In short: Alcohol harm is determined by the dose at which damage to internal organs begins—the toxicity threshold.To maintain health, the body needs to have time to recover after drinking: to do this, you need to drink no more than 170 grams of pure alcohol no more often than once every 8 days.The benefit of moderate doses of alcohol may be that the body is mobilized in response to small doses of harmful substances.Dry red wine and unpasteurized beer contain useful impurities: vitamins, antioxidants, beneficial microelements in small doses and harmful in large doses.
"Drinking a lot is dangerous, but drinking a little is boring."
What is a simple drink?
In terms of pure ethanol toxicity threshold (that is, the dose at which organ damage begins) for the liver is 90 g (285 ml of vodka) per day, for the brain - 19 g (60 ml of vodka) per day.This means a person of white race with a healthy heart, kidney and brain, and a body weight of 70 kg.
But it is not difficult to calculate that 90 grams of pure alcohol is contained in an incomplete glass of vodka.If you imagine a person who drinks a glass of vodka every day, then if he has a hereditary predisposition, he will develop alcohol dependence in six to eight months, and if there is no hereditary predisposition, in three years.Not to mention the fact that after a few months the alcohol dose will always increase.
The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that the weekly consumption of strong alcoholic beverages (more than 25 vol.% ethanol) in the amount of more than 150 ml is sufficient to form alcohol dependence.
Note: if a person has had viral hepatitis (except hepatitis A), or has other chronic liver diseases, then the safe dose for the liver during the period without exacerbation is reduced by two to three times.This depends on the number of parts of the organ affected and the nature of the process.The nature of the process and the extent of the lesion can only be assessed individually.
Therefore, let's figure out what the drinking regimen is for this, so that the body has time to recover: the body of a healthy person cannot metabolize alcohol in the amount of more than 170 g per day (538 ml of vodka). One day of drinking alcohol to restore the heart should be alternated with eight days of abstinence. Therefore, the "acceptable" dose per month is (31/(1+8))*170 (g) in terms of pure alcohol, which is 586 grams.For comparison: a standard bottle of vodka contains 316 grams of alcohol.
If you drink more than 170 grams in terms of alcohol, then you should increase the interval between drinking sessions - this is the only way to reduce the danger.
In conclusion, try to imagine three people who drink 8 days at a time.Anyone who exceeds the threshold of 170 grams of alcohol will experience damage to the liver and other organs: kidneys, stomach, pancreas, lungs, retina.Anyone who drinks from 90 to 170 grams is at risk of developing fatty liver degeneration (and if there is a violation of bile flow or has had hepatitis, then cirrhosis).Anyone who drinks from 19 to 90 grams of pure alcohol will only harm the brain.
With the development of medicine, doctors' recommendations gradually change.A professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London talks about this interestingly in his book "To Drink or Not to Drink?"(2020).First of all, the harm of alcohol to the liver and cardiovascular system is obvious.Recently, British doctors allow men to drink up to 21 drinks (standard units of alcohol), and women - up to 14 drinks a week.Of course, drinkers do not particularly try to stay within this limit: after all, if 14 drinks do not cause harm to the liver, then does the danger suddenly start from a dose two or three times greater?The heart can't count.
In the 21st century, we have learned much more.Accurate scientific research has confirmed that even very small doses of alcohol damage the brain and increase the risk of cancer.This is more serious.Scientists have discovered that there is no absolutely safe amount of alcohol;we can only talk about doses "with a low level of health risk."In 2016, British doctors equated this dose for men and women, because from small doses of alcohol the risk level of both sexes is the same, and if exceeded, the risk for men develops faster.Now everyone is recommended to drink no more than 14 drinks a week: this is 1 liter of 4% beer or 6 glasses of wine with a strength of 13% (175 ml glass).Also, you need to stretch this amount of drinks throughout the week and not drink every day.
Is it better for your health to drink less or drink more moderately?
For light-haired, light-skinned, light-eyed people of European descent, if you don't want to stop drinking, it's better to drink less (in short-term drinking mode).Less often means no more than once a month, which is due to the danger of rapid development of addiction with regular drinking.For people with dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes, the drinking regimen is not important, provided that the dose in terms of ethanol is observed.
