Briefly: The harm of alcohol is determined by the dose at which damage to internal organs begins - the threshold of toxicity.To maintain health, the body needs time to recover after drinking: for this, you need to drink no more than 170 grams of pure alcohol no more than once every 8 days.The benefit of alcohol in moderate doses may be that the body mobilizes in response to small doses of harmful substances.Dry red wine and unpasteurized beer contain useful impurities: vitamins, antioxidants, trace elements that are useful in small doses and harmful in large doses.
"Drinking too much is harmful, but drinking too little is boring."
What is moderate drinking?
In terms of pure ethanol toxicity threshold (i.e. the dose at which organ damage begins) 90 g (285 ml of vodka) per day for the liver, 19 g (60 ml of vodka) per day for the brain.This means a Caucasian person with a healthy liver, kidneys and brain and a body weight of 70 kg.
However, it is not difficult to calculate that there are 90 grams of pure alcohol in an incomplete glass of vodka.If you imagine a person who drinks a glass of vodka every day, he will develop alcohol addiction in six to eight months if there is a genetic predisposition, and after three years if there is no genetic predisposition.It cannot be said that after a few months the dose of alcohol will constantly increase.
The World Health Organization (WHO) considers that weekly consumption of alcoholic beverages in excess of 150 ml (over 25 vol.% ethanol) is sufficient to cause alcohol dependence.
Note: if a person has suffered from viral hepatitis (except hepatitis A) or other chronic liver diseases, the safe dose for the liver in the non-acute period is reduced by two to three times.It depends on the volume of the affected part of the body 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 calculate what the drinking regime is for this, so that the body has time to recover: the body of a healthy person cannot metabolize more than 170 g of alcohol (538 ml of vodka) per day. To restore the liver, drinking alcohol for one day should be replaced by eight days of abstinence. Thus, the "acceptable" dose per month would be (31/(1+8))*170 (g), i.e. 586 grams, in terms of pure alcohol.For comparison: a standard bottle of vodka contains 316 grams of alcohol.
If you drink more than 170 grams of alcohol, then you need to increase the intervals between drinking sessions - this is the only way to reduce the damage.
To sum it all up, let's try to imagine three people drinking once every 8 days.Anyone who exceeds the limit of 170 grams of alcohol will damage the liver and other organs: kidneys, stomach, pancreas, lungs, retina.Anyone who drinks between 90 and 170 grams is at risk of fatty liver degeneration (and cirrhosis if there is impaired bile flow or hepatitis).Anyone who drinks 19 to 90 grams of pure alcohol will only damage the brain.
With the development of medicine, doctors' recommendations are gradually changing."To Drink or Not to Drink?", Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.he talks about it interestingly in his book.(2020).First of all, the damage of alcohol to the liver and cardiovascular system was obvious.British doctors recently allowed men to drink 21 drinks (standard alcohol units) and women to 14 per week.Of course, the drinkers made no particular effort to stay within these limits: after all, if 14 drinks does not harm the liver, then does the damage suddenly start with two or three times the dose?It seems that the liver cannot count.
In the 21st century, we have learned more.Accurate scientific studies have confirmed that even very small doses of alcohol damage the brain and increase the risk of cancer.This is more serious.Scientists have determined that there is no absolutely safe amount of alcohol;we can only talk about "low health risk" doses.In 2016, British doctors equalized this dose for men and women, because the level of risk from small doses of alcohol is the same for both sexes, and if this limit is exceeded, the risk increases more rapidly for men.Now everyone is advised not to drink 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).Moreover, you should stretch this amount of drink throughout the week and not drink it every day.
Is drinking less or moderate drinking better for your health?
For light-haired, light-skinned, light-eyed people of European descent, if you don't want to give up drinking, it's better to drink less (in short-term drinking mode).Less often means no more than once a month, due to the danger of rapid development of addiction with regular drinking.For black-skinned, black-haired, black-eyed people, the drinking mode is not of fundamental importance, provided that the doses are followed in terms of ethanol.
