Dylan Scott here — nice to meet you. I'll be periodically editing Today, Explained alongside Cameron Peters for the foreseeable future. You may know me from my coverage of health care here at Vox for the past eight years; I hope we will get to know each other better in the coming weeks. As always, feel free to send me your thoughts and feedback at dylan.scott@vox.com. Now, as we move into summer and all the festivities that accompany it, let's take a closer look at alcohol — and whether it is actually safe to drink. It's a question that I have been quietly obsessing over for months now and, shortly before Sean left Vox, we sat down to talk about it. |
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How much should you drink? |
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| Dylan Scott
There is widespread agreement that heavy drinking is not good for you — doctors and scientists have known for literally centuries that a lot of drinking is dangerous. And the more you drink, the greater your risk. Your risk starts to increase pretty exponentially once you're having more than one or two drinks at a given sitting, especially if you're drinking every day. There is still a lot of debate about the safety of drinking small amounts of alcohol and whether it can have very small health benefits. On that front, studies can seem to contradict themselves. I talked to one scientist who has published some research documenting cardiovascular benefits from drinking a little bit of alcohol, and I also recently talked to the author of a 2017 statement from the leading cancer physician medical society, which was basically intended to be a wake-up call to the public that alcohol is a carcinogen. Yet those two people, despite appearing to be on opposite sides of the debate, would basically be in total agreement, about the negative consequences of more than one drink for a woman every day or more than two drinks for a man every day. |
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| Sean Collins
Alcohol is a carcinogen? |
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| Dylan Scott
Yes, but let me take a step back.
What has stuck out to me in reporting about alcohol is that the problem isn't so much the substance itself as it is widespread misunderstanding about what moderate drinking means.
That's 12 oz. of a 5 percent beer, 1.5-oz. glass of 80-proof liquor, and 5 oz. of a 12 percent glass of wine.
There's a trope among doctors that most people think they're moderate drinkers but aren't thinking about those numbers as they drink. I might pour a glass of wine and think I'm having one glass of wine, but a doctor would see two glasses of wine if it's a really generous pour.
Coming back to your question, if you didn't know alcohol is a carcinogen, you're not alone. I learned in my reporting that only 40 percent of people know alcohol is a carcinogen, which shows there's still a lot of work to do in educating people about the health risks.
Public health experts told me that they want to be more vocal about some of alcohol's risks, especially about it being something that builds a dependency. Between that, and alcohol being a carcinogen, you can start to see why knowing what levels of drinking are actually moderate is really important. |
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| Sean Collins
That's interesting, and it makes me wonder about those headlines that claim a new study has found a glass of red wine a day is the key to longevity or something like that. Is there anything to those? |
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| Dylan Scott
After my reporting, I do think there is some room for debate about whether a very modest amount of alcohol consumed in a very particular way might confer some small cardiovascular benefit. That said, even the doctor I talked to who has authored studies finding some benefit, said, "This is not an elixir." He was clear that his work shouldn't be read as saying, "Alcohol is going to reduce your chance of diabetes, improve your heart health, or what have you." |
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| Sean Collins
So, you're saying I shouldn't start drinking, hoping it will make me a healthier person. |
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| Dylan Scott
Yes. The doctors I've spoken to have said things like, "I would never tell somebody to start drinking because it's not going to help you." The basic thing to remember, though, is if you're a light drinker, any potential problems caused by alcohol aren't something worth worrying about. People should be aware of the risks but shouldn't panic about them. Really, my two big takeaways on alcohol are: Heavy drinking is dangerous, and it's easy to drink too much. Those are the things to watch out for. |
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⮕ Keep tabs Trouble with the in-laws: Allie Volpe dives into an uncomfortable reality for many of us with a long-term romantic partner: We may have chosen our loved one, but we didn't choose our in-laws. What do we really owe them? New nuclear deterrent: Until now, the United Kingdom has relied on nuclear-armed submarines to secure its safety. But in this new era of global uncertainty, the country is investing in an air force that can also carry nukes. [NYT] The Big, Beautiful Bill's brutal price: Republicans in Congress are on the verge of passing Medicaid cuts, which an analysis found would lead to thousands fewer people using health care, with deadly consequences. I broke it down on Vox.com.
AI dims our minds: A brighter future? Think again. It turns out that using artificial intelligence is making people's thinking and writing worse. [The New Yorker]
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| Americans are starting to make small purchases — like burritos — using pay later programs. Today, Explained explores what this says about the US, and the American addiction to debt. |
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Sean has been on a music recommendation streak, so on this very hot June week, let me highlight a heater from my latest musical fixation: Phish. This 1994 show was played in Columbus, Ohio, only about an hour down the road from 7-year-old me. For anybody with Phish-phobia out there: It's only a 4-minute rendition. No 20-minute extended jams to be found. Try it out. Who knows, it might turn out to be your song of the summer. |
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Today's edition was produced and edited by me, senior correspondent and resident Deadhead Dylan Scott. We'll see you tomorrow. |
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