I know and have known people with cancer. It’s a horrible disease. But that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try to reduce statistical probabilities of a diagnosis.
There are no absolutes, when it comes to cancer or other diseases.
Sure they do, but not out of the goodness of their hearts. The times require they pay lip service to responsible drinking, and that is a good thing. But doesn’t responsible drinking entail knowing and understanding the risks? If so, then when why the push back here against even accurate information regarding the dangers of alcohol?
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I’m afraid that the probability of dying is 100%. So how does one “win” the “game”? I look at the ridiculous lengths some people will go to, in order to live longer, as in this film, and shake my head:
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I’m not a bev alc company. I’m not saying the government can’t require warning labels. I’m just a person that has worked in the bev alc business for 30+ years and spends a lot of time around customers that are enjoying themselves while consuming alcoholic beverages. I’m aware that alcohol isn’t a health product. Neither are brownies, but I like those too. The same goes for a good steak.
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There’s just no fun, unless you drink alcohol. 
No, I agree, we shouldn’t have to, but it is what it is. The healthy must fund the unhealthy. That’s the world in which we live.
That’s easy to answer. Not get cancer and not live our remaining years in and out of the hospital and worrying about the next health scan or bloodwork results.
Increase one’s “healthspan,” lengthen the healthy years of our lives. Avoid the “four horsemen” of diseases: cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease and/or metabolic disease.
That’s how I’m hoping to “win the game.” Try and avoid those, that’s my plan!
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Yes. I mean this would be impossible to measure right? Does my Saturday glass of red wine trump your (hypothetical) drive thru at Taco Bell? What about my full fat butter vs your sugar-ladened non-fat yogurt? I wear sunscreen but you don’t but my skin is lighter than yours and you never sunbathe. I mean you could play that game all day long. Unless the insurance industry wants to put risk monitors on us at all times (and they probably do!), we will be paying for everyone else’s misdeeds and they will pay for ours.
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I wish I could depend on that; we have unfortunately not a great family history. There is cancer, but also high cholesterol in vegetarian thin athletes. Sometimes people don’t pick their parents carefully enough 
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From the NYT article I just posted in the Random Stuff thread:
I regularly do alcohol abstinence breaks. (Think: Dry January, Sober October or giving up alcohol for Lent.) I have found that these breaks have resulted in long-term reductions in my drinking behavior, even in the months when I don’t abstain.
Johannes Thrul
Associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
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And die of what exactly? Getting run over by a car? Or are you planning to sit at home to avoid that too?
My grandmother died at 101. I’d certainly trade the last 10-15 years of the way she lived (in a care home) for a more enjoyable 80 year lifespan. I’d prefer something relatively quick to a more gradual physical and mental deterioration (which is what my mother is experiencing now in her 80s). Ideally I’ll keel over hiking in a national park with a nice view…
If you get enjoyment from alcohol then make the most of that experience. If you don’t, don’t…
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There is such a thing as dying of natural causes or at least at a minimum reducing the days, months or years of one’s bad health. Would one prefer to spend more or less time in a hospital with doctors, nurses and medical technicians poking you? That’s the choice, as I see it.
If people want to drink and get tipsy or drunk and eat and be overweight, disregarding medical advice and warnings, then go for it! Your life, your choice.
Me OTOH, I’ll be doing my very best NOT to be a burden to my children or burden them less as I age, because I’m sick or can’t lift myself out of a chair.
As my mom used to say, you make your bed, you lie in it.
That’s humorous, but genetics do not guarantee that the offspring will get cancer. One can still can make healthy choices.
I’m going to move on. This thread is bad for my health. 
I don’t make the same lifestyle decisions as @sushiritto but it seems a weird thing to argue about on both sides. I don’t know why people care how he lives his life, and I don’t know why he cares how people live their lives. Seems to be quite a lot of prothelytizing going on on both sides.
My issue in this thread is not the decisions people make but whether or not the information is readily available. And unfortunately when it comes to alcohol use, the deck is stacked. We love alcohol as a society, and consequently many really want to believe it is a harmless activity, and it doesn’t help that we are barraged with pro-alcohol pressures. Even in this thread there has been quite a lot of glorification of the consumption of alcohol, and a strong effort to minimize and underplay the potential dangers associated with drinking. Why is that? Aren’t we all better off if the information about the potential dangers is readily available so people can make sound decisions? Why the pushback against accurate information?
