2019 Week 5: Alcohol

Short version: I’m drinking a bit less, the media still likes skewing science to get page views, live music is wonderful, it snowed more in Oxford.

Long version:

Alcohol

Personal Experience:
Last week I wrote about having made the change to not eat meat. More recently I’ve been toying with cutting back on alcohol. Throughout January I observed a one drink per day maximum. This was most difficult socially, as I don’t have a single reason for cutting back, and there are many contexts where accepting drinks is the polite behaviour. Moreover it often felt more difficult to explain setting a threshold of one, than simply saying I didn’t drink, or was undertaking Dry January. I think in general this comes from a desire for principled consistency. While consuming alcohol is fun, I felt overall I was able to have just as good a time while consuming less, with benefits felt in sleep and recovery from training.

Guidelines:
The Australian Government Department of Health recommends no more than two standard drinks per day long term and no more than four standard drinks per day (where a standard drink is 10 g or 13 mL of ethanol). The British NHS has a similar 14 units per week, to be spread over 3 or more days , but using smaller units (8 g or 10 mL of ethanol). Of course the US is a little trickier to compare due to the lack of the metric system but the CDC recommends one drink for women and two for men, with much larger units (14 g being 0.6 ounces, or 18 mL).

Benefits of Alcohol:
In February of 2018 Dr Claudia Kawas presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas her work “The 90+ Study“. The quote from her talk “I have no explanation for it, but I do firmly believe that modest drinking improves longevity” led to headlines such as “Drinking Alcohol Better Than Exercise For Living Past 90“, “Study: Drinking Alcohol More Important Than Exercise to Living Past 90“, and “Drinking Small Amounts of Alcohol May Help You Live to over 90, Claims Study“. New Zealand joined the party almost a year later with “Drinking wine better than exercise if you want to live a long life“. YouTuber Doctor Mike did a comparison. After searching for a couple hours though I couldn’t actually find a peer-reviewed paper on these benefits. The study itself places less emphasis on the alcohol vs exercise question; “People who drank moderate amounts of alcohol or coffee lived longer than those who abstained.” (which is kind of funny since consuming alcohol and coffee seems to be pretty dangerous.) Notably the only mention of ‘alcohol’ or ‘exercise’ in the AAAS official news post was “Data show that the risk of developing dementia has declined slightly in the past decades, Kawas said, which she attributes to people improving their lifestyles: eating better, exercising more, trying to minimize stress.” I suspect omitting the alcohol point is deliberate.

Other Alcohol Stuff:
WHO Global status report on alcohol and health 2018. Dry January does not lead to increased drinking in February. People are drinking less in pubs (on-trade) and slightly more from supermarkets (off-trade).

Music: Soloists and Symphonies

I listened to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra perform Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges: Suite, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, and Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 4. I particularly enjoyed the drama of the final piece, and the incredible energy of the orchestra. The soloist Augustin Hadelich has a pretty incredible life story, and incredibly clean sound.

Stuff I read this week

The Australian Bureau of Statistics National Health Survey 2017-18 suggest some fairly grim things about the diets of Australians. AI is getting really good at video games.

Photos: 5 Things that made this week great

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Writing from home.