#dont say that as if women are less likely to be academic and really theyre just being silly?? and i have nothing against smut romance books

[a-a-a-anon]

i hate the self infantilization of women but i sound so "not like other girls" if i talk about it.... "im literally just a girl".... mhm.... "girl math"... eye twitch...

[lepidopterium]

im ruminating about the future again but i need to decide what major im sticking with by mid september. right now im set as psychology-behavioral neuroscience major but i might become an environmental studies major instead

and the thing is if i keep with neuroscience, there’s not much i have to change. hell, even if i decide i dont want to do neuroscience anymore, i can just switch to another subset of psychology.

but if i go the environmental studies route, chances are i’m going to graduate early because (1) way less required courses than neuroscience (2) i was already considerably ahead when i came in with my ap credits + the fact that so far i’ve been able to double down with major and commoncore reqs with the classes i chose. which means i need to start making some major changes esp since i plan on pursuing a masters in oceanography right after (and then maybe a PhD) which meeeeaaaans

i need to start seeing what lab opportunities the university offers (i mean i need to do this regardless of which major i choose, but it’s even more urgent with environmental since it’s a less flexible study compared to psychology) + figure out how i’m going to manage an internship (since most of them are unpaid :c) and a job when i’m already so. exhausted from just managing academics but like. this is non-negotiable if i want to even be remotely successful

if i graduate early, i have to start prepping for grad school early (i could just stick with my university to avoid going into debt but like....if it’s oceanography i want, something on the west coast esp pacific northwest might be better)

i need to learn how to swim. i vaguely know how to swim, but it’s just enough to stay afloat (though i did keep my brother from drowning + drowning me with him that one time so hm.). once im confident in swimming i need to learn how to work with SCUBA

not to mention how much a career in oceanography is going to affect my personal life. it’s not exactly that kind of career that you can keep with wherever you are. i’m most likely gonna have to leave a lot of what i know behind

so like obvs a change to EV is giving me a lot to think about. and i’m worried because you know for so long i was set on psychology, but i’m realizing that i dont want to do that anymore. i cared so much about it because it helped me make sense of my trauma and i just. i’m tired of centering my life on that

and maybe i’m letting my parents get to me since theyre def not fans of this switch and while most of their arguments are ridiculous (like women cant physically handle fieldwork in the ocean. pfft) and they really have no say in what i do with my life after everything theyve done, i do worry that i’m not good enough to make it. which isn’t. justified maybe. i know i’m smart. i know i’m more than capable of succeeding if i give myself the chance. i know im passionate about this and i just. i know i have always had the propensity to stand out in a positive way. but sitll i’m scared.  i dont know if im being overconfident when i trust in my abilities. i dont know if my lack of confidence will make me sabotage things.

it just feels like a lot to put the weight of my future all on this one decision. and maybe i’m still not past the habit of thinking that it’s do or die when it comes to the decisions i make. i thought, you know, i’m a little older know. i can look at my teenage years and see that all the times i thought would spell the end of things if i made the “wrong” decision really weren’t the big of a deal in the long run. but maybe i’m not that old yet. i mean i am just 18. just a year ago i was still a teenager. and i feel like ive grown a lot in these past few months after living on my own, but maybe i’m not as like. put together as i try to act like i am. maybe i still dont know what i’m doing. maybe ill realize decades from now that i still dont know what im doing. maybe it’s impossible for anyone to do know if what they do they can do with the peace of mind of knowing that this is the “right choice”

anyways the whole pandemic thing is complicating things further. and of course the uncertainty of times esp with climate and political turmoil + the decay (or maybe strengthening) of capitalism. idk. i just miss the beach. i think im gonna go visit the ocean tomorrow

[red-stocking]

fuckity fuck fuck fuck

so the building i live in and pay rent to live in has just been sold to new owners and tthe new owners ran into on of my roommate today and apparently they were like “oh, by the way, we’re not renewing your leaase, go fuck urselves find a new place to live by june first”

apparently they are having some senior relative live here instead below them probs cuz theyre old and shit BUT WHATEVER I HAVE TO FIND A NEW P<ACE TO LIVE FOR THE THIRD TIME IN 3 FUCKING YEARS OKAY

they could have been upfront about it but instead they fucking waltzed in making small talk with us and stuff all the while knowing they were going to basically be kicking us out when 2 of us still have a year left in our programs

and i got to be the one to tell my other roommate while barely holding it together crying my eyes out becayse i am so unbelievably stressed and i didnt realize how much id be banking on living in the same place next year and during the summer

so im getting drunk and stress crying for the rest of the night after talking to my dad about how everything is going to be fine but like just saying i dont gotta stress doesnt actually stop the stress goddamit i honestly cant tell if i am blowing this out of proportion or not

i am so fucking glad i made an appointment with a counselor for monday like i had no idea this was coming but i had ALREADY BEEN FUCKINNG STRESSED BEFORE THIS AND NOW IM FUCKING OVERWHELMED.

tomorrow i need to be a normal person again but tonight im going to be a drunk sobbing mess cuz honestly fuck everything

at least one of my roommates was super sympathetic and gave me a hug and shit and was like dont worry i will help like how do i ask her to be my friend forever

god fuck i was going to go grocery shopping tonight and like shower cuz i still havent had time to buy food and i havetn had time to do anythiing except schol and work. i should have time tomorrow morning. fuck. i had a midterm this week plus working womens international day and one of my roommates cant stop fucking this dude like she is audtioning gfor a audiotape porno like seriosuly THREE TIMES IN  LESS THAN 12 HOURS BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10PM AND 8AM. THE WALLS ARE FUCKING THIN AND I CANt FUCKING SLEEP god if they start up agian at 2am i am going to start blasting Friday or something really fucking Not Sexy like i literally had to wake up to that the morning of my midterm i am DONE.

just the fact that all this apartment shit is on top of full time school, a part time job, and activism (which I have been cutting down the most) is got me so stressed.  i dont know if i have time to look for apartments and i will definitely not be able to find rent as good as this. which means money trouble next year possibly. fuck am i glad im going into engineering. 

