Is alcohol bad for you or is alcohol good for you? Yes

Red wine may be one of the healthiest alcoholic beverages, probably due to its high concentration of antioxidants. Chronic alcohol abuse can wreak havoc on your body and brain, increasing your risk of many diseases. Numerous factors can predispose people to problematic drinking, such as family history, is alcohol good for you social environment, mental health and genetics. Simultaneously, alcohol abuse is the third main cause of preventable death in the US, as it’s a large factor in chronic diseases, accidents, traffic crashes and social problems (68). Drinking alcohol may increase your risk of certain cancers, especially mouth and throat cancer. Characterized by abnormally high blood sugar, type 2 diabetes is caused by a reduced uptake of glucose, or blood sugar, by your cells — a phenomenon known as insulin resistance.

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And it analyzed the overall health impact related to alcohol consumption, including death and disability due to automobile accidents, infectious diseases, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. It concluded that the best option for overall health was no drinking at all. Of note, the definition of “a drink” in this study was 10 grams of alcohol — that’s 30% less than a standard drink in the US, but 25% more than a standard drink in the UK. The risk of developing cancer increases substantially the more alcohol is consumed. This drinking pattern is responsible for the majority of alcohol-attributable breast cancers in women, with the highest burden observed in countries of the European Union (EU).

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If you already drink at low levels and continue to drink, risks for these issues appear to be low. Emily offers online workshops as part of her mission to make her knowledge accessible to everyone. She speaks nationally and internationally to a diverse range of audiences including educators, health and mental health professionals, and the general public. Her expertise has been featured in Oprah Magazine, CNN, USA Today, NBC, and more. Dr. Jamea hosts the popular Love & Libido Podcast, writes columns for Psychology Today and Healthy Women, and posts across all the social media channels @dremilyjamea.

Whereas light or moderate alcohol consumption may be good for your heart, excessive drinking weakens the heart muscle.

• The new study is fascinating, but it may not be replicated in larger pieces of research.
• Excessive alcohol use is a term used to describe four ways that people drink alcohol that can negatively impact health.
• Despite this, less than half of the US public is aware of any alcohol-cancer connection.
• Further, it’s firmly established that alcohol is an addictive substance with systemic effects in the body that can lead to physiological dependence.

If we imagine the conversation about alcohol’s health effects as a football field, the consensus covers 95 yards of the 100-yard field — almost all the way to the goal of general unanimity. We all agree heavy drinking is bad, but the fight remains on the issue — the remaining five yards — of whether light drinking is truly bad and that is still being debated. Subsequent studies appeared to affirm the correlation, strengthening the belief among the general public about the benefits of red wine. But over the past decade, new studies and public health warnings have called that conventional wisdom into question, stating emphatically that no level of alcohol consumption could be considered safe — much less beneficial. In all, the new cholesterol findings aren’t an invitation for nondrinkers to start drinking or for heavy drinkers to keep hitting the bottle hard, the researchers caution.

Alcohol Use and Your Health

However, some kombucha makers are now producing hard kombucha, which has an alcohol content similar to beer or hard seltzer. Regular kombucha has some health benefits, including reducing blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and aiding in digestion. Even light alcohol consumption — up to one drink per day — is linked to a 20% increased risk of mouth and throat cancer (59, 60).

• Many are exploring ways to cut back, including the Dry January Challenge or alcohol-free drinks.
• Red wine appears to be particularly beneficial because it is very high in healthy antioxidants.
• Heavy alcohol drinking can affect the absorption of or increase the loss of zinc and other nutrients.
• As a rule of thumb, if alcohol is adversely affecting your quality of life, you may have a problem with alcohol dependence or alcoholism.
• Sarah found that sitting in her car for a few minutes and taking several deep breaths before picking up the kids went a long way in helping her calm her nervous system before transitioning to mommy mode.

Alcohol consumption above those levels is considered heavy drinking. Too much beer can cause a drop in blood glucose levels because alcohol prevents the liver from producing glucose. Although the liver can produce glucose if blood sugar drops too low, once these emergency stores are used up, more can’t be made right away if a person with Type 1 diabetes drinks too much.

The best advice, and the safest thing to do, is always discuss this with your health care provider to determine if it’s safe to drink alcohol or not. It’s definitely not something you should take a chance on if you’re uncertain. At the end of the day, determining if alcohol is good or bad for you requires making sound decisions with respect to your health. Excessive alcohol damages brain cells and causes a vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency, which can impair memory and vision. There are many risks from drinking, but high cholesterol doesn’t seem to be one.

• I’ve recently worked with a team on a study showing that it may reduce blindness and other eye problems even in people who don’t have diabetes.
• The ASCO was alarmed by surveys that found only one in three Americans knew about the finding decades after medical literature had documented a link between, for example, alcohol use and breast cancer.
• These aren’t randomized control studies, which serve as the gold standard for understanding the effects of pharmaceuticals.
• Yet a small risk is a very different thing from a small benefit, at the public health level, and that’s where the consensus breaks down.
• We need more high-quality evidence to assess the health impacts of moderate alcohol consumption.
• The advisory calls for updating the existing health warning labels on alcoholic beverages to include a warning about the cancer risks.

Check your drinking

It should be a surprise to no one that drinking too much alcohol can be bad for you — of course, the definition of “too much” can vary. Macie JepsonYou mentioned better sleep, not necessarily the case with alcohol. So can we talk about some other effects of quitting for a while? I mean that should be enough right there to make some people want to stop drinking.

We spent several sessions in therapy exploring the root of her Halfway house sexual hang-ups, and I gave her strategies to overcome them. It took a couple of months, but eventually she tapped into her inner sober vixen. She was overcome with joy to discover that uninhibited sober sex was infinitely more pleasurable than sex with the numbing effect of booze. And what’s more, she found she genuinely desired her husband more frequently in between date nights.

The good and the bad

It was something of a surprise, but perhaps not completely unexpected, when researchers found that semaglutide reduced the risk of heart disease for people even if they did not have diabetes. Even among the positive studies, potential health benefits are often quite small. In addition, alcohol may reduce the risk of one condition (such as cardiovascular disease) while increasing the risk of another (such as cancer). So it’s hard to predict who might actually benefit and who may be harmed more than helped by alcohol consumption. And the balance of risk and benefit likely varies from person to person, based on individual factors such as genetics and lifestyle factors.