Briefly: The harm of alcohol is determined by the dose beyond 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, microelements that are beneficial in small doses and harmful in large doses.
“Drinking a lot is harmful, but drinking a little is boring.”
What is moderate drinking?
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 the white race with a healthy liver, kidneys and brain, and a body weight of 70 kg.
But it’s 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 in the absence of a hereditary predisposition, in three years.Not to mention the fact that after a couple of months the dose of alcohol will constantly increase.
The World Health Organization (WHO) believes that weekly consumption of strong (more than 25 vol.% ethanol) alcoholic beverages in an amount of more than 150 ml is sufficient to form alcohol dependence.
Note: if a person has suffered from viral hepatitis (except for 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 volume of the affected part of the organ 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 regimen should be for this, so that the body has time to recover: the body of a healthy person cannot metabolize alcohol in an amount of more than 170 g per day (538 ml of vodka). One day of drinking alcohol to restore the liver should be alternated with eight days of abstinence. Thus, the “acceptable” dose per month will be (31/(1+8))*170 (g) in terms of pure alcohol, that 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 intervals between drinking sessions - this is the only way to reduce harm.
To sum it all up, let's try to imagine three people who drink once every 8 days.Anyone who exceeds the threshold of 170 grams of alcohol will have damage to the liver and other organs: kidneys, stomach, pancreas, lungs, retina.Anyone who drinks from 90 to 170 grams is at risk of 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 are gradually changing.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 was obvious.More recently, British doctors allowed men to drink up to 21 drinks (standard units of alcohol), and women - up to 14 drinks per week.Of course, drinkers did not particularly try to stay within these limits: after all, if 14 drinks do not cause harm to the liver, then would harm suddenly begin from a dose two or three times greater?The liver doesn’t seem to be able to 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 much more serious.Scientists have found 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 equalized this dose for men and women, because from small doses of alcohol the level of risk in both sexes is the same, and if it is exceeded, the risk for men grows faster.Now everyone is recommended to drink no more than 14 drinks per week: this is 1 liter of 4% beer or 6 glasses of wine with a strength of 13% (175 ml glasses).Moreover, you need to stretch this amount of drinking over the whole week and not drink every day.
Is it better for your health to drink less often or drink more moderately?
For fair-haired, light-skinned, light-eyed people of European descent, if you do not want to give up drinking, it is better to drink less often (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 dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed people, the drinking regimen is not of fundamental importance, provided that the doses in terms of ethanol are observed.
How different peoples tolerate alcohol
You should also keep in mind that darker-skinned and dark-haired Caucasians (Mongoloids are a separate issue) develop addiction during regular drinking sessions much more slowly than light-skinned and fair-haired people.
This is due to the fact that dark-skinned and dark-skinned people carry the genes of peoples of southern origin.Peoples of southern origin were formed in conditions of eating large quantities of fruits and berries containing a lot of glucose, grape 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 fair-haired people carry the genes of northern peoples, who evolutionarily consumed animal foods and vegetables that produce predominantly 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 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 much better with other alcohols.If a person had inherited exactly this kind of biochemistry from animals, then we would not be drawn to drinking: even the slightest doses of alcohol, which are contained in overripe fruits, would cause severe intoxication in the body, not to mention strong drinks.
However, scientists managed to find out that our ancestors, after the evolutionary branch of orangutans separated from them, but before we parted ways with gorillas and chimpanzees, a special subtype of this enzyme appeared - alcohol dehydrogenase of the “fourth class” (ADH4).A small mutation in the genome of our ancestors changed the 294th amino acid of the enzyme and made it possible for their bodies to process overripe fruits that fell to the ground, and eliminated the need to climb trees for unripe fruits.
Thus, 10 million years ago, the ability to process alcohol helped us climb down from the trees and begin to explore open spaces in order to subsequently become homo erectus.And, as often happens in evolution, this skill was later useful for completely different purposes.
The benefits of wine - truth or myth
Main benefits of alcoholic drinks comes, of course, from dry red wine.Dry wine is a fermentation product of grapes (fruit and berry wines are not wines in the strict sense), in which all the sugar contained in the grapes is fermented by microorganisms into alcohol.The only sugar that is fermented is the one that is naturally found in the grapes.Therefore, the ethanol content in dry wines, as a rule, does not exceed 13%.
Health benefits come primarily from dry red wine. powerful antioxidant.It helps lower cholesterol levels and is also 10-20 times stronger than vitamin E as an antioxidant.Dry red wine contains approximately 3 times more resveratrol than grape juice from the same grape varieties.
For reference, antioxidants are substances that can neutralize the 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 powerful antioxidants are not an absolute benefit: 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 microelements, for example, rubidium, which 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 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 believed that drinking in small doses could prevent atherosclerosis.No, all modern scientific data indicate the opposite.A healthy dose of dry red wine is three glasses (approximately 450 ml) per week.
Is beer healthy?
Another alcoholic drink that can be said to be capable of providing health benefits can be considered beer.We are talking, first of all, about unpasteurized, so-called “live” beer, which prevailed in the country 20 years ago, and is now a rarity.
Beer contains yeast products, including B vitamins, though in quantities that do not satisfy the daily requirement;zinc, which is a valuable microelement necessary for the synthesis of insulin.The condition of the skin and reproductive system depends on the zinc content.Hops components - natural analogues of benzodiazepine tranquilizers - 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 approximately 600 ml per day.However, daily consumption of beer for several years leads to the formation of addiction in light-skinned, light-eyed, fair-haired people, including due to the content of tranquilizers.Beer addiction develops more unnoticed and is more difficult to treat compared to “pure” alcohol addiction, which developed, for example, as a result of an addiction to vodka.