anyway this has been Week Of Hell part Whatevewr because i have had too many weeks of hell throughout my academic career and i still have 1 year left  i cant fucknig wait til i am free of academia and impermanence and transition and moving. i want to stay in one place for more than 9 months. Pleas.e

[teh-abyss]

here are my thoughts on shadowgast:

first of all, i love them, i adore them, and wizards falling in love is everything ive ever wanted. and as much as i wanted a love confession/kiss to happen on screen, i get why it didnt happen

where we left off in the series was the beginning of a relationship, there was lots of complicated feelings still happening, and there was still so much shit that the m9 had to deal with and as much as i would have wanted it, I feel like it might have been out of place and/or out of character for it to happen with what else happened in the finale

that being said, caleb and essek and romantically involved and that did happen in the finale and it was confirmed and i feel like that just seems so fitting for them. these two are most definitely the type to not actually define what they are to each other, like they flirt in metaphors, come on (and the thing about the metaphors is that its an important language between them, and its not to make things ambiguous necessarily, but because that is just how these two wizards work, speaking to each other in a way they know the other will properly understand, and that the other will be able to see the other meanings behind what they say), but yeah, i just dont know if i ever see them explicitly defining their relationship, because they know, and their friends know and thats really all that matters

and in the same vein, because of the life span difference, i think the idea that they part as old friends makes a lot of sense too. they dont really change anything, they dont really address it, but theyre both realistic people, and they both know that caleb will die way before essek, and so, although they were romantic before hand, the idea that in the end they see each other as friends just makes more sense to me

now, onto caleb’s bisexuality

there are people who were/are going on about how critrole goes about avoiding mlm relationships, or really avoiding the topic of mlm characters, but i think thats a weird point to put on caleb

hes always been a reserved character, and isnt much for overt romance (hence the “life partner” and “together for a long time” kinda thing) so i think it makes sense that he isnt really open about his attraction to anyone. for me, the only people he really seemed to noticeably be attracted to were astrid and essek

 theres this idea thats been floating around that he only seems to be attracted to women in game, and that his attraction to men has been all done word of god, but i sort of have a feeling that may be due to the default usually being heteronormative attraction/relationships, because i did not notice his attraction to jester until i saw posts about it online, but i immediately noticed how he spoke about  essek and how he spoke about eadwulf 

obviously, his relationship with astrid has been the most defined, but also? that kinda makes sense? the blumendrei was a thing, but from how they appeared on the show, caleb and astrid seemed to be closer personality wise, and were also definitely pushed together in an academic sense (this is cominf from astrids seeming resentment the trent always favoured caleb, despite the fact that she was more so the model student) as well as the fact that them hearing about her was a fluke that happened in the early part of the campaign, when he wasnt as open about sharing, and the m9 took her name and ran with it, continuously bringing up her and only her

plus, critrole isnt scripted

like, yes they are actors, and they are professionals, but when creating a character for yourself that you are playing, you gotta pull from your own experiences, and liam obrien obviously has a bias towards women (idk if hes said what his sexuality is, but whatever) so him playing characters with bias towards women doesnt not make sense (although i personally dont think caleb has much of a bias) and also? that happen? bi people have preferences sometimes and might tend to swing more one way but that doesnt make them less bisexual?

[samanthasroberts]

The Muddled Link Between Booze and Cancer

A couple years ago, a researcher named Curtis Ellison took the podium in a crowded lecture hall at Boston Universitys School of Public Health to tackle a question that had divided the universitys public health community: whether moderate drinking should be recommended as part of a healthy lifestyle. Ellisons take? I mean, its so obviously yes, he told the crowd.

Youve heard Ellisons pitch before: A glass a day can make for a healthier heart and a longer life. On stage, he told the story of Jackrabbit Johannsen, a famed cross country skier who lived to be 111. Johannsen had four pieces of advice for a long and healthy life, Ellison said: Dont smoke, get lots of exercise, dont drink too much. He paused. On the other hand, dont drink too little, either. The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.

But Ellison wasnt going unchallenged. Watching from the other side of the stage was Tim Naimi, a public health professor at BU who studies binge drinking in the same building as Ellison. He was there to argue the less attractive position: Drinking is distinctly unhealthy. And not in the typical ways you might associate with alcoholism, but in the sense of increased cancer risk—even for moderate drinkers.

Alcohols potential health benefits may have been oversold by industry-funded research, distracting consumers from the realities of cancer risk.

For folks within the realm of public health, thats no surprise. The World Health Organization has recognized alcoholic beverages as a Group 1 carcinogen since 2012, meaning evidence supports a link between alcohol and increased cancer risk. This past March, Jennie Connor, a preventative and social medicine researcher from New Zealands University of Otago, published a review of studies looking at the correlation between drinking and cancer, concluding that there is strong evidence that alcohol causes cancer at seven sites in the body and probably others. Her analysis credits alcohol with nearly 6 percent of all cancer deaths worldwide.

Connors use of the word cause separates her from most alcohol researchers and cancer advocacy groups in the US, where the conversation revolves around a more delicate term: risk. American consumers and researchers are both uncomfortable—or at least unfamiliar—with the idea of alcohol as health threat. When the American Institute for Cancer Research put out a survey to measure public perception of various cancer threats, less than half of respondents believed that alcohol was a risk factor for cancer. Which is odd, because 56 percent thought GMOs were, even though theres no scientific proof that they are.

To be fair, the science around how alcohol impacts the body is still nascent. Ellison and Naimis debate wasnt a mock trial: The public health community is split among people who think alcohol has its benefits and those who caution against its risks. The WHOs designation puts alcohol in the same category as processed meats and sunlight: Theyre carcinogenic, but that label doesnt tell you how much is how carcinogenic. Consumers are faced with the conflicting message that moderate drinking can actually increase their level of good cholesterol and decrease their risk of heart disease, which kills more people in the US than anything else.

Lots of us drink and wed really like to believe drinking is good for us, says Naimi. But the research around that has really fallen apart in the last couple years. Since Ellison made his confident statement into that mic two years ago, Naimi and many of his peers have gone on the offense against the studies that support alcohols potential health benefits, saying they may have been grossly oversold by industry-funded research—in the end, distracting consumers from the realities of cancer risk.