How different peoples tolerate alcoholic beverages
You should also consider that dark-skinned and dark-haired Caucasians (Mongoloids are a separate matter) develop addiction more slowly during regular drinking sessions than fair-skinned and light-haired people.
This is due to the fact that dark-skinned and black-skinned people carry the genes of peoples of southern origin.Peoples of southern origin were formed in the conditions of eating a lot of fruits and berries, which contain a lot of glucose, vinic acid, fiber and pectin.In the large intestine, these components undergo alcoholic fermentation, so the body has adapted to microdoses of ethanol over many generations.
Light-skinned and light-haired people have evolved to carry the genes of northern peoples who consume animal foods and mostly vegetables that produce lactic acid fermentation.For northerners, alcohol is a xenobiotic (foreign substance) and addiction to it is formed through other mechanisms very similar to addiction to other weak poisons.
Where did humans get the ability to metabolize alcohol?
All mammals have the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol, but it processes ethyl alcohol with great difficulty, although it copes better with other alcohols.If man had inherited this kind of biochemistry from animals, then we would not be attracted to drinking: even the smallest doses of alcohol contained in overripe fruits would cause severe intoxication in the body, not to mention strong drinks.
However, scientists discovered that after the evolutionary branch of our ancestors, orangutans, diverged from them, but before we parted ways with gorillas and chimpanzees, a special subtype of this enzyme - "class four" (ADH4) - alcohol dehydrogenase appeared.A small mutation in the genome of our ancestors changed the 294th amino acid of the enzyme, allowing their bodies to process overripe fruit that fell to the ground, eliminating the need to climb trees for unripe fruit.
So 10 million years ago, the ability to process alcohol helped us descend from the trees and explore open spaces to later become homo erectus.And, as often happens in evolution, this skill later became useful for completely different purposes.
The benefits of wine - fact or myth
Main benefits of alcoholic beverages comes of course from dry red wine.Dry wine is the fermentation product of grapes (fruit and berry wines are not strictly wine), all the sugar in the grapes is fermented into alcohol by microorganisms.The only sugar that is fermented is the sugar naturally found in grapes.Therefore, the amount of ethanol in dry wines, as a rule, does not exceed 13%.
The health benefits come primarily from dry red wine. powerful antioxidant.It helps lower cholesterol levels and is 10-20 times stronger than vitamin E as an antioxidant.Dry red wine contains about 3 times more resveratrol than grape juice of the same grape variety.
For reference, antioxidants are substances that can neutralize substances called active radicals, which are constantly formed in the body and are considered one of the aging factors.However, it should be noted that strong antioxidants are not necessarily beneficial: they can both protect against cancer and cause cancer.Excessive use of them carries risks in itself.
Dry red wine also contains a number of valuable trace elements, such as rubidium, has a calming, anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effect.
It should be borne in mind that an excess of rubidium is more harmful to the body than its deficiency, so daily consumption of dry red in large quantities will not bring any benefit.
A separate article should have been devoted to the question of whether wine is good for the heart or not.Unfortunately, the Mediterranean diet's claims that a moderate amount of dry red wine is good for the heart have been proven false.
We must also 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 per week (about 450ml).
Is beer healthy?
Another alcoholic drink that can be said to have health benefits is beer.We are talking, first of all, about unpasteurized, "live" beer, which prevailed in the country 20 years ago and is now rare.
Contains beer, including yeast products B vitamins, even if it is in an amount that does not meet daily needs;zinc, a valuable trace element necessary for the synthesis of insulin.The condition of the skin and reproductive system depends on the zinc content.Hops components - natural analogs of benzodiazepine tranquilizers - have a calming effect, especially in combination with phytoestrogens, plant analogs of female sex hormones of the follicular phase.In moderate doses, hops have a calming effect.
The limit for a healthy dose of beer is about 600 ml per day.However, daily consumption of beer for several years leads to the formation of addiction in light-skinned, light-eyed, light-haired people, including tranquilizers.Beer addiction develops more carelessly and is more difficult to treat than "pure" alcohol addiction, which is caused by, for example, vodka addiction.