How different people tolerate alcohol
You should also remember that dark-skinned and dark-haired Caucasians (Mongoloids are a separate issue) develop addiction during regular drinking sessions more slowly than fair-skinned and light-haired people.
This is due to the fact that dark-skinned and dark-skinned people carry the genes of people from the south.People from the south are formed in conditions of eating a lot of fruits and berries that contain a lot of glucose, grape acid, fiber and pectin.In the large intestine, this component undergoes alcoholic fermentation, so the body has adapted to microdoses of ethanol for several generations.
Light-skinned and light-haired people carry the genes of northerners, who have evolved to consume animal and vegetable foods that produce mostly lactic acid fermentation.For northerners, alcohol turns out to be a xenobiotic (foreign substance), and addiction to it is formed through other mechanisms, very similar to addiction to other weak poisons.
Where do humans get the ability to metabolize alcohol?
All mammals have the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol, but it processes ethyl alcohol with difficulty, although it copes better with other alcohols.If a person had inherited this type of biochemistry from animals, then we would not be attracted to drink: even a small dose of alcohol, contained in overripe fruits, would cause a severe hangover in the body, let alone alcohol.
However, scientists managed to find out that our ancestors, after the evolutionary branch of orangutans separated from them, but before we separated from gorillas and chimpanzees, a special subtype of this enzyme appeared - alcohol dehydrogenase "fourth class" (ADH4).A small mutation in the genome of our ancestors changed the 294th amino acid of the enzyme and allowed their bodies to process overripe fruits that fell to the ground, and eliminated the need to climb trees for unripe fruits.
So, 10 million years ago, the ability to process alcohol helped us come down from the trees and start exploring open spaces to later become homo erectus.And, as often happens in evolution, these skills are later useful for different purposes.
The benefits of wine - truth or myth
Main benefits of alcoholic beverages come, of course, of dry red wine.Dry wine is a product of grape fermentation (fruit and berry wine is not wine in the strict sense of the word), where all the sugars contained in the grapes are fermented by microorganisms into alcohol.The only sugar that is fermented is the sugar that naturally occurs in grapes.Therefore, the ethanol content in dry wine, as a rule, does not exceed 13%.
The health benefits come mainly from dry red wine. powerful antioxidant.It helps lower cholesterol levels and is also 10-20 times more powerful than vitamin E as an antioxidant.Dry red wine contains approximately 3 times more resveratrol than grape juice from the same grape variety.
For reference, antioxidants are substances that can neutralize so-called active radicals, which are constantly formed in the body and are considered one of the factors of aging.However, it should be noted that strong antioxidants are not absolute benefits: they can both protect against cancer and cause cancer.Their excessive use carries its own risks.
Dry red wine also contains some valuable microelements, for example, rubidium, which has a soothing, anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effect.
It should be remembered that an excess of rubidium is more harmful to the body than its deficiency, so the daily consumption of dry red in large quantities will not bring any benefit.
A separate article had to be devoted to the question of whether wine is good for the heart.Unfortunately, claims that the so-called Mediterranean diet is beneficial for the heart due to moderate amounts of dry red wine have been proven false.
We also have to disappoint those who believe that drinking in small doses can prevent atherosclerosis.No, all modern scientific data points to the opposite.A healthy dose of dry red wine is three glasses (about 450 ml) a week.
Is beer healthy?
Another alcoholic drink that can be said to be able to provide health benefits can be considered beer.We are talking, first of all, about unpasteurized beer, the so-called "live", which happened in this country 20 years ago, and is now rare.
Beer contains yeast products, incl B vitamins, even in quantities that do not meet daily needs;zinc, which is a valuable trace element required for insulin synthesis.The condition of the skin and the reproductive system depends on the zinc content.Hop components - natural analogues of benzodiazepine sedatives - have a calming effect, especially in combination with phytoestrogens, plant analogues of female sex hormones of the follicular phase.Hops in moderate doses have a calming effect.
The limit for a healthy dose of beer is about 600 ml per day.However, drinking beer every day for several years leads to the formation of addiction in light-skinned, light-eyed, light-haired people, including because of the sedative content.Beer addiction develops more unconsciously and is more difficult to treat than "pure" alcohol addiction, which develops, for example, as a result of vodka addiction.