Bias in Booze Science

In late 1991, Ellison went on 60 Minutes to share the good news about red wine and heart health, and the idea took off. Underlying his claim were years of observational studies that compared moderate drinkers to non-drinkers. A handful of studies found that the moderate drinkers were actually healthier than the non-drinkers.

But in recent years, alcohol scholars like Connor and Naimi have criticized those studies for whats become known as a sick quitters bias. Some of the groups of non-drinkers that were compared to moderate drinkers were actually groups of former alcoholics or people who were too sick to continue drinking, so they were generally sicker than the healthier moderate drinkers. When Naimi adjusted the results in a meta-analysis that took the bias into account, the study still showed that moderate drinkers were better off than non-drinkers when it came to heart health—but not by nearly as much as originally thought.

Ellison says recent studies have gotten more sophisticated about eliminating those selection problems. But thats not the only source of bias in the literature. In the summer of 2014, the journal Addiction published a scathing editorial that outed Ellison for receiving unrestricted educational donations from the (alcohol) industry. That money had supported his work at BU, along with his leadership of a peer group that wrote positive reviews about studies highlighting the potential health benefits of drinking.

It wasnt the first time the journal had called out the often-cozy relationship between alcohol academics and industry. Trade organizations like the Distilled Spirits Council, which represents alcohol companies and is the largest alcohol lobbying arm, often work hand in hand with regulators and researchers. Some researchers go on to work for their industry connections, like Samir Zakhari, a former director at the US National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (the National Institutes of Healths alcohol research division). After he retired from the NIH, he went to work for the Distilled Spirits Council.

The council, for its part, doesnt buy the newer research that highlights the link between alcohol and cancer. Frank Coleman, a spokesman for the DSC, says that many of those meta-analyses are flawed, skewed by cherry-picking data points.

The Trouble with Analyzing Alcohol

Those biases are a direct challenge to the validity of science on alcohol and health. But even if they didnt exist, the nature of drinking still makes it extraordinarily difficult to come up with reliable results. Health risks, including those for cancer, are based on a complex interplay of variables—lifestyle factors, age, genetic predispositions—and they play out differently in each individuals body.

People who drink a bit of wine each day, for example, tend to sit down and drink it with meals. And theyre predominantly wealthier, more privileged consumers—making them predisposed to better health, says Ellison. Beer drinkers also tend to be more susceptible to binge drinking, he says.

Those factors can be difficult to separate from alcohols isolated effect on the body. Were not studying beer or wine specifically, says Ellison. Were studying people who drink them. Even low calorie beers come with a lot of empty calories, says Kenneth Portier, who directs the statistics and evaluation programs at the American Cancer Society. Drink enough of it and it can put you in that other risk factor: obesity.

Ellison doesnt deny that there is a link between alcohol and cancer—he just thinks its only relevant for heavy drinkers. But that starts a whole new debate: What exactly constitutes moderate drinking, and how do you study moderate vs. heavy drinking in study participants with vastly different body sizes, metabolisms, and socioeconomic backgrounds? In order to guide people in making informed decisions, researchers will need resources from somewhere outside the alcohol industry to conduct randomized studies that can isolate alcohols impact on the body over the course of decades.

Still, the less-than-perfect current evidence suggests that about 15 percent of breast cancer deaths are alcohol-related, says Naimi. Nearly 20,000 cancer deaths are attributable to alcohol every year in the US alone, he says, and were not even the worlds biggest drinkers. Simultaneously, the craft beer market has grown into a $22.3 billion industry and AB InBev and SAB Miller, the worlds two largest alcohol companies, are in the midst of a mega merger. If there was ever a time to come to a consensus about what exactly alcohol does to our bodies, it would be now.

Shaping the Message

Connors analysis of existing alcohol research was a turning point for the conversation on booze and cancer. But once youve decided that alcohol is a substantial public health risk, you still need to convince drinkers of that fact. And its a lot easier to tell people drinking is good for them than to explain how and why it isnt.

Things that are familiar to us are perceived as less risky, says Portier. Most of us have been around alcohol our whole lives and we know people who drink and theyre not dead.

It becomes even more difficult to construct a coherent public health message when consumers hear conflicting information. For each drink a woman has per day, her relative risk for breast cancer alone can increase by about 7 percent, says Susan Brown, whos in charge of health education programs at Susan G Komen. But people are often surprised and disappointed that theres an association between alcohol and breast cancer, she says. Many times, they’ve heard that moderate drinking is good for them. That may be confusing or masking the message, she says.

So right now, health groups like Susan G Komen and the American Cancer Society simply emphasize drinking in moderation. In public-health speak, thats defined as one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men (think of a drink more as a glass of wine or a bottle of fairly light beer, rather than a double martini).

But for most consumers, the concept of moderation is most closely tied to the phrase drink responsibly, an alcohol industry catch phrase that reminds customers not to drink too much—without actually defining how much is too much. I worry sometimes that the breweries are trying to change the perception of risk to benefit their own equation, says Portier.

Thats where policy comes into play. In the UK, for example, the Department of Health changed its alcohol guidelines from saying it was safe to drink moderately to acknowledging that there are a number of serious diseases, including certain cancers, that can be caused even when drinking less than 14 units weekly. While the risk for moderate drinking was low, they write, there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe.

Related Video

Fun With Powdered Alcohol: You Can Stop Being Scared Now

Look back at the public health messages around tobacco and youll notice they all share a common, simple message: stop smoking. There was no level of moderation that was considered risk-free, so there was no conversation around moderation. Alcohol, on the other hand, has a much more complex message: dont drink too much, make sure you understand what too much means for you, and mitigate the risk of drinking by assessing any other risk factors you may have in your life. Not exactly great fodder for a catchy PSA. But in a world where drinking is so closely tied to culture, it may be the best option.

It all comes down to perception of risk and how you want to live your life, says Portier. Someone who is at a higher risk for heart disease than cancer, for example, may feel more inclined to have a glass of red wine each night than someone who has a strong family history of breast cancer. People should make their own decisions about how much they drink, says Naimi. But I certainly think that people deserve to be more aware of this than they are now.