The effect of hermesis (hormesis)
As for other alcoholic drinks, we can say that the benefit of their moderate consumption is the effect of the so-called drink. hermesis (hormesis) - a mobilizing reaction of the body to a harmful effect in a small dose.
What word is this? Now let's figure it out
This effect is as follows: our body tries to remain the same despite external influences (homeostasis), and therefore, in response to the introduction of poison, it makes efforts directed against the external influence.If the external influence is not excessive, a mobilization reaction is obtained (the usual stages of increasing the 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 is not moderate, but rather appears for small doses of alcohol: no more than 50 ml of vodka (one tablespoon of alcohol) twice a week.
By the way, this effect is present 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, there were stories about how radiation sickness was treated with vodka after a radioactive explosion.Is this true?
Alcohol is an antioxidant.When the body is irradiated, active radicals are formed that damage cells.Antioxidants neutralize active radicals.Therefore, when alcohol is not oxidized, it has some degree of antiradiation effect.Alcohol oxidation products themselves have a harmful effect similar to the effect of active radicals.It will not be possible to treat radiation sickness that has already occurred with vodka (except symptomatically).
That is, vodka prevention of radiation sickness may look like this: drink a glass and pass through the radiation zone.And at the exit - immediately under the IV.
Conversely, before exposure to ionizing radiation, it makes sense to consume dry red wine prophylactically;is a more reliable antioxidant.
Does alcohol damage your hearing?
Drinking small amounts of alcohol regularly can help people preserve their hearing in the future, Australian scientists say.From 1997 to 1999, they studied and surveyed 2,000 residents over the age of 55 in the Sydney area.
It has been found that people who regularly consume up to 56 grams of pure alcohol per day throughout their lives (the amount in 180 ml of vodka, or 600 ml of wine or 1440 ml of beer) have less hearing problems in old age.Perhaps the reason lies in the vasodilating effect of alcohol, which improves blood flow to the external cells of the ear.
However, scientists point out that the main issue in this matter is not excess: patients who drink excessively (consume more than 56 grams of pure alcohol per day) have more serious hearing problems than those who absolutely abstain.
Does alcohol cure depression?
In 2013, a large study was completed in Pamplona, Spain.After a large study of 5,500 volunteers, scientists concluded that moderate consumption - 5-15 grams of pure alcohol per day - reduces the risk of depression.Especially good results were observed in those who drank 2-7 glasses (150 ml) of wine per week.
Those who drank more than that, on the other hand, had a higher-than-normal risk of depression.Depression and bad mood should not be confused.Major depressive disorder is an illness characterized by prolonged and - this is the main difference - unexplained depression of mood, mental and motor retardation, as well as the inability and unwillingness to enjoy natural things such as food or sex (anhedonia).
Why do creative people drink?
Creative people sometimes find that they come up with amazing new ideas after drinking.Why does this happen?
After entering the body, alcohol triggers the process of apoptosis: the death of brain cells.As a result, some elements are cut off from the neural network, synaptic connections are broken, and then partially restored.Some relationships are formed according to a new pattern.Any knowledge and understanding is the passage of electrical signals in the brain along a certain path, because this is where thought is possible.
However, such thoughts are a happy accident that can happen during the first few years of drinking.It will not be possible to achieve this purposefully, because we do not know which specific neuron's death will lead to the establishment of a more successful "thought route".It is more likely that the death of neurons will lead to a decline in mental abilities, and that regular drinking will lead to alcoholism.
Which is healthier: drinking in moderation or not drinking at all?
Research showing the benefits of moderate drinking is, in fact, flawed.This is what a group of scientists from the USA, Canada and Australia say.
Scientists analyzed 87 studies.According to their results, moderate drinkers appeared to be healthier than non-drinkers.It turns out that most of these studies cannot be trusted.
The main drawback of these studies was that the group of non-drinkers included everyone: both those who could not drink due to health reasons, and those who used to drink heavily, who later decided to stop in order not to become alcoholics.It turns out that the group of non-smokers usually consists of people who are initially in poor health, drinking or suffering from serious diseases.Moderate drinkers include people who do not suffer from alcohol dependence and are generally healthy and can drink as much as they want.
