I will stick with my doctors advice. Two glasses of red per day and beer doesn't matter. She didn't mention the size of the glass.
My local Super U stocks these please log in to view this image for less than 2€ a bottle... One probably covers the weekly limit
French doctors are unbelievably lax when it comes to drinking recommendations...Compared to the UK anyway!! To be fair very few people in the area suffer from alcohol-related issues compared to the average alcohol consumption...
The rule in France is if your doctor asks you to curb your drinking you change your doctor!! Is it still possible to have more than one GP surgery at the same time?
That article talks about increased risk but doesn't say how much of an increase on what level of risk. Medical doctors are notorious for their inability to understand statistics. Then their is the data collection. I won't get started on that. Next, I wouldn't trust a doctor to analyse data that involves more than one person. Most of them are reasonably good at diagnosing data about one individual but give them a large sample then they get into all sorts of trouble. This is not their fault, as they have not had training in that area. Unfortunately it does leave them open to exploitation from unscrupulous drug companies. The probability that a person who has a disease will have a positive test result is not the same as the probability that a person with a positive test result has the disease. It is like the conclusion that cannabis is a gateway drug for heroin because 85% of heroin users used cannabis before they used heroin. I would imagine that near 100% of heroin users used milk before they tried heroin. The analysis should be based on the number of cannabis users that have become heroin users and then a whole lot of other factors need to be taken into consideration. Finally, their is a lack of understanding of "margin of error". Medical procedures have become standardised because of one data analysis that has fallen within that. If the margin of error is as low as 1% (usually it is higher than that) you would expect that 1 finding in 100 to be false. Microscopic surgery on the knee for certain complaints became standard because the only study done showed a false positive. Sorry for the rant, but I would want to see the whole study before I would believe (or disbelieve) what some journalist understands about this information.
Ben Goldacre's book 'Bad Science' and his website expands on your points, NZ. In particular how journalists grab the wrong end of the stick and proceed to beat about the bush with it. Well worth a read. As for me, I'm not bothered, my drinking days are behind me. Too unwell and on too much medication!
I remember discussing with my GP the fact that if I stayed in bed all day my BP would stay low and i would not need tablets.... that was after he showed me a frightening computer prediction that with my health factors I had a 17% chance of not living another 10 years.... The one and only time i have sworn in my GPs surgery I am afraid we cant live our lives by stats.... However 50% of people who some regularly will die from a smoking related illness... I go with that one...
I agree. The simple rule is to do everything in moderation or, in some cases, not at all. The reason that only 50% of regular smokers die of smoking related diseases is because the other 50% die of something else first!
I found a glass that held a full bottle of wine. I was just standing there admiring it, when Mme said, "NO". What are the statistics on her reading my mind?