To get there, Naimi goes back to the idea of conducting long term, comprehensive, randomized studies. Thats something both sides are anxious to see more of. Zakhari, the alcohol expert who works at the Distilled Spirits Council, says its crucial to look at alcohol consumption over a long period of time, since cancer usually develops very slowly. These studies always ask women, how much did you drink last week, last month, last year, he says. But what they were doing last week or last month or last year has nothing to do with the initiation of cancer 20 years earlier. Its like someone has food poisoning today and the doctor asks them what they ate for Christmas in 1980.

Not that help isnt on the way—sort of. According to the Wall Street Journal, AB InBev and Diageo (another heavyweight alcohol producer) are planning to work with a handful of other alcohol companies to pay for a randomized study that will look at the health implications of drinking. Itll be run by the NIAAA, the same government division where Zakhari once worked.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/07/the-muddled-link-between-booze-and-cancer/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/08/07/the-muddled-link-between-booze-and-cancer/

[adambstingus]

The Muddled Link Between Booze and Cancer

A couple years ago, a researcher named Curtis Ellison took the podium in a crowded lecture hall at Boston Universitys School of Public Health to tackle a question that had divided the universitys public health community: whether moderate drinking should be recommended as part of a healthy lifestyle. Ellisons take? I mean, its so obviously yes, he told the crowd.

Youve heard Ellisons pitch before: A glass a day can make for a healthier heart and a longer life. On stage, he told the story of Jackrabbit Johannsen, a famed cross country skier who lived to be 111. Johannsen had four pieces of advice for a long and healthy life, Ellison said: Dont smoke, get lots of exercise, dont drink too much. He paused. On the other hand, dont drink too little, either. The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.

But Ellison wasnt going unchallenged. Watching from the other side of the stage was Tim Naimi, a public health professor at BU who studies binge drinking in the same building as Ellison. He was there to argue the less attractive position: Drinking is distinctly unhealthy. And not in the typical ways you might associate with alcoholism, but in the sense of increased cancer risk—even for moderate drinkers.

Alcohols potential health benefits may have been oversold by industry-funded research, distracting consumers from the realities of cancer risk.

For folks within the realm of public health, thats no surprise. The World Health Organization has recognized alcoholic beverages as a Group 1 carcinogen since 2012, meaning evidence supports a link between alcohol and increased cancer risk. This past March, Jennie Connor, a preventative and social medicine researcher from New Zealands University of Otago, published a review of studies looking at the correlation between drinking and cancer, concluding that there is strong evidence that alcohol causes cancer at seven sites in the body and probably others. Her analysis credits alcohol with nearly 6 percent of all cancer deaths worldwide.

Connors use of the word cause separates her from most alcohol researchers and cancer advocacy groups in the US, where the conversation revolves around a more delicate term: risk. American consumers and researchers are both uncomfortable—or at least unfamiliar—with the idea of alcohol as health threat. When the American Institute for Cancer Research put out a survey to measure public perception of various cancer threats, less than half of respondents believed that alcohol was a risk factor for cancer. Which is odd, because 56 percent thought GMOs were, even though theres no scientific proof that they are.

To be fair, the science around how alcohol impacts the body is still nascent. Ellison and Naimis debate wasnt a mock trial: The public health community is split among people who think alcohol has its benefits and those who caution against its risks. The WHOs designation puts alcohol in the same category as processed meats and sunlight: Theyre carcinogenic, but that label doesnt tell you how much is how carcinogenic. Consumers are faced with the conflicting message that moderate drinking can actually increase their level of good cholesterol and decrease their risk of heart disease, which kills more people in the US than anything else.

Lots of us drink and wed really like to believe drinking is good for us, says Naimi. But the research around that has really fallen apart in the last couple years. Since Ellison made his confident statement into that mic two years ago, Naimi and many of his peers have gone on the offense against the studies that support alcohols potential health benefits, saying they may have been grossly oversold by industry-funded research—in the end, distracting consumers from the realities of cancer risk.

Bias in Booze Science

In late 1991, Ellison went on 60 Minutes to share the good news about red wine and heart health, and the idea took off. Underlying his claim were years of observational studies that compared moderate drinkers to non-drinkers. A handful of studies found that the moderate drinkers were actually healthier than the non-drinkers.

But in recent years, alcohol scholars like Connor and Naimi have criticized those studies for whats become known as a sick quitters bias. Some of the groups of non-drinkers that were compared to moderate drinkers were actually groups of former alcoholics or people who were too sick to continue drinking, so they were generally sicker than the healthier moderate drinkers. When Naimi adjusted the results in a meta-analysis that took the bias into account, the study still showed that moderate drinkers were better off than non-drinkers when it came to heart health—but not by nearly as much as originally thought.

Ellison says recent studies have gotten more sophisticated about eliminating those selection problems. But thats not the only source of bias in the literature. In the summer of 2014, the journal Addiction published a scathing editorial that outed Ellison for receiving unrestricted educational donations from the (alcohol) industry. That money had supported his work at BU, along with his leadership of a peer group that wrote positive reviews about studies highlighting the potential health benefits of drinking.

It wasnt the first time the journal had called out the often-cozy relationship between alcohol academics and industry. Trade organizations like the Distilled Spirits Council, which represents alcohol companies and is the largest alcohol lobbying arm, often work hand in hand with regulators and researchers. Some researchers go on to work for their industry connections, like Samir Zakhari, a former director at the US National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (the National Institutes of Healths alcohol research division). After he retired from the NIH, he went to work for the Distilled Spirits Council.

The council, for its part, doesnt buy the newer research that highlights the link between alcohol and cancer. Frank Coleman, a spokesman for the DSC, says that many of those meta-analyses are flawed, skewed by cherry-picking data points.

The Trouble with Analyzing Alcohol

Those biases are a direct challenge to the validity of science on alcohol and health. But even if they didnt exist, the nature of drinking still makes it extraordinarily difficult to come up with reliable results. Health risks, including those for cancer, are based on a complex interplay of variables—lifestyle factors, age, genetic predispositions—and they play out differently in each individuals body.

People who drink a bit of wine each day, for example, tend to sit down and drink it with meals. And theyre predominantly wealthier, more privileged consumers—making them predisposed to better health, says Ellison. Beer drinkers also tend to be more susceptible to binge drinking, he says.

