Welcome back to the Daily Dumbbell, where we’re like the Walgreens to your CVS. Walgreens spends Millions each year finding the perfect locations with the exact foot traffic and demographics for their stores. CVS just builds across the street from them.

Walgreens hates it. But we’ll always let you copy our answers. Save yourself time and money and let us do the heavy lifting for you.

Today, we’re talking about Alcohol and what the literature says about drinking. We also have a deep dive into the deadlifts!

Drambuie and Deadlifts? Deadlifts and Dewar’s? We’ll keep workshopping.

Let’s dive in!

Cheers To Balance:
Breaking Down Alcohol’s Health Impact

As a society, we have a love-hate relationship with alcohol. We revel in the camaraderie and good times, but deep down, we know there's a price to pay. Alcohol, after all, is (literally) a poison, and no amount of fancy mixology or aging in an oak barrel can change that.

But do we really need to cut it out entirely, or is there a safe middle ground to be found?

Before you toss out your wine glasses and swear off happy hours forever, let's take a closer look at the facts. No, alcohol isn't your body's best friend, but you don't need to become a monk to enjoy a healthy, happy life.

What you need to know: 

There have been three recent large scale studies on the potential health impacts of alcohol. ^1 2 3 

The first one (citation 2) studied about 600k drinkers and it came to similar conclusions that previous studies have. But it went even further, saying that the boring ol recommendations you’ve heard before:

1. 1 drink/day or less for women

2. 2 drinks/day or less for men

Might not go far enough! Any alcohol consumption at all is dangerous.

But they didn’t have a zero drinking control group so we’re not sure what it’s compared to.

Besides, we’re much more interested in the other two studies. The studies that found a J shaped association with alcohol consumption.

A Silver Lining

Both of these studies showed better health outcomes for the light drinking group than for the zero consumption group. The scientists didn’t conclude this was due to a nerd tax meted out by God for wasting your one life, but it can’t be ruled out.

Regardless, this is great news for those of us who enjoy the occasional glass of wine, beer, or cocktail with dinner.

However.

Before you get too excited, this light drinking group was in the range of 3-5 drinks per week. Less than 1 drink per day.

This was a fairly consistent outcome across all of the outcomes measured. Although the “benefits” seemed to extend into the 1-1.5 drinks per day for CVD.

And if you’re getting excited about the two graphs showing the heavy drinkers at a lower risk of Myocardial infarction and coronary disease, don’t be. The only reason they didn’t suffer from either of those was because they’d already died of heart failure or stroke.

There is unfortunately no way around the negative effects of having more than 2 drinks per day. Here’s a chart showing estimated years lost based on g/week of alcohol:

In the US we consider 15g a standard drink.

Meaning 1-2 drinks per day had a minimal impact on longevity. However when you get into the 2-3 drinks/day range you can say with confidence that you’re beginning to take years off your life.

The real danger appears in the 3.5-4+ drinks/day range. A few beers or glasses of wine when you get home each night (or a spectacular weekend binge, whatever gets you to 25 drinks/week) might be taking upwards of 5 years off your life, making you more susceptible to CVD events, cancer, and premature death.

However, we have good news. You can start up again when you’re in your mid to late 80s because all the data points head to 0 anyway.

So you have that to look forward to.

More bad news

Something you need to keep in mind when you’re tallying up those weekly drinks: A standard drink contains 15g of alcohol:

• 12 oz 5% beer

• 5oz glass of wine

• 1.5oz shot of alcohol.

That 20oz 7% IPA you love? 2.5 drinks by itself. If that’s your go to drink, then you only get 2, maybe 3 a week if you want to land in the safe group.

(That isn’t a made up beer either. That’s a pint of Voodoo Ranger, the highest selling IPA in the US)

Your favorite cocktail might be in the same boat. Depending on how generous your bartender is, you could be throwing back 2-3 drinks with each glass.

Better news for women

While your consumption recommendation is lower, so is the alcohol content in typically “girly” drinks.

Now that’s obviously a sweeping generalization, but we all know who is drinking the lion’s share of cosmopolitans & mimosas at brunch. There’s very little overlap between Busch Light consumption & Rosé. That’s just a fact.