Effect of hermesis (hormesis)
Regarding other alcoholic drinks, we can say that the benefit of their moderate consumption is the effect of the so-called hermesis (hormesis) - a mobilizing reaction of the body to a harmful effect in a small dose.
What kind of buzzword is this? Let's figure it out 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 the external influence.If the external influence is not excessive, then a mobilizing reaction 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 (a 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 a 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, while alcohol has not oxidized, it has an anti-radiation effect to some extent.Alcohol oxidation products themselves have a damaging effect similar to the action 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 move on through the radiation zone.And at the exit - immediately under an IV.
Rather, before exposure to ionizing radiation, it makes sense to consume dry red wine prophylactically; it is a much 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 in the Sydney area who were over 55 years of age.
It turned out that people who regularly consumed up to 56 grams of pure alcohol per 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 vasodilating effect of alcohol, which improves 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 (consuming more than 56 grams of pure alcohol per day) have much more serious hearing problems than absolute abstainers.
Does alcohol save you from depression?
In 2013, a large study was completed in the city of Pamplona, Spain.After extensive work with 5,500 volunteers, scientists came to the conclusion that moderate consumption—5 to 15 grams of pure alcohol per day—reduces the risk of depression.Particularly good results were observed in those who drank wine in quantities of 2 to 7 glasses (150 ml) per week.
Those who drank more than this, on the contrary, had a higher than normal risk of developing depression.Depression and bad mood should not be confused.Major depressive disorder is an illness that manifests itself with long-term and - this is the main difference - causeless 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 notice that after drinking, they come up with amazing new ideas.Why is this happening?
Once in 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 connections are formed according to a new pattern.This is where insight is possible, since any knowledge and understanding is the passage of electrical signals in the brain along a certain path.
However, such insights are a happy accident that can happen in 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 construction of a more successful “route for thoughts.”It is much 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 showing the benefits of moderate drinking is flawed at its very core.So says a group of scientists from the USA, Canada and Australia.
Scientists analyzed 87 studies.According to their results, it turned out that moderate drinkers were healthier than non-drinkers.It turned 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 cannot drink for health reasons, and those who drank so much before that they later decided to stop so as not to become an alcoholic.It turns out that a group of abstainers usually consists of people with initially poor health, undermined by drinking or serious illnesses.And the group of moderate drinkers includes people who do not suffer from alcohol addiction and are generally healthy, so they can afford to drink as much as they want.
That’s why it turns out at the end of the study that moderate drinkers are healthier than absolute abstainers. Scientists once again looked at previous studies and found just such people who drink rarely and irregularly.It turned out that they live longer than moderate drinking study participants.Their life expectancy was, on average, longer than that of moderate drinkers, than that of non-drinkers, and even more so than that of heavy drinkers.
Didn’t live to see the research
When mortality from alcohol is 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 sciences from Boston Medical Center (USA) comments on the situation.
Heavy drinkers over 50 are people who accidentally survived due to particularly good health, genetics, consumption of less dangerous alcoholic beverages, etc. This is why patients with such good health, which even alcohol could not destroy, live even longer than abstainers, and thereby spoil all the statistics.It’s just that the most resilient ones remained alive, the rest of the alcoholics died earlier, but we don’t take young people into account in mortality studies.
Naimi, together with Tanya Chikritz, already known to us, 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 turned out that more than 40% of deaths from alcohol occur before the age of 50.
Drinking turned out to be least dangerous for people over 65 years of age: although 35% of deaths from alcohol also occur at this age, drunkards of this age are 80% less likely to die prematurely (before the predicted expected age).So, if you read an article about how drinkers live longer than non-drinkers, know that this pattern only holds true for 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 suggest that moderate drinking is beneficial for the cardiovascular system.Myocardial infarction occurred least often in patients who drank alcohol in moderate doses: from 14 to 56 grams of pure alcohol per day, which is less than a glass of vodka.
Among absolute abstainers, the risk of myocardial infarction was even slightly higher, and among alcohol abusers it was significantly higher.At the same time, the choice of drink did not play a role: wine, beer and spirits in moderation equally reduced the risk of heart disease.An extensive article was published in the British Medical Journal about this and other studies on this topic in 2017.
The researchers suggested the same U-shaped dependence of the incidence of brain diseases on the amount of alcohol.That is, brain diseases occur a little more often in non-drinkers, rarely in moderate drinkers, and much more often in heavy drinkers. In this case, it turns out that even small doses of alcohol only cause 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 and thousands of factors (diet, habits, sports, climate, genes, whatever).Isolating the influence of one of them is a difficult task that requires a huge number of subjects, refined methodology and a lot of patience.It is often difficult to distinguish results from statistical noise.
What can be said with certainty is that if there are benefits of small doses of alcohol, then they are barely visible against the background of everything else that affects the body.But the harm from alcohol, alas, is detected immediately and does not raise any doubts among researchers.Thus, 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 small doses of alcohol.
Alcohol producers can bribe scientists
In the summer of 2018, a scandal erupted in the United States: the National Institute of Health (N.I.H.) was going to spend $100 million on a large-scale study on 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: quite often, research on the benefits of a particular product is sponsored by manufacturers.For example, some companies pay for much of the research into the benefits of cocoa, while others sponsor research into the benefits of yogurt.This is not direct bribery, and anyone can see who ordered the research.Another thing is that manufacturers can present the results in a favorable light.For example, publish only those studies that show the benefits of cocoa, and then say that not only cocoa is healthy, but also chocolate made from it (which is not true).So we have another reason to be critical of 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.