alcohol consumption or clofibrate feeding significantly lengthens lifetime, which is prolonged by 42% if ethanol is combined with clofibrate. [...]

That seems pretty significant! Cheers!

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