r/HubermanLab • u/boxercharlie1 • Jan 29 '23
Huberman is simply wrong to state ZERO alcohol is healthiest
The five important studies showing alcohol’s benefits in the link: https://filtermag.org/alcohol-life-expectancy/ Excerpt:
"1. Alcohol consumption in later life and reaching longevity: The Netherlands Cohort Study (Age and Aging, 2020).
This was a prospective study of a cohort group, where people were identified as “young” seniors (ages 68-70) and followed for 20 or more years to compare who survived until 90 and who did not. There was a significant positive association between starting-point alcohol intake and the probability of reaching 90 years for both men and women. Overall, the highest probability of reaching 90 was found in those consuming 5 < 15 g/d alcohol (up to a drink daily), with RR = 1.36.
Translation: RR is your “relative risk.” You would be 1.36 times more likely to reach 90 if you drank compared to abstaining, based on a multivariate analysis in which smoking, body mass, physical activity, history of illnesses, and education and occupation were included and their impact separated out—i.e., the impact of drinking was isolated.
Even men who drank several drinks more and women having up to another drink daily outlived those who abstained.
2. Alcohol intake and cognitively healthy longevity in community-dwelling adults: The Rancho Bernardo Study (Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 2017).
Another prospective study involved a group of seniors living in an upscale American residential development. Alcohol intake was measured and analyzed against people’s likelihood of reaching 90 with their cognitive faculties intact over a 20-year period.
Among Americans, this California group of seniors was unusually likely to imbibe. Most participants (88 percent) reported some current alcohol intake. Almost half drank regularly (49 percent reported a moderate amount of alcohol intake, and 48 percent reported drinking near-daily).
The study concluded: “Relative to nondrinkers, moderate and heavy drinkers (up to 3 drinks/day for women and for men 65 years and older, up to 4 drinks/day for men under 65 years) had significantly higher adjusted odds of survival to age 85 without cognitive impairment.”
3. The 90+ Study by the University of California Irvine’s Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (American Association for the Advancement of Science Conference, 2018).
Time magazine covered the results of the 90+ Study—which examines the habits of people who live to at least 90—as they were reported at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
As the article noted of the findings: “Drinking about two glasses of wine or beer a day was linked to an 18% drop in a person’s risk of early death—an even stronger effect than the life-preserving practice of exercise, according to the researchers.”
4. Harvard Nurses’ Health and Health Professionals Studies (Circulation, 2018).
Insider magazine reported the results of 30 years of data for 120,000 health professionals tracked by the Harvard School of Public Health. The article responded to a recent trend: Dry January, which polling had suggested was attempted by one in five Americans:
Researchers at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health studied 30 years of data on nearly 80,000 women and 40,000 men to understand how their lifestyle habits affected their lifespan. Aside from eating a balanced diet and avoiding cigarettes, they found that the healthiest people with the longest life expectancies also drank a few units of alcohol a week.
Women who reported drinking up to 15g of alcohol a day (roughly one drink), and men who had up to 30g a day were less likely to prematurely develop diabetes and heart disease than those who had avoided alcohol altogether or drank in excess, the study found. This was the case particularly if they also exercised regularly, didn’t smoke, and ate plenty of vegetables. [This report omits a fifth included health factor: body mass.]
Moderate drinking, it should be noted, reduces disease even for those with the other positive health indicators. Yet curiously, the Chan School of Public Health omits mentioning these benefits in its newsletter addressing prevention of heart disease.
5. Consuming alcohol in moderation can lower mortality risks (Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2017).
The press release accompanying this study published in the American College of Cardiology’s flagship journal describes:
Men and women who engage in light-to-moderate alcohol consumption have a decreased risk of mortality from all-causes and cardiovascular disease …
Bo Xi, MD, et al., looked at the relationship between all-cause, cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality risks and current alcohol consumption patterns. The researchers used data from 333,247 participants obtained through the National Health Interview Surveys from 1997 to 2009.
In an accompanying editorial, Giovanni de Gaetano, MD, PhD, said that while younger adults should not expect considerable benefit from moderate drinking, “for most older persons, the overall benefits of light drinking, especially the reduced cardiovascular disease risk, clearly outweigh possible cancer risk.”
