Also not clear is the selection criteria. Are these people who were going to have an MRI and incidentally were offered a chance to participate in this study? In that case it could have biased the sample - there could be a large group of people drinking alcohol and being just fine but they wouldn’t be seen in this study for the very reason that they are doing fine and weren’t getting MRIs.
Certainly the presented hypothesis could be true but the article would be more convincing if it was more critical of its source material. Correlations are easy, they’re a dime a dozen. Proving causation is the real work.
It's using the data from the UK Biobank study, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Biobank
Also, part of their conclusion is "as with any observational study, we can not infer causality from associations." They are aware of what their study shows, it's the Guardian who oversells it.
But, I have seen some drastic personality changes in friends who start using it habitually. Without the decades of research we have for things like cigarettes and alcohol it's hard to know that it is really safer. Although it is a pretty low bar to clear considering how many people are killed or ruined by them every year.
If we banned everything that's bad for you, then vegetable oil should be illegal.
I'd take this with a grain of salt for now
The reality is the body is pretty resilient though. Its pretty amazing the amount of abuse it can withstand and still keep on ticking.