Those factors can be difficult to separate from alcohols isolated effect on the body. Were not studying beer or wine specifically, says Ellison. Were studying people who drink them. Even low calorie beers come with a lot of empty calories, says Kenneth Portier, who directs the statistics and evaluation programs at the American Cancer Society. Drink enough of it and it can put you in that other risk factor: obesity.

Ellison doesnt deny that there is a link between alcohol and cancer—he just thinks its only relevant for heavy drinkers. But that starts a whole new debate: What exactly constitutes moderate drinking, and how do you study moderate vs. heavy drinking in study participants with vastly different body sizes, metabolisms, and socioeconomic backgrounds? In order to guide people in making informed decisions, researchers will need resources from somewhere outside the alcohol industry to conduct randomized studies that can isolate alcohols impact on the body over the course of decades.

Still, the less-than-perfect current evidence suggests that about 15 percent of breast cancer deaths are alcohol-related, says Naimi. Nearly 20,000 cancer deaths are attributable to alcohol every year in the US alone, he says, and were not even the worlds biggest drinkers. Simultaneously, the craft beer market has grown into a $22.3 billion industry and AB InBev and SAB Miller, the worlds two largest alcohol companies, are in the midst of a mega merger. If there was ever a time to come to a consensus about what exactly alcohol does to our bodies, it would be now.

Shaping the Message

Connors analysis of existing alcohol research was a turning point for the conversation on booze and cancer. But once youve decided that alcohol is a substantial public health risk, you still need to convince drinkers of that fact. And its a lot easier to tell people drinking is good for them than to explain how and why it isnt.

Things that are familiar to us are perceived as less risky, says Portier. Most of us have been around alcohol our whole lives and we know people who drink and theyre not dead.

It becomes even more difficult to construct a coherent public health message when consumers hear conflicting information. For each drink a woman has per day, her relative risk for breast cancer alone can increase by about 7 percent, says Susan Brown, whos in charge of health education programs at Susan G Komen. But people are often surprised and disappointed that theres an association between alcohol and breast cancer, she says. Many times, they’ve heard that moderate drinking is good for them. That may be confusing or masking the message, she says.

So right now, health groups like Susan G Komen and the American Cancer Society simply emphasize drinking in moderation. In public-health speak, thats defined as one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men (think of a drink more as a glass of wine or a bottle of fairly light beer, rather than a double martini).

But for most consumers, the concept of moderation is most closely tied to the phrase drink responsibly, an alcohol industry catch phrase that reminds customers not to drink too much—without actually defining how much is too much. I worry sometimes that the breweries are trying to change the perception of risk to benefit their own equation, says Portier.

Thats where policy comes into play. In the UK, for example, the Department of Health changed its alcohol guidelines from saying it was safe to drink moderately to acknowledging that there are a number of serious diseases, including certain cancers, that can be caused even when drinking less than 14 units weekly. While the risk for moderate drinking was low, they write, there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe.

Related Video

Fun With Powdered Alcohol: You Can Stop Being Scared Now

Look back at the public health messages around tobacco and youll notice they all share a common, simple message: stop smoking. There was no level of moderation that was considered risk-free, so there was no conversation around moderation. Alcohol, on the other hand, has a much more complex message: dont drink too much, make sure you understand what too much means for you, and mitigate the risk of drinking by assessing any other risk factors you may have in your life. Not exactly great fodder for a catchy PSA. But in a world where drinking is so closely tied to culture, it may be the best option.

It all comes down to perception of risk and how you want to live your life, says Portier. Someone who is at a higher risk for heart disease than cancer, for example, may feel more inclined to have a glass of red wine each night than someone who has a strong family history of breast cancer. People should make their own decisions about how much they drink, says Naimi. But I certainly think that people deserve to be more aware of this than they are now.

To get there, Naimi goes back to the idea of conducting long term, comprehensive, randomized studies. Thats something both sides are anxious to see more of. Zakhari, the alcohol expert who works at the Distilled Spirits Council, says its crucial to look at alcohol consumption over a long period of time, since cancer usually develops very slowly. These studies always ask women, how much did you drink last week, last month, last year, he says. But what they were doing last week or last month or last year has nothing to do with the initiation of cancer 20 years earlier. Its like someone has food poisoning today and the doctor asks them what they ate for Christmas in 1980.

Not that help isnt on the way—sort of. According to the Wall Street Journal, AB InBev and Diageo (another heavyweight alcohol producer) are planning to work with a handful of other alcohol companies to pay for a randomized study that will look at the health implications of drinking. Itll be run by the NIAAA, the same government division where Zakhari once worked.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/07/the-muddled-link-between-booze-and-cancer/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/163887195402

[jimdsmith34]

The Muddled Link Between Booze and Cancer

A couple years ago, a researcher named Curtis Ellison took the podium in a crowded lecture hall at Boston Universitys School of Public Health to tackle a question that had divided the universitys public health community: whether moderate drinking should be recommended as part of a healthy lifestyle. Ellisons take? I mean, its so obviously yes, he told the crowd.

Youve heard Ellisons pitch before: A glass a day can make for a healthier heart and a longer life. On stage, he told the story of Jackrabbit Johannsen, a famed cross country skier who lived to be 111. Johannsen had four pieces of advice for a long and healthy life, Ellison said: Dont smoke, get lots of exercise, dont drink too much. He paused. On the other hand, dont drink too little, either. The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.

But Ellison wasnt going unchallenged. Watching from the other side of the stage was Tim Naimi, a public health professor at BU who studies binge drinking in the same building as Ellison. He was there to argue the less attractive position: Drinking is distinctly unhealthy. And not in the typical ways you might associate with alcoholism, but in the sense of increased cancer risk—even for moderate drinkers.

Alcohols potential health benefits may have been oversold by industry-funded research, distracting consumers from the realities of cancer risk.

For folks within the realm of public health, thats no surprise. The World Health Organization has recognized alcoholic beverages as a Group 1 carcinogen since 2012, meaning evidence supports a link between alcohol and increased cancer risk. This past March, Jennie Connor, a preventative and social medicine researcher from New Zealands University of Otago, published a review of studies looking at the correlation between drinking and cancer, concluding that there is strong evidence that alcohol causes cancer at seven sites in the body and probably others. Her analysis credits alcohol with nearly 6 percent of all cancer deaths worldwide.

