Wednesday, May 27, 2009

More on Alcohol Consumption




Some time ago I suggested that up to a half bottle of red wine a day was a safe dose of alcohol and would have a therapeutic effect. This is of course a maximum and I would suggest that you should avoid ever drinking more than half a bottle in any one day. Different people will have different bodies and so some may be able to drink more and some less. The other day I had two beers and then a half bottle of red. This was after a fairly long period of drinking red wine every day. I began to notice that I was pouring myself a glass earlier in the day and even hiding my glass if I heard my wife approaching the room. Clearly I don’t want to be someone who is seen to be drinking constantly. My face seems to be looking a little red too and I worry about the state of my liver. It is also quite expensive.

I haven’t had any alcohol now for six days as I write this and I am feeling very healthy although I know that this feeling will pass soon and the opposite will happen. If I don’t drink anything the night before I always never regret this fact which is something to think about however the key to health with alcohol is moderation not abstinence. A thing that concerns me and many studies support it and that is the longest living people tend to drink some alcohol so I wont give up altogether - that would be madness. So what to do? I’ve decided to restrict consumption to no more that a quarter of a bottle a day as a sort of medicinal dose and have days where nothing is imbibed at all.

I have also noticed that over the past six days my weight has dropped back to just over 70kg whereas it was edging up to close to 72kg. Maybe wine drinking is fattening after all. A half bottle everyday is around 400 calories which is a significant amount. Maybe at night while sleeping the body burns alcohol and stores fat. Alcohol needs to be burned off first so while the body is doing that it is doing nothing else.

You know the body soon bounces back to vibrant health if it is looked after. You notice this in animals that are brought to the shelter in a very poor state of health. After a few days of good food and tender loving care their coats return to being shiny and their energy returns. It is the same for humans – the body is all geared up to return to vibrant health almost at the moment you start looking after it. In some ways this is a bad thing as people tend to abuse their bodies knowing that it is very resilient – it is amazing what the human body can put up with. For instance it will take a prolonged period of alcohol abuse but after a while you will begin to notice it. As you age the bounce back will become less efficient and constant irritation of the body will eventually result in a fatal malady.