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The Alcohol & Health Story Isn’t as Simple as You Think: Wisdom Wednesdays · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Now,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: unless you've been living under a rock, you'll have noticed
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: that the message around alcohol has changed quite dramatically over
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: the last decade or so. We used to hear a
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: lot about the possible benefits of a glass of red
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: wine in particular, things like the French paradox, cardiovascular protection,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: resveratrol and all that stuff. And these days, the message
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: is much more straightforward. Alcohol is bad for you, And increasingly,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: we're told that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. Now,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: from a purely physical health perspective, there's actually plenty of
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: evidence behind that shift. Alcohol is known as a group
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: one carcinogen, and it's associated with a number of different cancers.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: And although the absolute risk from an occasional drink may
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: be very small, there doesn't appear to be a magical
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: threshold below which the cancer risk in particular disappears completely.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And then in 2018, we had the huge global burden
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of disease study published in the journal The Lancet. It
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: looked at alcohol consumption across 195 countries and territories and
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: examined 23 different alcohol-related health outcomes. And the headline conclusion
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: was pretty stark. When all of those outcomes were considered together,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the level of alcohol associated with the lowest overall health
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: risk was essentially zero. And in the same paper, alcohol
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: was also named as the seventh leading risk factor for
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: death and disability globally. And among people aged 15 to 49,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: it was actually the leading risk factor. So the old
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: thinking that one or two glasses of wine a night
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: is a longevity intervention has pretty much been torpedoed by science.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: But here's where I think the conversation needs a little
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: more nuance, because the idea alcohol isn't good for you
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: and every drink causes a meaningful amount of harm are
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: not quite the same statement. And a really interesting meta-analysis
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: published by Azao and colleagues in JAMA Network Open in
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: 2023 looked at 107 cohort studies in involving just under
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: 5 million people. And there were more than 425,000 deaths
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: in this cohort. And the researchers were particularly interested in
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: something called the former drinker bias, sometimes known as the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: sick quitter effect. And here's the problem. In quite a
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: lot of older alcohol research where we found that alcohol
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: are small amounts were good for you, the non-drinking group
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: also included not only people who had never drunk alcohol,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: but also people who had stopped drinking. And it turns
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: out that some of those people had stopped drinking precisely
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: because they were getting older or had become unwell, or
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: they had problematic alcohol consumption and really had to stop.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: And if you put those former drinkers into the abstainer group,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the abstainers suddenly looked less healthy and the people having
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: a glass or two of wine can appear healthier by comparison.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: even if the alcohol itself isn't providing any benefit. So
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: when the researchers adjusted for this and some other issues
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: they found, that supposed longevity advantage of moderate drinking largely disappeared,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: which is supportive of the Lancet study I mentioned earlier.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: But there was another part of the result that I
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: think gets less attention. They also didn't find a statistically
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: significant increase in all-cause mortality at lower levels of consumption.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: It turns out in their analysis of almost 5 million
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: people that occasional drinkers and people consuming up to 24
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: grams of alcohol a day were not significantly different in
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: their all-cause mortality risk from lifetime abstainers. And even the
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: group consuming 25 to 44 grams per day had a
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: small increase that wasn't statistically significant. Now I talk about
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: grams because It's different, a standard drink is different in
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: different countries. 24 grams is about 1.7 standard drinks in
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the US, but 2.4 standard drinks here in Australia, which
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: is why we use grams to kind of have that
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: overall effect. Now, it was at 45 to 64 grams
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: per day, which is three to four and a half
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: standard US drinks or four and a half to six
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: and a half standard Australian drinks. that the mortality signal,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: all-cause mortality, became really clear, about 19% higher. And above
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: 65 grams a day, it was about 35% higher, which
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: is pretty whopping. So we're not talking about a very
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: clear cutoff here where alcohol suddenly becomes harmless. We're talking
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: about a dose-response relationship where the measurable risk becomes much
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: more obvious as consumption increases. There's also good evidence that
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: the old idea of alcohol being protective for the heart
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: was probably exaggerated. And a 2022 JAMA Network open study
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: involving more than 371,000 people from the UK Biobank found
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: that light and moderate drinkers tended to have healthier lifestyles
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: in general. They exercised more, smoked less, had lower BMI
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: and ate more vegetables. Now, once some of those differences
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: were taken into account, much of the apparent cardiovascular protection
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: for moderate alcohol consumption completely disappeared. Their genetic analysis pointed
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: in the same direction. Alcohol intake was associated with increasing
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: cardiovascular risks, although importantly, The increase was relatively small at
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: low intakes and became much steeper with heavier drinking. Now,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: even the global burden of disease group that I talked