Connors use of the word cause separates her from most alcohol researchers and cancer advocacy groups in the US, where the conversation revolves around a more delicate term: risk. American consumers and researchers are both uncomfortable—or at least unfamiliar—with the idea of alcohol as health threat. When the American Institute for Cancer Research put out a survey to measure public perception of various cancer threats, less than half of respondents believed that alcohol was a risk factor for cancer. Which is odd, because 56 percent thought GMOs were, even though theres no scientific proof that they are.

To be fair, the science around how alcohol impacts the body is still nascent. Ellison and Naimis debate wasnt a mock trial: The public health community is split among people who think alcohol has its benefits and those who caution against its risks. The WHOs designation puts alcohol in the same category as processed meats and sunlight: Theyre carcinogenic, but that label doesnt tell you how much is how carcinogenic. Consumers are faced with the conflicting message that moderate drinking can actually increase their level of good cholesterol and decrease their risk of heart disease, which kills more people in the US than anything else.

Lots of us drink and wed really like to believe drinking is good for us, says Naimi. But the research around that has really fallen apart in the last couple years. Since Ellison made his confident statement into that mic two years ago, Naimi and many of his peers have gone on the offense against the studies that support alcohols potential health benefits, saying they may have been grossly oversold by industry-funded research—in the end, distracting consumers from the realities of cancer risk.

Bias in Booze Science

In late 1991, Ellison went on 60 Minutes to share the good news about red wine and heart health, and the idea took off. Underlying his claim were years of observational studies that compared moderate drinkers to non-drinkers. A handful of studies found that the moderate drinkers were actually healthier than the non-drinkers.

But in recent years, alcohol scholars like Connor and Naimi have criticized those studies for whats become known as a sick quitters bias. Some of the groups of non-drinkers that were compared to moderate drinkers were actually groups of former alcoholics or people who were too sick to continue drinking, so they were generally sicker than the healthier moderate drinkers. When Naimi adjusted the results in a meta-analysis that took the bias into account, the study still showed that moderate drinkers were better off than non-drinkers when it came to heart health—but not by nearly as much as originally thought.

Ellison says recent studies have gotten more sophisticated about eliminating those selection problems. But thats not the only source of bias in the literature. In the summer of 2014, the journal Addiction published a scathing editorial that outed Ellison for receiving unrestricted educational donations from the (alcohol) industry. That money had supported his work at BU, along with his leadership of a peer group that wrote positive reviews about studies highlighting the potential health benefits of drinking.

It wasnt the first time the journal had called out the often-cozy relationship between alcohol academics and industry. Trade organizations like the Distilled Spirits Council, which represents alcohol companies and is the largest alcohol lobbying arm, often work hand in hand with regulators and researchers. Some researchers go on to work for their industry connections, like Samir Zakhari, a former director at the US National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (the National Institutes of Healths alcohol research division). After he retired from the NIH, he went to work for the Distilled Spirits Council.

The council, for its part, doesnt buy the newer research that highlights the link between alcohol and cancer. Frank Coleman, a spokesman for the DSC, says that many of those meta-analyses are flawed, skewed by cherry-picking data points.

The Trouble with Analyzing Alcohol

Those biases are a direct challenge to the validity of science on alcohol and health. But even if they didnt exist, the nature of drinking still makes it extraordinarily difficult to come up with reliable results. Health risks, including those for cancer, are based on a complex interplay of variables—lifestyle factors, age, genetic predispositions—and they play out differently in each individuals body.

People who drink a bit of wine each day, for example, tend to sit down and drink it with meals. And theyre predominantly wealthier, more privileged consumers—making them predisposed to better health, says Ellison. Beer drinkers also tend to be more susceptible to binge drinking, he says.

Those factors can be difficult to separate from alcohols isolated effect on the body. Were not studying beer or wine specifically, says Ellison. Were studying people who drink them. Even low calorie beers come with a lot of empty calories, says Kenneth Portier, who directs the statistics and evaluation programs at the American Cancer Society. Drink enough of it and it can put you in that other risk factor: obesity.

Ellison doesnt deny that there is a link between alcohol and cancer—he just thinks its only relevant for heavy drinkers. But that starts a whole new debate: What exactly constitutes moderate drinking, and how do you study moderate vs. heavy drinking in study participants with vastly different body sizes, metabolisms, and socioeconomic backgrounds? In order to guide people in making informed decisions, researchers will need resources from somewhere outside the alcohol industry to conduct randomized studies that can isolate alcohols impact on the body over the course of decades.

Still, the less-than-perfect current evidence suggests that about 15 percent of breast cancer deaths are alcohol-related, says Naimi. Nearly 20,000 cancer deaths are attributable to alcohol every year in the US alone, he says, and were not even the worlds biggest drinkers. Simultaneously, the craft beer market has grown into a $22.3 billion industry and AB InBev and SAB Miller, the worlds two largest alcohol companies, are in the midst of a mega merger. If there was ever a time to come to a consensus about what exactly alcohol does to our bodies, it would be now.

Shaping the Message

Connors analysis of existing alcohol research was a turning point for the conversation on booze and cancer. But once youve decided that alcohol is a substantial public health risk, you still need to convince drinkers of that fact. And its a lot easier to tell people drinking is good for them than to explain how and why it isnt.

Things that are familiar to us are perceived as less risky, says Portier. Most of us have been around alcohol our whole lives and we know people who drink and theyre not dead.

It becomes even more difficult to construct a coherent public health message when consumers hear conflicting information. For each drink a woman has per day, her relative risk for breast cancer alone can increase by about 7 percent, says Susan Brown, whos in charge of health education programs at Susan G Komen. But people are often surprised and disappointed that theres an association between alcohol and breast cancer, she says. Many times, they’ve heard that moderate drinking is good for them. That may be confusing or masking the message, she says.

So right now, health groups like Susan G Komen and the American Cancer Society simply emphasize drinking in moderation. In public-health speak, thats defined as one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men (think of a drink more as a glass of wine or a bottle of fairly light beer, rather than a double martini).

