EnviroDude: I wonder how many people here know that even the Bible says to drink a little wine now and then. Old news is old

That may be one of the few accurate and beneficial statements in that book.

This explains my outstanding health.

This has been know for about 30 years now. This is a student research project and it's being picked up as news. Moderate to heavy drinkers have fewer heart attacks and do better after they have one. This is because one of the main contributors to coronary artery disease is over active platelets (sometimes called sticky platelets). The platelets combine with cholesterol and other debris in the blood to form the plaques than clog the coronary arteries. Alcohol suppresses platelet function and acts as a mild anticoagulant, thereby lessening the chance of arteries building up too much plaque and increasing blood flow. Of course, the liver has to take a pounding for this.

Yeah, it's all fun and games until you get cirrhosis. Binge drinking also increases your chance pancreatic cancer, which is one of the most deadly. :-\

/Mom's a nurse. Has seen it all.
//I still drink, just make sure to make it count more every time :-)

FTFA:Women who drank anywhere from a few alcoholic drinks a month to more than three a week in the year leading up to a heart attack

This is not heavy drinking by any definition

/only read first sentence of TFA

Yeah tell that to my damaged kidneys and my ex's mother with cirrhosis of the liver.

Did anybody check out ALCOHOL AS ART in the sidebar?

Lipspinach: FTFA:Women who drank anywhere from a few alcoholic drinks a month to more than three a week in the year leading up to a heart attack

This is not heavy drinking by any definition

/only read first sentence of TFA

...and I have nothing more to add.

/except to ask this: how many days are in a week, again?
//INXS?

CPT Ethanolic: Ethanol vs formaldehyde.... 1 methyl difference.

Nearly - adding a methyl group would get you ethanal, also known as acetaldehyde. You'd need to convert the carbonyl to a hydroxyl group and add a methyl group to get ethanol. :D

_{/sorry I'll stop now
//chemistry!}

Depends on the definition of heavy...

But beer guts, cirrhosis and liver failure are definitely not good for your health.

casual disregard: JackieRabbit: This has been know for about 30 years now. This is a student research project and it's being picked up as news. Moderate to heavy drinkers have fewer heart attacks and do better after they have one. This is because one of the main contributors to coronary artery disease is over active platelets (sometimes called sticky platelets). The platelets combine with cholesterol and other debris in the blood to form the plaques than clog the coronary arteries. Alcohol suppresses platelet function and acts as a mild anticoagulant, thereby lessening the chance of arteries building up too much plaque and increasing blood flow. Of course, the liver has to take a pounding for this.

I think the answer to the liver problem will be the day that we can regrow our own organs within our bodies. We'll probably all die of liver disease before that day arrives, though.

er, I'm probably wrong, but I thought the Liver was the only internal organ in the human body (excluding skin) that could regenerate? Not just regenerate like stomach lining, but proper regeneration?

Anyone?
Bueller?

Mark this day down in history - I was nearly right! Link (new window)

As many as THREE A WEEK? That's what they call excessive? I had three before breakfast.

AbiSnail: CPT Ethanolic: Ethanol vs formaldehyde.... 1 methyl difference.

Nearly - adding a methyl group would get you ethanal, also known as acetaldehyde. You'd need to convert the carbonyl to a hydroxyl group and add a methyl group to get ethanol. :D

/sorry I'll stop now
//chemistry!

Okay. The scary shiat pre-Halloween threads about movie characters... not so scary.

But organic chemistry?! Your post just sent a shiver down my spine...

riiiiiiiiiight

It also makes you rich. Economists have found that drinkers make 10% more than non drinkers, and heavy drinkers make more than regular drinkers. Even people who show serious signs of potential alcoholism get a bump.

/is wealthy and immortal
//Farkers are the 1%

neon_god: It also makes you rich. Economists have found that drinkers make 10% more than non drinkers, and heavy drinkers make more than regular drinkers. Even people who show serious signs of potential alcoholism get a bump.

/is wealthy and immortal
//Farkers are the 1%

eh people with more disposable income are more likely to drink. correlation != causation and all that

CPT Ethanolic: Ethanol vs formaldehyde.... 1 methyl difference.

Ethanol also has an extra hydrogen on the oxygen atom. Formaldehyde has a double bonded oxygen atom with no extra hydrogen.

Ethanol: CH3-CH2-OH
Formaldehyde: CH2=O

CPT Ethanolic:methyl group, etc.