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: about earlier, they subsequently added some nuance to their original message.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Their 2022 analysis found that alcohol risk varied considerably depending
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: on age and background disease patterns. For people aged 15
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: to 39, the level associated with minimal overall risk was
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: generally zero or very close to zero. But in adults
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: over 40, the aggregated risk curves were often J-shaped because
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: small amounts of alcohol may lower the risk of certain
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: cardiovascular outcomes while simultaneously increasing other risks. So their conclusion
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: wasn't that middle-aged people should start drinking. but that the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: relationship between alcohol and total health risk isn't identical for
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: everyone and the waters are a bit murky. Now, when
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: we take all of this together, I think the reasonable
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: interpretation is this. The old story that a couple of
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: drinks every night will make you live longer hasn't held
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: up particularly well, but neither should we pretend that having
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: one or two glasses of wine carries anything remotely resembling
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the risk of regularly having four or six. Dose clearly matters.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And there's another piece of biological evidence that's emerged very recently.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: In June, 2026, there was a review published in pharmacological
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: reports looking specifically at relationship between alcohol and serotonin. Now serotonin,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: as you know, is involved in mood, but also stress,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: impulse control and aggression and relationship with alcohol appears to
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: work in both directions. So disrupted serotonergic function may increase
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: vulnerability to some forms of alcohol use disorder, while chronic
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: alcohol exposure itself changes the serotonin system, including serotonin production,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: serotonin transport, and serotonin receptors. And those adaptations may then
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: contribute during withdrawal to anxiety, low mood, craving, and relapse.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Now that's important because we have to be precise about
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: what the paper actually studied. It's largely a review of
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: chronic alcohol use and alcohol use disorder. And a lot
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: of the mechanistic evidence comes from animal models. So we
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: shouldn't take it and claim that somebody having two glasses
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: of wine over a long dinner is wrecking their serotonin
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: system because that's not what the evidence shows. What it
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: does reinforce is that chronic and heavy alcohol exposure is
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: can substantially alter brain chemistry. And once again, pattern and
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: dose matter enormously. And I think everyone is aware of
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the societal problems of alcohol misuse disorder on both social
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: and domestic violence and general bad behavior. So if we
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: stop there, we'd have a perfectly reasonable Wisdom Wednesday. about
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: why drinking less or abstaining completely is probably the best
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: for your physical and mental health. And that is what
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the physiology said. But I'm a psychophysiologist and we have
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: to talk about the psychology because I came across another
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: paper recently that made me think that there's another side
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  Speaker 1: to this conversation that many people who drink alcohol will recognize.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Not another side to whether alcohol causes cancer and not
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: some clever argument that alcohol is secretly good for your arteries.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about another side to being human. So in 2025,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: James Nichols and Geoffrey Hunt published a paper in the
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: journal Addiction with the cool title, Taking Pleasure Seriously. Should
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Alcohol Research Say More About Fun? Their basic point was
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: pretty simple. Public health alcohol research has become incredibly good
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: at measuring hormones. think cancer liver disease cardiovascular disease addiction
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: accidents violence mortality but if you're actually trying to understand
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: why human beings drink alcohol there's something rather obvious missing
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: from that list lots of people me included enjoy a
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: drink especially in social settings Now, Nichols and Hunt argue
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: that this matters for three reasons. Scientifically, if pleasure is
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: one of the major reasons people drink, you can't properly
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: understand drinking behavior while excluding pleasure from your research. Ethically,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: they argue that it's not self-evident that maximizing long-term physical
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: health should be the only things that human beings value.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And practically, If health authorities describe drinking in a way
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: that bears absolutely no resemblance to people's lived experience, there's
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: a danger that people simply stop listening to the message altogether.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I think that's a really important point because none of
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: us actually live our lives according to the principle of
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: eliminating every possible risk. If we did, life would be
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: pretty damn dull. We eat desserts, we ski, we surf,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: we ride motorbikes, we do risky sports, we stay up
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: until one in the morning talking to someone we haven't
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: seen for years, we fly halfway around the world to
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: go traveling, we sit around a table eating and drinking
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  Speaker 1: for three hours when from a purely metabolic point of view,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: we'd be much better off eating salmon and broccoli at
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: six o'clock and being tucked up in bed by 10.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Human beings constantly make trade-offs between longevity and pleasure, experience, relationships,
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  Speaker 1: and meaning. And that's not irrational, that is called living.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And at the risk of glorifying alcohol, which is not
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  Speaker 1: what I want to do, some of the most memorable occasions,
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  Speaker 1: which I will remember until my 90s, that I've ever had,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: have involved alcohol. And admittedly, some pretty stupid but hilarious antics.