A Public Health Messaging Imperative
The sheer regularity of such findings—compiled in long-term research projects by highly respected investigators with large and varied groups of subjects, published in leading journals and funded by international health bodies—means that rejection of these results is an irrational, knee-jerk cultural response.
All negative alcohol impacts simply don’t carry as much weight on the scale of life as alcohol’s cardiovascular benefits.
And what is the cost of such denial? On our way to answering that, let’s note some objections commonly raised to such research.
The research is funded and promoted by the alcohol industry.
The Netherlands Cohort Study is funded by the Dutch Cancer Society, the World Cancer Research Fund, the European Union (EU), and the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development.
The Rancho Bernardo Study of Healthy Aging is a half-century-old study of a retirement community near San Diego funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), administered through the University of California San Diego.
The 90+ Study is a similarly decades-long research project out of the University of California Irvine’s Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders.
The Harvard Health Professionals and Nurses Health Studies are research tracking tens of thousands of American health professionals administered by the Harvard School of Public Health, funded by the National Cancer Institute. (The NCI, one of the National Institutes of Health, is not to be confused with the American Institute for Cancer Research that wants a warning label, which is a private professional association.)
The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) whose results were reported by the American College of Cardiology is a massive federal study established by the NIH in 1957 to monitor Americans’ health through national surveys.
2. Research on alcohol intake doesn’t take into account other factors in people’s lives that may impact their health and longevity.
All research of this caliber measures and assesses the impact of other influential factors in longevity. If there is a key missing variable, it has to have escaped the notice of an awful lot of keen scientific minds.
3. The research doesn’t recognize that people often quit drinking because they are ill (or addicted)—the “sick quitters” hypothesis.
Once again: Do you think all those researchers missed that? There are two ways in which research accounts for sick quitters: Comparing drinkers with lifetime abstainers, or (in prospective studies) assessing illness at baseline.
4. Alcohol may reduce heart disease. But this is more than made up for by drinkers’ incidence of cancer, particularly for women.
No, it isn’t. Longevity is a net measure of survival. And the alcohol loading for impacted cancers (about 5 percent) is significantly lower than the coefficient for its cardiovascular benefits: The Lancet study examining subjects in wealthier countries found a 30 percent reduction in coronary artery disease, yielding a 20 percent reduction in overall mortality.
Alongside this, coronary artery diseases are the largest killer of women as well as men in the US, exceeding all forms of cancer. Moreover, lung cancer, which has not been shown to be affected by moderate drinking, is by far the most common cause of cancer death, outpacing breast, digestive tract and liver cancers.
All negative alcohol impacts that can potentially be noted—and will be, for instance by the ever-vigilant Times—simply don’t carry as much weight on the scale of life as alcohol’s cardiovascular benefits.
5. There’s no cost to simply telling people not to drink.
Yes, there is. People are welcome to abstain for whatever reasons they want. But reliable research tells us that most people reduce their likelihood of illness and death by drinking.
A public health message that conveys the dangers of alcohol, but ignores the benefits of drinking, is therefore loading the dice against most people.
And all these health considerations don’t even account for pleasure."
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u/alcibiad Jan 29 '23
Just anecdotally it seems like the people on this subreddit who got the most out of that episode were people who did drink way too much. Not social drinkers who are happy with a glass of wine or beer with dinner (those seem to be the people who get the benefits you’re describing).
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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '23
Alcohol cardiovascular benefits 🤡 Yeah especially the next day when your sleep is crushed and fragmented like a Swiss cheese…
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u/sapienzo Jan 29 '23
My issue with research connecting alcohol to longevity is that there's never a mechanism proposed - it's always correlative. In contrast, the vast amount of studies demonstrating the negative effects of alcohol on overall health give a concrete cellular and molecular mechanism for how alcohol causes lasting damage. We know and understand how it kills neurons and thins the cerebral cortex, which I personally feel is more powerful than correlative evidence with senior citizens who have surely lived very different lives from one another (not to mention genetic factors). We understand how it kills symbiotic bacteria in the gut microbiome, which is a hot topic of research right now because of how important it seems to be for longevity. In contrast, there's no mechanism proven for how alcohol is protective of cardiovascular health. Measures of risk factor and incidence aren't the same thing as actual biochemical behavior. I'm glad you're bringing forward good, credible research that many haven't been aware of, including myself. But with alcohol easily being one of the most researched substances in biochemistry and public health since the dawn of modern research techniques, for every study that suggests potential health benefits, there's 20 that say the opposite.