What Abi said. The reactivities and toxicities of aldehydes and hydroxyl groups are hugely different. Formaldehyde and ethanal/acetaldehyde can condense with amines on your proteins, etc, thereby crosslinking or inactivating them and generally buggering things up. Worse, methanol and formaldehyde can both be oxidized to formic acid by your body, which burns out your retinas (hence why drinking methanol makes you go blind). Ethanol is converted to acetic acid, which is a significantly weaker acid than formic, thereby sparing your vision. In summary: very different animals. Saying there's only a methyl group difference is not only factually inaccurate, but it also fails spectacularly in describing how differently your body handles them.

BlippityBleep: neon_god: It also makes you rich. Economists have found that drinkers make 10% more than non drinkers, and heavy drinkers make more than regular drinkers. Even people who show serious signs of potential alcoholism get a bump.

/is wealthy and immortal
//Farkers are the 1%

eh people with more disposable income are more likely to drink. correlation != causation and all that

Yeah, but alcohol's cheap enough that not being able to afford it doesn't seem to be a limiting factor for most people who want to drink. Rich people might drink better alcohol, but you'd have to be pretty poor not to be able to afford something.
The best explanation I've heard is that drinkers are popular because going drinking is fun, and social contacts and popularity help get you jobs and raises

Headline:

Alcohol linked to better survival after heart attack
Only 18 women out of every 100 heavy drinkers who had suffered a heart attack had died after at least 10 years of follow up.

First sentence:

Women who drank anywhere from a few alcoholic drinks a month to more than three a week in the year leading up to a heart attack ended up living longer than women who never drank alcohol, according to a U.S. study.


The last sentence of the Abstract to the study (linked to in the article):

These results suggest that women who survive MI [myocardial infarction, i.e. "heart attack" (new window)] need not abstain from alcohol, but any derived benefit would appear to occur well below currently recommended limits in alcohol consumption.

Meaning:

If you're a woman, who has had just a heart attack, or if you're planning to have a heart attack, within a year from now, what most Farkers define as "very very light drinking" might be good, or maybe you won't have to give up booze entirely.


Gee. This was a very limited study that has very little revelance to most people's lives. E.g., the conclusions of this study, which could be contradicted by another study next week, won't have anything to do with me even if I have a heart attack, not even if I have a sex change beforehand.

Will you people please read critically and for comprehension? To extract the meat of the article from all the fluff they put in to keep the ads near it in your peripheral vision longer?

And people wonder how "the 1%" could have kept increasing their power and wealth for the past 40 years when life for the rest of us has vastly increased in suckitude.

This example of this thread here is as bad as those people who look at a photo of a spider's web after a very very large dose of THC for such a tiny tiny creature and conclude that, because smoking pot will turn their snowflakes' brains sunny side up, everybody who has ever even inhaled once needs to be in Attica.

When the truth is a tiny bit of caffeine or almost any "psycho-active" substance (new window), even considering the size of the spider, will make spiders' webs look "off."

Except that, to quote the Wikipedia article I linked to above, "All the drugs tested reduced web regularity except for small doses (0.1-0.3 µg) of LSD, which resulted in more ordered webs."

So some idiots might conclude OMG CAFFEINE SHOULD BE OUTLAWED -- but our precious snowflakes should be dosed with acid to make them smarter and more artistic.

See?

Even I know this stuff, and I dropped out of 8th grade.

Again: people wonder how "the 1%" could have kept increasing their power and wealth for the past 40 years when life for the rest of us has vastly increased in suckitude.

Not that I need another reason to, but I'll drink to that study.

"There are more old drunks than there are old doctors." ---BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

CPT Ethanolic: And I've always found it amusing that ethanol looks like a dog peeing:

[www.nyu.edu image 457x331]

Especially since ethanol is a diuretic, at least in humans.

Modguy: CPT Ethanolic: Ethanol vs formaldehyde.... 1 methyl difference.

Oh GOD! It has METH in it! Shut. Down.EVERYTHING!

/farking biochemistry, how does it work?

er, I'm probably wrong, but I thought the Liver was the only internal organ in the human body (excluding skin) that could regenerate? Not just regenerate like stomach lining, but proper regeneration?

Anyone?
Bueller?

Look, even Wolverine has his limits, never mind your liver.

Is that why I always feel great the next day after drinking?