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But the reality is that natural physical and mental deterioration creates a huge caring burden in old age even if you’ve lived a very healthy life. My mother visited my grandmother almost every day for the last 10 years of her life, washed her clothes, etc. And now we have a lot of challenges planning for care of my mother for what may be another 15-20 “no go” years, even though she’s not sick and can certainly get around the house. She isn’t spending time in hospital, but she sure needs a lot of care and attention. In contrast, my father who did in fact die suddenly from a blood clot at ~80 (after being pretty healthy) was not a burden to anyone in terms of care needs.
If anything you “win the game” by enjoying your life, not by sacrificing enjoyment to prolong it, just like you don’t “win” by leaving as much money to your kids as possible, but by enjoying your savings in retirement.
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Right? I wouldn’t expect even college kids to glorify alcohol consumption such as some have here. If these data encourage someone to live a more healthy life…based on their personal set of parameters, that’s great.
I appreciate more information. We will always be faced with imperfect information, but that doesn’t doesn’t make it worthless or unusable. People can use said information or not, and use it at whatever point the data become important to their decision. Seems simple!
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That depends on which “people” are making the decisions. Are individuals free to make their own decisions or does the state in fact seek to step in to make those decisions for them? This country has a puritan streak about all sorts of things that other countries are much more relaxed about, alcohol being the most prominent amongst them. We’ve tried prohibition before, with disastrous consequences in terms of lawbreaking, and the federal government already sets a minimum drinking age that is far out of line with most other countries.
I really object to the idea that the majority of college kids end up becoming lawbreakers (not least by getting fake IDs), just because the US set the legal drinking age at 21. That decreases the credibility of the legal system at significant cost to us all.
Many other “cancer-causing” substances are highly regulated, and the US is all too fond of litigation against those deemed to be to blame for exposure to these substances. So the question is not about making information available that you can already find easily with a Google search, but what’s the next step that follows from this government intervention? Further restrictions on alcohol? Or perhaps more likely, litigation against companies selling alcohol, just like we saw against the tobacco industry.
I barely ever drink alcohol, so for me this isn’t about that or “glorifying” anything. I don’t find alcohol enhances my social life, and I am uncomfortable around drunk people.
That said, I find it a little bit hurtful that people are claiming that someone can prevent cancer (or other ill effects) by clean living. My own relatives do everything right. My mother never did any substances of any sort. She exercised regularly, stayed healthy and fit/thin. Wore sunscreen. Went for regular health treatment. Ate vegetables and really almost no junk food of any kind. Unfortunately, she did choose the wrong parents. She had three independent cancers by her early sixties and died a really awful death (glioblastoma) before turning 68.
Now so far I seem to have the health profile of the other side of the family, but I think some of this talk has come dangerously close to blaming people for things that they cannot control. I fear that this tendency comes from a desire to believe that everything is controllable, because then of course you could avoid cancer. Maybe you can’t.
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I’m sorry for your loss. I didn’t interpret that mtmind was thinking of you when they mentioned some posters glorifying alcohol consumption. I know I certainly wasn’t.
I don’t remember every post in this thread, but don’t recall anyone saying they could prevent disease…just reduce their risk, however small that potential reduction might be. In the end it’s impossible to tell whether reducing or eliminating alcohol helped a given person reduce their disease or behavioral risk or not. But that’s their prerogative to take action on whatever data they find important.
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This is derivative, but relevant. If you haven’t done so yet, have your Lp(a) checked. Twenty percent of the population have genetically elevated Lp(a). It’s highly atherogenic. For now, here’s no treatment but to aggressively lower your LDL. It’s something routinely tested in Europe and Japan, but not here. It creates more risk than the quality or amount of anything you can eat or drink. Ask me how I know. Coincidentally, my most fit friend had a heart attack at 49…elevated Lp(a). Get it checked everyone.
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@Twoin18, No one here has suggested prohibition, and from the context it is quite clear that I was referring to whether individuals choose not to drink for health reasons.
I understand and I too am sorry for your loss. I hope I haven’t written anything indicating that I believe people with cancer did something wrong, because I certainly don’t believe it.
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Thank you!!
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I used to eat a lot of broccoli for its health properties. After I had cancer I said “nope, I hate this stuff.” I do eat many vegetables, just not that one. I never drank at all pre cancer. Now I’ll have an occasional beer or glass of wine in a social setting. For me, data is important, but you can’t reduce your risk of any of the “4 horsemen” to zero. So being mindful but recognizing that being human is inherently risky is where I land. I remember sitting in the waiting room at my gynecologist and looking at a poster that theoretically showed how much you could reduce the risk of breast cancer by breast feeding. It claimed you could reduce the risk to 0 at 6 years. And there I sat with my surgery scars barely healed and my head bald from chem and my babies who nursed a total of 6.25 years now young adults. I politely asked that it be removed. I really wanted to tear it down and shred it.
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