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  Speaker 1: I seriously don't remember anything ever catching up with old
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Navy or uni mates and saying, hey, do you remember
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: that time we went for a coffee? What a legendary
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: time that was. I personally, and you may as well,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: have a long list of stories that I'll dine out
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  Speaker 1: on for years, and not one of them involves sitting
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: around having avocado on toast. And that takes us to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: research of Oxford evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar. Now, Dunbar and
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: colleagues published a fascinating paper in 2017 called Functional Benefits
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: of Modest Alcohol Consumption. They started with a very different question.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Alcohol has been part of human social life for thousands
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: of years and appears in one form or another in
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: cultures all over the world. So why has it been
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: so persistent? Their work combined three different studies, including a
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: nationally representative UK survey of 2,200-odd adults, along with questionnaire
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and observational studies in pubs. And what they found was
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: that social drinkers tended to report having more people they
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: could turn to for emotional and practical support, greater trust
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: in other people, and a stronger sense of connection to
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: their local community. People who had a regular local pub
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: tended to be particularly socially connected. Now, obviously, I don't
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: want you to interpret that as beer creates friendships. These
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: are observational relationships. And it could be that naturally sociable
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: people are more likely to go to the pub in
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the first place. Dunbar and his colleagues were very clear
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: about those limitations in their study. But they also proposed
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: a very interesting biological mechanism. Alcohol can stimulate the endogenous
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: opioid system, what we call the endorphin system. And that
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: system plays a really important role in social bonding. And
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: what else activates that system? Laughing together, singing, dancing, storytelling.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: These are things human beings have been doing socially for
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: an extremely long time. Dunbar's suggestion is that moderate alcohol
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: consumption in a social environment may amplify the same bonding
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: processes involved in those other social rituals. And I think
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: many of us who do consume alcohol will realize you
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: don't need a PhD to come up with that idea.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: And there's also pretty interesting experimental evidence suggesting that something
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: real is happening here. Michelle Syatt and colleagues at the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: University of Pittsburgh carried out one of the largest alcohol
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: administration studies of its kind. So what they did is
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: they recruited 720 social drinkers, put complete strangers into groups
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: of three, and randomly gave them either an alcoholic drink,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: a placebo drink, or a non-alcoholic controlled drink. They then
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: recorded their interactions and painstakingly analysed facial expressions, smiling, speech,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: and other behaviours. The people who received alcohol showed more
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: behaviors associated with positive emotion, fewer behaviors associated with negative emotion,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: and reported greater bonding with the other members of the group.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: In other words, under those controlled conditions of just a drink,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: this wasn't like six drinks, alcohol did appear to facilitate
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: social bonding during the formation of a new group. Now,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that we need alcohol to connect. Clearly,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: we don't. Laughing, exercise, music, singing, dancing, sport, shared meals,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and storytelling can all create social connection without alcohol being
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: involved at all. But it does mean that when someone says,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I enjoy having a drink with my mates or friends
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: because it helps us relax and have a laugh, science
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: shouldn't respond by pretending they're imagining the entire experience and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: taking them off because they're damaging their health. And here's
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: what I think becomes even more interesting because social connection
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: itself is incredibly important for health. And in my latest book,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: The Hardiness Effect, I discussed the research where Julianne Holt-Lunstad
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: and colleagues, they published a landmark meta-analysis in the journal
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: PLOS Medicine involving 148 studies and more than 308,000 people.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: And across those studies, people with stronger social relationships had
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: around a 50% greater likelihood of survival during the follow-up
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: period compared to people with weaker social relationships. Now, before
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: anybody edits this into a reel saying Paul Taylor says
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: drinking gives you a 50% survival advantage, that's not what
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I'm saying. The Health Association is with Social Connection, not
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: with alcohol, but alcohol can help facilitate it, right, on occasion.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: This is exactly why I think the discussion becomes more