But for most consumers, the concept of moderation is most closely tied to the phrase drink responsibly, an alcohol industry catch phrase that reminds customers not to drink too much—without actually defining how much is too much. I worry sometimes that the breweries are trying to change the perception of risk to benefit their own equation, says Portier.

Thats where policy comes into play. In the UK, for example, the Department of Health changed its alcohol guidelines from saying it was safe to drink moderately to acknowledging that there are a number of serious diseases, including certain cancers, that can be caused even when drinking less than 14 units weekly. While the risk for moderate drinking was low, they write, there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe.

Related Video

Fun With Powdered Alcohol: You Can Stop Being Scared Now

Look back at the public health messages around tobacco and youll notice they all share a common, simple message: stop smoking. There was no level of moderation that was considered risk-free, so there was no conversation around moderation. Alcohol, on the other hand, has a much more complex message: dont drink too much, make sure you understand what too much means for you, and mitigate the risk of drinking by assessing any other risk factors you may have in your life. Not exactly great fodder for a catchy PSA. But in a world where drinking is so closely tied to culture, it may be the best option.

It all comes down to perception of risk and how you want to live your life, says Portier. Someone who is at a higher risk for heart disease than cancer, for example, may feel more inclined to have a glass of red wine each night than someone who has a strong family history of breast cancer. People should make their own decisions about how much they drink, says Naimi. But I certainly think that people deserve to be more aware of this than they are now.

To get there, Naimi goes back to the idea of conducting long term, comprehensive, randomized studies. Thats something both sides are anxious to see more of. Zakhari, the alcohol expert who works at the Distilled Spirits Council, says its crucial to look at alcohol consumption over a long period of time, since cancer usually develops very slowly. These studies always ask women, how much did you drink last week, last month, last year, he says. But what they were doing last week or last month or last year has nothing to do with the initiation of cancer 20 years earlier. Its like someone has food poisoning today and the doctor asks them what they ate for Christmas in 1980.

Not that help isnt on the way—sort of. According to the Wall Street Journal, AB InBev and Diageo (another heavyweight alcohol producer) are planning to work with a handful of other alcohol companies to pay for a randomized study that will look at the health implications of drinking. Itll be run by the NIAAA, the same government division where Zakhari once worked.

source http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/07/the-muddled-link-between-booze-and-cancer/ from All of Beer http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-muddled-link-between-booze-and.html

[allofbeercom]

The Muddled Link Between Booze and Cancer

A couple years ago, a researcher named Curtis Ellison took the podium in a crowded lecture hall at Boston Universitys School of Public Health to tackle a question that had divided the universitys public health community: whether moderate drinking should be recommended as part of a healthy lifestyle. Ellisons take? I mean, its so obviously yes, he told the crowd.

Youve heard Ellisons pitch before: A glass a day can make for a healthier heart and a longer life. On stage, he told the story of Jackrabbit Johannsen, a famed cross country skier who lived to be 111. Johannsen had four pieces of advice for a long and healthy life, Ellison said: Dont smoke, get lots of exercise, dont drink too much. He paused. On the other hand, dont drink too little, either. The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.

But Ellison wasnt going unchallenged. Watching from the other side of the stage was Tim Naimi, a public health professor at BU who studies binge drinking in the same building as Ellison. He was there to argue the less attractive position: Drinking is distinctly unhealthy. And not in the typical ways you might associate with alcoholism, but in the sense of increased cancer risk—even for moderate drinkers.

Alcohols potential health benefits may have been oversold by industry-funded research, distracting consumers from the realities of cancer risk.

For folks within the realm of public health, thats no surprise. The World Health Organization has recognized alcoholic beverages as a Group 1 carcinogen since 2012, meaning evidence supports a link between alcohol and increased cancer risk. This past March, Jennie Connor, a preventative and social medicine researcher from New Zealands University of Otago, published a review of studies looking at the correlation between drinking and cancer, concluding that there is strong evidence that alcohol causes cancer at seven sites in the body and probably others. Her analysis credits alcohol with nearly 6 percent of all cancer deaths worldwide.

Connors use of the word cause separates her from most alcohol researchers and cancer advocacy groups in the US, where the conversation revolves around a more delicate term: risk. American consumers and researchers are both uncomfortable—or at least unfamiliar—with the idea of alcohol as health threat. When the American Institute for Cancer Research put out a survey to measure public perception of various cancer threats, less than half of respondents believed that alcohol was a risk factor for cancer. Which is odd, because 56 percent thought GMOs were, even though theres no scientific proof that they are.

To be fair, the science around how alcohol impacts the body is still nascent. Ellison and Naimis debate wasnt a mock trial: The public health community is split among people who think alcohol has its benefits and those who caution against its risks. The WHOs designation puts alcohol in the same category as processed meats and sunlight: Theyre carcinogenic, but that label doesnt tell you how much is how carcinogenic. Consumers are faced with the conflicting message that moderate drinking can actually increase their level of good cholesterol and decrease their risk of heart disease, which kills more people in the US than anything else.

Lots of us drink and wed really like to believe drinking is good for us, says Naimi. But the research around that has really fallen apart in the last couple years. Since Ellison made his confident statement into that mic two years ago, Naimi and many of his peers have gone on the offense against the studies that support alcohols potential health benefits, saying they may have been grossly oversold by industry-funded research—in the end, distracting consumers from the realities of cancer risk.

Bias in Booze Science

In late 1991, Ellison went on 60 Minutes to share the good news about red wine and heart health, and the idea took off. Underlying his claim were years of observational studies that compared moderate drinkers to non-drinkers. A handful of studies found that the moderate drinkers were actually healthier than the non-drinkers.

But in recent years, alcohol scholars like Connor and Naimi have criticized those studies for whats become known as a sick quitters bias. Some of the groups of non-drinkers that were compared to moderate drinkers were actually groups of former alcoholics or people who were too sick to continue drinking, so they were generally sicker than the healthier moderate drinkers. When Naimi adjusted the results in a meta-analysis that took the bias into account, the study still showed that moderate drinkers were better off than non-drinkers when it came to heart health—but not by nearly as much as originally thought.