Hermesis effect (hormesis)
Regarding other alcoholic beverages, we can say that the benefits of their moderate consumption are the effects of the so-called hermesis (hormesis) - the body's response to harmful effects in small doses.
What type of keyword is this? Let's think about it now
This effect is as follows: our body strives to remain the same, despite external influences (homeostasis), and therefore, in response to the introduction of poison, it makes efforts directed in the direction opposite to external influences.If the external influence is not excessive, then a mobilizing response is obtained (the usual stages of increasing influence are activation, training, stress).That is, you can take any harmful effect of alcohol and change the sign of the effect to the opposite.
This effect does not appear for moderate, but rather small, doses of alcohol: no more than 50 ml of vodka (one tablespoon of alcohol), no more than twice a week.
By the way, this effect exists for any harmful effect, and is usually studied using radiation.
Does alcohol protect against radiation?
Is it true that alcohol protects against radiation?For example, after the radioactive explosion there were stories about how radiation sickness was treated with vodka.Is this true?
Alcohol is an antioxidant.When the body is irradiated, active radicals are formed that damage cells.Antioxidants neutralize active radicals.Therefore, although alcohol is not oxidized, it has an anti-radiation effect to some extent.Alcohol oxidation products themselves have damaging effects similar to the action of active radicals.It is not possible to treat radiation sickness that has occurred with vodka (except symptomatically).
That is, the prevention of vodka radiation sickness may look like this: drink a glass and continue through the radiation zone.And at the exit - immediately below the IV.
On the other hand, before exposure to ionizing radiation, it is desirable to consume dry red wine prophylactically;it is a more reliable antioxidant.
Does alcohol harm your hearing?
Australian scientists say that regularly drinking small amounts of alcohol can help people preserve their hearing in the future.From 1997 to 1999, they surveyed and surveyed two thousand residents of the Sydney area over the age of 55.
It turns out that people who regularly consume up to 56 grams of pure alcohol every day throughout their lives (and this is the amount contained in 180 ml of vodka, or 600 ml of wine, or 1440 ml of beer) are less likely to develop hearing problems in old age.Perhaps the reason lies in the vasodilation effect of alcohol, which increases blood flow to the outer cells of the ear.
However, scientists note that the main thing in this matter is not to overdo it: patients who drink excessively (take more than 56 grams of pure alcohol per day) have more serious hearing problems than those who abstain.
Does alcohol save you from depression?
In 2013, a large study was completed in the city of Pamplona, Spain.After working extensively with 5,500 volunteers, scientists concluded that moderate consumption—5 to 15 grams of pure alcohol per day—reduces the risk of depression.Excellent results were observed in those who drank wine in quantities of 2 to 7 glasses (150 ml) per week.
Those who drink more than this, on the other hand, have a higher than normal risk of developing depression.Depression and bad mood should not be confused.Major depressive disorder is a disease that manifests itself with long-term and - this is the main difference - depression without a cause of mood, mental and motor retardation, as well as the inability and refusal to enjoy natural things such as food or sex (anhedonia).
Why do creative people drink?
Creative people sometimes notice that after drinking, they come up with amazing new ideas.Why does this happen?
Once in the body, alcohol triggers the process of apoptosis: the death of brain cells.As a result, some elements are disconnected from the neural network, synaptic connections are severed, and then partially restored.Some connections form according to new patterns.This is where insight is possible, because any knowledge and understanding is the path of electrical signals in the brain along a certain path.
However, such insights are happy accidents that can happen in the first few years of drinking.It is not possible to achieve this on purpose, because we do not know the death of certain neurons that will lead to the construction of a more successful "pathway for thought".It is more likely that the death of neurons will lead to a decrease in mental abilities, and regular drinking will lead to alcoholism.
What is healthier: drinking in moderation or not drinking at all?
Research shows the benefits of moderate drinking are flawed at their core.So said a group of scientists from the United States, Canada and Australia.
The scientists analyzed 87 studies.According to their results, moderate drinkers are healthier than non-drinkers.It turns out that most of these studies are unreliable.
The main weakness of this study is that the group of non-drinkers includes everyone: both those who cannot drink for health reasons, and those who drank too much before they later decided to stop so as not to become alcoholics.It turns out that a group of abstinent people usually consists of people who are initially unhealthy, affected by drinking or serious illness.And the group of moderate drinkers includes people who do not suffer from alcoholism and are generally healthy, so they can afford to drink as much as they want.