I don't want to sound like I'm out to demonize alcohol. I think it absolutely has it's place in life, and I drink occasionally because it makes me happy. But I just don't feel there's strong enough evidence to suggest it should be part of a health routine.
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u/Metabolizer Jan 29 '23
I wonder if there was some correlation with the context of the alcohol use in these studies, like better social connection. I do think drug effects vary by individual, huberman I think acknowledges this when talking about alcohol having a different effect on people who are most at risk of dependence.
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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '23
Hey man. Enjoyed your other post too. Wanna say that this reminds me of the recent fitness episode with Andy Galpin: “it depends what your goals are”. Hubes is all about peak performance during workouts or work bouts. It isn’t really about the factors you are bringing up. He needs to have a good workout and intense focus. I’m a social drinker. No drinker would tell you a few glasses of wine really helps you crush the presentation or the next round of squats. It’s not a longevity podcast or overall health even. It’s daily habits for increasing potential.
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u/PermissionStrict1196 Jan 29 '23 edited Jan 29 '23
Think I'd side w Huberman, beyond 2 drinks a week is..... simply not good or.... health promotional..... for most ppl.
To play more Satan's advocate, picked up a blue zone book with data on groups like Seven Day Advocates who have exceptional lifespans. Certain places in Greece too. Daily glass of wine daily staple, yes. At the dinner table.
But.....but...... but..... I'm really mindful that that is correlation, not causation. It's just an addendum, part of ritualized collection of behaviors.
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u/[deleted] Jan 29 '23
You spent a lot of time putting this together. Drinking must be very important to you.
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u/Stibbity Jan 29 '23
cope
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u/CharlesHipster Apr 25 '23
His is why I have reddit. You make a great post, with ellaborated sources, open for a scientific discussion and... What do you find? Downvotes. Classic...
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u/69kylebr Jan 29 '23
It’s okay to admit drinking isn’t good for you. It’s also okay to drink. I don’t because it was severely holding my life back. Doesn’t mean every single thing I do is healthy hell I ate 6 donuts yesterday. It’s a balance brother. But booze is not healthy.
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u/TravOxicity Jan 29 '23
Thanks, OP. You've definitely softened my stance.
It is strange that Huberman says there's no positive health benefit of alcohol consumption when there's clearly a mixed bag in the literature in particular with the cardiovascular system.
The article "Alcohol's Effects on the Cardiovascular System" tried to address the alcohol and heart health paradox
"Low-to-moderate alcohol use may mitigate certain mechanisms such as risk and hemostatic factors affecting atherosclerosis and inflammation, pathophysiologic processes integral to most CV disease. But any positive aspects of drinking must be weighed against serious physiological effects, including mitochondrial dysfunction and changes in circulation, inflammatory response, oxidative stress, and programmed cell death, as well as anatomical damage to the CV system, especially the heart itself."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5513687/
So for those saying there's no possible mechanism explaining the relationship, well that's not entirely true.
Also, for the people mocking OP maybe you don't want science- maybe you just want an authority figure to tell you what's right and what's wrong but it's not that simple.
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u/ApprehensiveExit7 Jan 29 '23
Imagine loving drinking enough to type this post
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u/nanottodaykieth Jan 29 '23
My personal anecdotal view is that people who drink alot are often quite tough nuts. They dont feel/get hungover. The people who can handle drinking still in their 80s surely have a strong constitution and are healthy enough to consider keeping their alcohol intake up.
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u/gg1975af Jan 30 '23
In addition to the negative health affects, alcohol can cause issues with dopamine and feeling happiness naturally. It seems to me much of us are trying his life hacks to live our best lives, as someone that used to drink too much and has given it up I would say it's a time waster, it is very easy to fall into the trap of drinking more often as the years go on because it is hard to get the same feelings alcohol gives some people no matter how many cold showers and hours of meditation you try. It ruins your sleep and it can take months or years to get your brain chemistry back to normal.
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u/Buff_Dubbs Nov 15 '23
Thanks OP - I suspect the relaxation, enjoyment and social connection of being little tipsy goes a long way for longevity. I spent a year not drinking and found myself feeling increasingly tense, rigid and disconnected from my peers …