So score another one for cultural norms helping women outlive their partners.

Conclusion

If you’re tired of hearing about moderation, you’re out of luck here. Because once again, that’s what it’s all about. But, it’s important to define that because some people think a night of moderation is being able to drive home without squinting one eye shut.

All of the above will have a negative impact on your health outcomes long term. True. But, there’s a massive difference between a drink a day and the 3-4+ range.

You can think of binge drinking as an accelerant. Like Dom Toretto pushing the NOS button to race a little bit faster.

Except you’re racing towards poor health outcomes…

1. Under 1 drink per day seems to be the safest place to be. It might even have protective effects. (We doubt it: Probably just a correlation with other health seeking behaviors)

2. 1-2 drinks a day honestly, not a big deal. The health impact is negative, but a few months of life? We aren’t sure how much difference there is between dying on your 87th birthday vs 3-4 months later.

3. 2-3 drinks per day is where your’e really starting to ask for trouble. It seems clear that our bodies just can’t sustain this level of alcohol consumption. This is where you begin to take years off your life.

4. 3.5+ drinks per day is the level where it’s time to have one of those honest conversations. There aren’t any shades of gray here like in 1 and 2. If you’re drinking 25+ drinks per week, you are choosing an early grave.

There’s a conversation to be had with the first couple rungs here. We all make tradeoffs in our health. You can likely counteract a small amount of alcohol with better exercise and a solid diet. But that doesn’t seem to be the case with the higher levels of consumption.

And it seems fair to say leaving 5+ years on the table is likely a mistake.

Drink responsibly, my friends.

Making a Splash:
A Quick Dive Into Risk Calculation

Normally we would never recommend you dive into the shallow end. But we wanted to keep this one short for those of you who survived slogging through that alcohol feature.

When vegans claim that eating red meat will raise your risk of bowel cancer, they’re talking about studies that have shown associations.

For example, a fairly large prospective study showed an 18% increase in bowel cancer for every 50g (2oz) of red meat you consume daily.

To understand what this means, we need to understand the difference between relative and absolute risk. An 18% increase isn’t taking us from 10% to 28%. It’s a much smaller jump from 10% to 11.8%

Your risk of getting bowel cancer varies depending on how long you live:

• 65: 2.9%

• 85: 8.2%

As you can see, the simple act of aging from 65 to 85 increases cancer risk by 282%

In comparison, eating 14oz of processed red meat per week comes with a a modest 18% increase.

• 65: 3.4%

• 85: 9.6%

However, there are many other factors that increase or decrease your risk here:

• Obesity

• Alcohol Consumption

• Diet & Exercise

• Fiber Intake

• Family History

Which brings us back to today’s feature on alcohol and the relative risk increase for each level of drinking.

• 1-2 drinks per day: 0-10%

• 2-3 drinks per day: 10-20%

• 3.5+ drinks per day: 50-60%

Drinking more than 300g/week or 25+ standard drinks led to a 50% increase in all cause mortality.

I think we can all agree there’s a massive difference between going from 15% to 16.5%. (A 10% increase) and turning 15% into 22.5%. Almost 1 in 4. 

The Daily Dumbbell’s Take:

Don’t get too caught up in risk here. You don’t want to turn into Ben Stiller’s character in Along Came Polly, living your life based on actuarial tables.

But there is some low hanging fruit:

• Exercise regularly

• Eat fruits & vegetables

• Don’t smoke

• Try to drink less than 2 drinks per day.

It’s all about that balance baby. Avoid the big potholes and pick that sweet sweet low hanging fruit.

If you have a history of certain cancers in your family, do what you can to reduce the risk in those areas.

Don’t think you can reduce your alcohol consumption? Try to get more cardio in and make sure you’re at a healthy body composition.

We all make choices to increase and decrease our risk in every day life. You don’t have to stop drinking and do every single thing Andrew Huberman says. Think of it like dials on a stereo. You can dial up your health in some ways and lower it in others. As long as it all balances out, you should live a long and healthy life.

Happy Hump Dayyyyyy! Hope you all have a great Wednesday!

Make sure to come back tomorrow for a fun and exciting Throwback Thursday Feature.