There continues to be a great deal of media coverage of anti-alcohol advocates who claim that there is “no safe level” of alcohol consumption. This series of blog posts provides 3 reasons why I will continue to ignore these assertions.
Reason #3 – Individuals Should Make Their Own Choices
The third reason that I am not paying much attention to anti-alcohol advocates is that their conclusions and recommendations are wholly incompatible with the notion that individuals are likely to have both different health outcomes from similar behaviours and different risk tolerances. The conclusion that there is “no safe level” of alcohol consumption is a prime example of this.
Individuals have vastly different health histories, genetic predispositions to illness, diets and lifestyles. Even if it were true that there is an increased average health risk across a population related to a certain level of alcohol consumption, that does not mean that it is true that any one individual has the same level of risk. There could well be groups of individuals who have higher risks related to family health history, diet, exercise or susceptibility to problem consumption. It may well be appropriate to advise some of those individuals that the safest level of consumption for them is low or even none. But that does not mean that other individuals have the same risk factors. Someone who drinks moderately, who is fit, who has no problematic health history, and who eats well may have little to no risk from the same level of consumption. For that individual the blanket recommendation of “no safe level” is completely wrong.
Any set of recommendations (and particularly the blanket “no safe level” statement) is simply not accurate on an individual level unless it takes into account all of the unique personal factors that apply to that individual. As such, public health guidance that creates blanket recommendations is inappropriate and bordering on the reckless. Unfortunately, I suspect that such guidance is being created to deliberately “scare” people into reducing consumption, even when there is no scientific basis to do so.
In a similar vein, individuals will likely have very different levels of risk acceptance when it comes to health and alcohol consumption, particularly when the absolute risk related to certain health outcomes is very small. This applies to all aspects of life including driving, playing sports and engaging in other lifestyle choices. Some people are risk adverse when it comes to health, others not so much. The anti-alcohol advocates assume in their calculations that almost any level of increased risk is unacceptable even if it is very minimal. They also mostly ignore the proven health benefits of certain levels of consumption on heart disease … and completely ignore the health benefits of consumption that is related to social interaction and community.
It remains a fact (which is inconvenient to the anti-alcohol folks) that if you look at all-cause mortality … in other words, general life expectancy … that people who consume in moderation are on average, likely to live longer than those who abstain completely (as well as longer than heavy drinkers). Life insurance calculations do not penalize people who drink for a reason … there is simply no basis to conclude that moderate drinkers will have shorter lives. As a result, I will continue to drink wine in moderation, as I have for the past few decades and as civilized society has for thousands of years.
Reason #1 is here: Only Pay Attention to Good Science
Reason #2 – Don’t Listen to Biased Sources