That's why at the end of the study it was found that moderate drinkers are healthier than absolute abstainers. The scientists looked back at previous studies and found such people who drank infrequently and irregularly.They were found to live longer than study participants who drank moderately.On average, they lived longer than moderate drinkers, nondrinkers, and even heavy drinkers.
I did not live to see the investigation
When studying alcohol-related deaths, elderly patients are selected for the study: over 50 years of age.However, alcoholics often die at an earlier age.A doctor of medical sciences from the Boston Medical Center (USA) commented on the situation, "dead people cannot be included in cohort studies."
Heavy drinkers over the age of 50, especially in good health, genetics, less hazardous alcohol consumption, etc.are people who survive by chance.That is why patients with such good health, which even alcohol cannot destroy, live longer than those who abstain, thereby spoiling all statistics.It's just that the most resilient survived, the rest of the alcoholics died earlier, but we don't take young people into account in mortality studies.
Naimi, together with Tanya Chikritz and other colleagues, who are already known to us, published new data in 2019.They analyzed statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2006 to 2010.It has been found that more than 40% of alcohol-related deaths occur before the age of 50.
Drinking appears to be least dangerous for people over 65: although 35% of alcohol-related deaths also occur at this age, drinkers at this age are 80% less likely to die prematurely (before their estimated life expectancy).So if you read an article about drinkers living longer than non-drinkers, know that this pattern only applies to older people.Young alcoholics are more likely to die young.
Can alcohol be helpful?Research results
In 1999, a Dutch doctor conducted a study and his results show that moderate drinking is beneficial for the cardiovascular system.Myocardial infarction occurred in patients who consumed the least moderate amount of alcohol: from 14 to 56 grams of pure alcohol per day, which is less than a glass of vodka.
The risk of myocardial infarction was even higher among absolute abstainers and significantly higher among alcohol abusers.At the same time, the choice of drink did not play a role: wine, beer and spirits reduced the risk of heart disease equally on average.In 2017, an extensive article was published in the British Medical Journal about this and other research on this topic.
The researchers suggested the same U-shaped dependence of the frequency of brain diseases on the amount of alcohol.That is, brain diseases are slightly more common in non-drinkers, rarely in moderate drinkers, and more often in heavy drinkers. In this case, it turns out that even small doses of alcohol only harm the brain.In general, it is not yet possible to say for certain whether moderate drinking can be beneficial or whether alcohol in any amount is harmful to us.
Studies can show different results, and that's normal: health and life expectancy are influenced by thousands and thousands of factors (diet, habits, exercise, climate, genes, whatever).Isolating the effect of one of them is a difficult task that requires a large number of subjects, sophisticated methodology and a lot of patience.It is often difficult to distinguish results from statistical noise.
It's safe to say that if there are benefits to small doses of alcohol, they hardly appear in the light of everything else that affects the body.But the harm of alcohol, unfortunately, is immediately detected and does not cause any doubt in the researchers.So, if the main thing for you is to protect your health, it is wiser not to drink at all than to try to improve your body with small doses 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 (NIH) would spend 100 million dollars on a large-scale study on the benefits of small doses of alcohol.However, officials intercepted correspondence between the 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 investigation were predetermined.As a result, the investigation was canceled.
It should be noted that such news should not be surprising: often studies on the benefits of a particular product are funded by manufacturers.For example, some companies pay for the bulk of research on the benefits of cocoa, while others sponsor research on the benefits of yogurt.This is not direct bribery and anyone can see who commissioned the investigation.Another thing is that manufacturers can present the results in a favorable light.For example, publish studies that only show the benefits of cocoa, and then say that not only cocoa, but chocolate made from it is healthy (which is not true).So, we have another reason to criticize what is written about science in the press.
Finally, to put an end to this issue, scientists are trying to find out whether moderate drinkers live longer than non-drinkers.