That is why it turned out at the end of the study that moderate drinkers are healthier than absolute abstinence. Scientists again looked at previous studies and found only such people rarely drank and were irregular.Turns out they lived longer than moderate drinking study participants.Their life expectancy, on average, is longer than moderate drinkers, than non-drinkers, and even longer than heavy drinkers.
Didn't live to see the research
When alcohol-related deaths are studied, elderly patients are selected for the study: over 50 years of age.Whereas alcoholics often die at an earlier age.But "dead people cannot be included in cohort studies," as a doctor of medical science from the Boston Medical Center (US) commented on the situation.
Heavy drinkers over 50 are accidental survivors due to excellent health, genetics, less harmful alcohol consumption, etc.This is why patients in good health, which although alcohol cannot destroy, live longer than people who abstain, and thus ruin all the statistics.Only the most resilient survive, the rest of the alcoholics die early, but we don't take young people into account in the mortality study.
Naimi, along with Tanya Chikritz, whom we already know, and other colleagues published new data in 2019. They analyzed statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2006–2010 in the United States.It turns out that more than 40% of deaths due to alcohol occur before the age of 50.
Drinking turns out to be least dangerous for those over 65: although 35% of alcohol-related deaths also occur at this age, drinkers of this age are 80% less likely to die early (before the expected age).So if you read an article about how drinkers live longer than non-drinkers, know that this pattern only applies to older people.Young alcoholics are more likely to die young.
Can alcohol be beneficial?Research results
In 1999, a Dutch doctor conducted a study, the results of which showed that moderate drinking is beneficial for the cardiovascular system.Myocardial infarction occurs at least in patients who drink alcohol in moderate doses: from 14 to 56 grams of pure alcohol per day, which is less than a glass of vodka.
Among people who are absolutely abstinent, the risk of myocardial infarction is slightly higher, and among alcohol abusers it is even higher.At the same time, the choice of drink does not play a role: wine, beer and spirits in moderation both reduce the risk of heart disease.An extensive article was published in the British Medical Journal on this and other studies on this topic in 2017.
The researchers suggest a similar U-shaped dependence of the incidence of brain disease on the amount of alcohol.That is, brain disease occurs slightly more often in non-drinkers, less often in moderate drinkers, and more often in heavy drinkers. In this case, it turns out that even a small dose of alcohol only causes harm to the brain.In general, it is not yet possible to say with certainty whether moderate drinking can be beneficial or whether alcohol is harmful to us in any quantity.
Studies may show different results, and this is normal: health and life expectancy are influenced by thousands of factors (diet, habits, sports, climate, genes, whatever).Isolating the influence of one of them is a difficult task that requires a large number of subjects, a refined methodology and a lot of patience.It is often difficult to distinguish results from statistical noise.
What can be said for sure is that if there are benefits of small doses of alcohol, then they are almost invisible against the background of everything that affects the body.But the harm from alcohol, unfortunately, was detected immediately and did not raise doubts among researchers.Therefore, if the main thing for you is to maintain health, then it is wiser not to drink at all than to try to improve your body with a small dose of alcohol.
Alcohol producers can bribe scientists
In the summer of 2018, a scandal broke out in the United States: the National Institute of Health (N.I.H.) will spend $100 million on a large-scale study of the benefits of small doses of alcohol.However, officials intercepted correspondence between researchers and representatives of the alcohol industry.It turned out that most of the money was received from alcohol producers, and the results of the study were predetermined.As a result, the study was cancelled.
It must be said that such news should not be surprising: often, research on the benefits of certain products is sponsored by the manufacturer.For example, some companies pay for most of the research on the benefits of cocoa, while others sponsor research on the benefits of yogurt.This is not corruption at all, and anyone can see who directed the research.Another thing is that the manufacturer can present the results in a favorable light.For example, publish only studies that show the benefits of cocoa, and then say that not only cocoa is healthy, but also the chocolate made from it (which is not true).So we have another reason to criticize what is written about science in the press.
To finally put an end to this issue, scientists are trying to find out whether moderate drinkers live longer than non-drinkers.