That is, so long as I don't get near blackout-drunk.

Mugato: Unknown_Poltroon: Look, even Wolverine has his limits, never mind your liver.

Yeah, it never made any sense to me how Wolverine or Superman or any other invulnerable super hero had the ability to get drunk.

I thought Superman couldn't get drunk? And Wolverine has to drink a shiatload to get drunk?

Wolverine isn't invulnerable, but rather is highly resistant to damage and has extraordinary healing power. As far as I know.

Unknown_Poltroon:

er, I'm probably wrong, but I thought the Liver was the only internal organ in the human body (excluding skin) that could regenerate? Not just regenerate like stomach lining, but proper regeneration?


About that I am ignorant. I can say that the Wikipedia article says that "the liver has a great capacity to regenerate and has a large reserve capacity. In most cases, the liver only produces symptoms after extensive damage."

And there's a subsection in that article on Regeneration. To cut & paste a bit:

Regeneration

"The liver is the only internal human organ capable of natural regeneration of lost tissue; as little as 25% of a liver can regenerate into a whole liver. This is, however, not true regeneration but rather compensatory growth. The lobes that are removed do not regrow and the growth of the liver is a restoration of function, not original form. This contrasts with true regeneration where both original function and form are restored."

And I was inspired (skeered!) into looking up alcoholic liver disease (new window) and was thrilled to see the following:

The risk factors presently known are:

Quantity of alcohol taken: consumption of 60-80g per day for 20 years or more in men, or 20g/day for women significantly increases the risk of hepatitis and fibrosis by 7 to 47%[5], (and Mandayam S, Jamal MM, Morgan TR. Epidemiology of alcoholic liver disease. Semin Liver Dis 2004;24:217-232)

Then I looked up that "60-80g" thing:

"At relatively low abv, the alcohol percentage by weight is about 4/5 of the abv (e.g., 3.2% abw is equivalent to 4.0% abv)."

Google converted 80 grams to 2.82191696 ounces, which is something like 2.25 ounces by volume, or roughly 4 "standard drinks." (According to what I found a "standard drink" is "12 ounces of beer, 1.5 ounces of 72-proof distilled spirits, or 5 ounces of wine, all of which contain approximately .54 ounces of alcohol" -- but where do you find 72 proof liquor?!?)

So 4 drinks a day for 20 years might be bit much for your poor liver. Especially if (to summarize that part of that Wikipedia article) you drink on an empty stomach, are female, have Hepatitis C, have too much iron in your blood and/or have an unbalanced diet (particularly short on vitamin A and E.) But of course that '4 drinks a day for 20 years' part seems to be the biggie for "alcoholic liver disease."

4 drinks a day for 20 years. Which sounds like it could also be 8 drinks a day for 10 years, or 20 drinks a day for 5, or...

Holy fark, some of us might soon be in trouble. I figure I've got about 12 years left for that at my current rate; I'm glad I didn't start drinking "heavily" every day till sometime in 2006.

I'm starting to get a pain in the right side of my abdomen just worrying about it. Worrying, which drives me to drink. (Okay, okay, among 72 other "reasons.")

Anyway.

I hope this answers your question, you pawn of the Trilateral Commission you!

Correction: I read that wrong because I was only thinking of myself. What that Wikipedia article actually says is "consumption of 60-80g per day for 20 years or more in men, or 20g/day for women."

So that's like one (1) drink a day for 20 years for women.

(I'm assuming they mean XX; my hunch is the hormones TSes take might change that a bit, but not much.)

For women it's 1 drink a day for 20 years. (Or 2 a day for 10, or 4 a day for five...)

I'm glad that ain't me.

neon_god: It also makes you rich. Economists have found that drinkers make 10% more than non drinkers, and heavy drinkers make more than regular drinkers. Even people who show serious signs of potential alcoholism get a bump.


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give me the source for that.

david1963: neon_god: It also makes you rich. Economists have found that drinkers make 10% more than non drinkers, and heavy drinkers make more than regular drinkers. Even people who show serious signs of potential alcoholism get a bump.


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give me the source for that.

Here you go: Link (new window)

OK, I'll post it

More than 3 a week is a significant number now? I should probably be dead.

FTA: "One drink a day is a really good target, assuming that a person can be disciplined about that," said James O'Keefe

"For every health claim suggested by scientific research, there is an equal and opposite health claim suggested by scientific research." Anon.