Ellison says recent studies have gotten more sophisticated about eliminating those selection problems. But thats not the only source of bias in the literature. In the summer of 2014, the journal Addiction published a scathing editorial that outed Ellison for receiving unrestricted educational donations from the (alcohol) industry. That money had supported his work at BU, along with his leadership of a peer group that wrote positive reviews about studies highlighting the potential health benefits of drinking.

It wasnt the first time the journal had called out the often-cozy relationship between alcohol academics and industry. Trade organizations like the Distilled Spirits Council, which represents alcohol companies and is the largest alcohol lobbying arm, often work hand in hand with regulators and researchers. Some researchers go on to work for their industry connections, like Samir Zakhari, a former director at the US National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (the National Institutes of Healths alcohol research division). After he retired from the NIH, he went to work for the Distilled Spirits Council.

The council, for its part, doesnt buy the newer research that highlights the link between alcohol and cancer. Frank Coleman, a spokesman for the DSC, says that many of those meta-analyses are flawed, skewed by cherry-picking data points.

The Trouble with Analyzing Alcohol

Those biases are a direct challenge to the validity of science on alcohol and health. But even if they didnt exist, the nature of drinking still makes it extraordinarily difficult to come up with reliable results. Health risks, including those for cancer, are based on a complex interplay of variables—lifestyle factors, age, genetic predispositions—and they play out differently in each individuals body.

People who drink a bit of wine each day, for example, tend to sit down and drink it with meals. And theyre predominantly wealthier, more privileged consumers—making them predisposed to better health, says Ellison. Beer drinkers also tend to be more susceptible to binge drinking, he says.

Those factors can be difficult to separate from alcohols isolated effect on the body. Were not studying beer or wine specifically, says Ellison. Were studying people who drink them. Even low calorie beers come with a lot of empty calories, says Kenneth Portier, who directs the statistics and evaluation programs at the American Cancer Society. Drink enough of it and it can put you in that other risk factor: obesity.

Ellison doesnt deny that there is a link between alcohol and cancer—he just thinks its only relevant for heavy drinkers. But that starts a whole new debate: What exactly constitutes moderate drinking, and how do you study moderate vs. heavy drinking in study participants with vastly different body sizes, metabolisms, and socioeconomic backgrounds? In order to guide people in making informed decisions, researchers will need resources from somewhere outside the alcohol industry to conduct randomized studies that can isolate alcohols impact on the body over the course of decades.

Still, the less-than-perfect current evidence suggests that about 15 percent of breast cancer deaths are alcohol-related, says Naimi. Nearly 20,000 cancer deaths are attributable to alcohol every year in the US alone, he says, and were not even the worlds biggest drinkers. Simultaneously, the craft beer market has grown into a $22.3 billion industry and AB InBev and SAB Miller, the worlds two largest alcohol companies, are in the midst of a mega merger. If there was ever a time to come to a consensus about what exactly alcohol does to our bodies, it would be now.

Shaping the Message

Connors analysis of existing alcohol research was a turning point for the conversation on booze and cancer. But once youve decided that alcohol is a substantial public health risk, you still need to convince drinkers of that fact. And its a lot easier to tell people drinking is good for them than to explain how and why it isnt.

Things that are familiar to us are perceived as less risky, says Portier. Most of us have been around alcohol our whole lives and we know people who drink and theyre not dead.

It becomes even more difficult to construct a coherent public health message when consumers hear conflicting information. For each drink a woman has per day, her relative risk for breast cancer alone can increase by about 7 percent, says Susan Brown, whos in charge of health education programs at Susan G Komen. But people are often surprised and disappointed that theres an association between alcohol and breast cancer, she says. Many times, they’ve heard that moderate drinking is good for them. That may be confusing or masking the message, she says.

So right now, health groups like Susan G Komen and the American Cancer Society simply emphasize drinking in moderation. In public-health speak, thats defined as one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men (think of a drink more as a glass of wine or a bottle of fairly light beer, rather than a double martini).

But for most consumers, the concept of moderation is most closely tied to the phrase drink responsibly, an alcohol industry catch phrase that reminds customers not to drink too much—without actually defining how much is too much. I worry sometimes that the breweries are trying to change the perception of risk to benefit their own equation, says Portier.

Thats where policy comes into play. In the UK, for example, the Department of Health changed its alcohol guidelines from saying it was safe to drink moderately to acknowledging that there are a number of serious diseases, including certain cancers, that can be caused even when drinking less than 14 units weekly. While the risk for moderate drinking was low, they write, there is no level of regular drinking that can be considered as completely safe.

Related Video

Fun With Powdered Alcohol: You Can Stop Being Scared Now

Look back at the public health messages around tobacco and youll notice they all share a common, simple message: stop smoking. There was no level of moderation that was considered risk-free, so there was no conversation around moderation. Alcohol, on the other hand, has a much more complex message: dont drink too much, make sure you understand what too much means for you, and mitigate the risk of drinking by assessing any other risk factors you may have in your life. Not exactly great fodder for a catchy PSA. But in a world where drinking is so closely tied to culture, it may be the best option.

It all comes down to perception of risk and how you want to live your life, says Portier. Someone who is at a higher risk for heart disease than cancer, for example, may feel more inclined to have a glass of red wine each night than someone who has a strong family history of breast cancer. People should make their own decisions about how much they drink, says Naimi. But I certainly think that people deserve to be more aware of this than they are now.

To get there, Naimi goes back to the idea of conducting long term, comprehensive, randomized studies. Thats something both sides are anxious to see more of. Zakhari, the alcohol expert who works at the Distilled Spirits Council, says its crucial to look at alcohol consumption over a long period of time, since cancer usually develops very slowly. These studies always ask women, how much did you drink last week, last month, last year, he says. But what they were doing last week or last month or last year has nothing to do with the initiation of cancer 20 years earlier. Its like someone has food poisoning today and the doctor asks them what they ate for Christmas in 1980.

Not that help isnt on the way—sort of. According to the Wall Street Journal, AB InBev and Diageo (another heavyweight alcohol producer) are planning to work with a handful of other alcohol companies to pay for a randomized study that will look at the health implications of drinking. Itll be run by the NIAAA, the same government division where Zakhari once worked.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/07/the-muddled-link-between-booze-and-cancer/