[s1artibartfast]

I agree it is quite interesting.

If you look to figure 5 you will see that moderate drinking has very low impact on relative risk, and figure 4 shows some moderate benefit with respect to ischemic heart disease and diabetes. IF you buy into this kind of high level analysis, drinking 1-3 drinks a day may lower your risk for these diseases ~10-20%.

At the end of the day, the conclusions are much the same as people would intuit. moderate drinking has little impact, may help some conidiations and exacerbate others and will depend on the individual. for the average person, the effect will be slightly negative.

What I find most shocking is that you have to get to 5-6 drinks before relative risk hits 1.5X. 30-40 drinks/week is a lot for non-alcoholics.

[ananiochita]

You say :

> At the end of the day, the conclusions are much the same as people would intuit. moderate drinking has little impact, may help some conidiations and exacerbate others and will depend on the individual. for the average person, the effect will be slightly negative.

You are of course free to interpret facts as you wish. However, the study from 195 countries and over 26 years, literally, and I copy word for word from its conclusion, says :

"Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none."

And in the paragraph where that phrase is, anyone interested can find what they say about the supposed and non-existent benefits of moderate drinking.

[s1artibartfast]

I think we are talking past each other.

I agree the paper claims that the net health benefit of drinking for the average person is negative.

1) However, it also shows some benefits associated with drinking for prevention of specific diseases.

2) It also shows only minor net health issues for moderate drinking.

The The claim that, on average, the safest level of drinking does not negate the points above. They can both be true.