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: interesting once you zoom out from a single molecule. If
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: you look only at the alcohol and the physiological pathways
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: in the body, you see cautionogenic effects, you see cardiovascular effects,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: you see liver disease, and you see neurobiological effects. Now,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: they are real and important, but if you zoom out
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: and look at the person sitting around a table laughing
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: with five people they love, there is another set of
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: things happening as well. Health doesn't just happen inside your
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: liver or your coronary arteries. It happens inside a life,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and that life includes relationships, friendships, pleasure, ritual, celebration, and belonging. Now,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: there was a response to Nicholson Hunt's paper in the
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: same issue of addiction from psychologists James Morris and Emma Davies,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: who argued that public health messaging needs to grapple with
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: exactly this problem. If the message essentially becomes there is
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: nothing whatsoever positive about drinking and we should all stop,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: while people's own lived experience tells them that there sometimes
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: is something positive, then that health message completely loses its
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: credibility or is at significant risk of losing its credibility
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: with a large subset of the population. And I think
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: that's right. If somebody loves sitting down on a Friday
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: night with their partner and sharing a bottle of wine
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: over dinner, and you tell them there's absolutely nothing positive
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: occurring in that experience, they're probably going to think, well,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: that's clearly bollocks. And once you've lost them there, maybe
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: they pay less attention when you're telling them something genuinely
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: important about cancer risk dependence, or drinking five bottles of
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: wine a week. I also think, as many of you will,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: that there's a big difference between drinking with someone and
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: drinking because of something. Sitting alone at home pouring glass
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: after glass of wine or having a truckload of beers
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: because you've had a really stressful day or week or
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: you're in a shit relationship and you want to numb
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: yourself is psychologically very different from sitting around a table
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: drinking with mates or people you love sharing a meal,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: laughing and having a couple of drinks. The ethanol molecule
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: might be identical, but the behaviour, motive and social context
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: are completely different. And perhaps that's where parts of modern
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: health culture occasionally get themselves tied up in knots. We've
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: become very good at asking what increases my risk of disease? Now,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: that's an important question and we should ask it, but
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: it's not the only question worth asking. We should also ask,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: what makes my life enjoyable, meaningful and connected? Sometimes those
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: two questions point in exactly the same direction. Exercise is
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: great for you and can be enormously enjoyable. Good relationships
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: are both pleasurable and associated with better health. But sometimes
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: there's a trade-off. And that's why I don't think the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: lesson from any of these papers is that alcohol is
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: good for you. It isn't a health food. And if
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: you don't drink, there's absolutely no health reason to start drinking.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: If you're drinking heavily, however, using alcohol as your primary
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: coping mechanism, losing control of your consumption or your life
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: or finding it's affecting your sleep, relationships, mood or health,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: none of this social bonding research cancels those harms out.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: What the evidence is suggesting to me is something a
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: bit more grown up than either alcohol is good for
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: you or every sip is poisoning you. Dose matters, frequency matters,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: patterns matters, motive matters and context matters. Perhaps the most
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: interesting lesson from Dunbar's work is that the alcohol may
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: not even be the most important ingredient in the situations
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: we value. Maybe the really powerful ingredients are the people,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the ritual, the shared meal, the laughter, the stories, and
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: that feeling that you're part of something. And if a
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: little bit of alcohol can help facilitate or enhance those things,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: then maybe that offsets a big chunk of the risk.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Because health isn't simply about adding years to your life,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: it's also about what you put into those years. Sometimes
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: that's an early night, a hard training session and a
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: green smoothie. And sometimes it's sitting around a table with
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: people you love, eating great food and talking absolute shit
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: over a glass of wine or a few beers. Both
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: things can be true. That's it for this week, folks.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Catch you next time.