11 Ways Alcohol Is Legitimately Healthy

Excessive alcohol use can harm people who drink https://ecosoberhouse.com/ and those around them. You and your community can take steps to improve everyone’s health and quality of life. When it comes to alcohol, if you don’t drink, don’t start for health reasons. In the United States, people younger than age 21 are not legally able to drink alcohol. During pregnancy, drinking may cause the unborn baby to have brain damage and other problems.

Drinking in moderation

The grapes used to make champagne are high in phenolic compounds, a type of antioxidant that can boost brain health and may help reduce risk for dementia. When it comes to a healthier alcohol, red wine is top of the list. Here’s what you need to know about the healthiest alcohols and which you should avoid.

Calories (specifically, carbs)

Scientists aren’t sure why exactly, but it might be that a drink or two helps your body deal with high blood sugar levels in a healthy way. In fact, your overall diabetes risk tends to drop with moderate alcohol consumption. However, when it comes to heavy drinking and binge drinking, your risk rises (53, 54, 55, 56). Instead, much alcohol research is observational, meaning it follows large groups of drinkers and abstainers over time.

Alcohol and the Gut: Friends or Foes?

• Hepatologists advise there’s actually no such thing as “healthy” alcohol, but choosing from their list of safer drinks may help you do the least possible damage to your system.
• A 2018 study published in The Lancet and coauthored by Sheron finds that no level of alcohol consumption improves health.
• “I really recommend that people drink alcohol while eating food, because it’s going to slow the absorption of alcohol and how fast it gets into your bloodstream,” she notes.
• For example, it may be used to define the risk of illness or injury based on the number of drinks a person has in a week.
• The first of these to appear is fatty liver, characterized by increased fat inside liver cells.

If you tend to drink excessively or notice that alcohol causes problems in your life, you should avoid it as much as possible. In the US, one standard drink is any drink that contains 0.6 fluid ounces (14 grams) of pure alcohol (ethanol). The problem is, most people have no idea what qualifies is alcohol good for you as a “standard drink.” To worsen matters, the official definition of a standard drink differs between countries.

Ways to reduce risks

That’s 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. But the health benefits of drinking may not be so cut and dry, and the risks, on the other hand, are hard to ignore. Another problem, Naimi noted, was that most studies did not include younger people. Almost half of people who die from alcohol-related causes do so before the age of 50. Naimi Substance abuse said the studied groups did not effectively represent all drinkers.

“There is no consensus of scientists on the cardiovascular effects,” says Rehm.“I’m quite agnostic… I’m willing to let well-designed studies decide,” says Sherk. The key thing to know here is that nearly all studies of alcohol in humans are observational, meaning they look for correlations among large research cohorts who self-report habits. These aren’t randomized control studies, which serve as the gold standard for understanding the effects of pharmaceuticals. Instead, observational studies can only really demonstrate associations, not causal relationships. Drinking habits are complex and heavily influenced by non-random factors. Addiction to booze, she says, is similar to addiction to highly processed food.

• Excessive alcohol use can harm people who drink and those around them.
• In addition to the alcohol content, keep an eye on the calories you’re drinking.
• The key with alcohol is drinking in moderation, and weighing any health benefits against the negative impacts of drinking.
• For mixed drinks, stick with a Bloody Mary at 120 calories, a rum and Diet Coke at 100 calories, or a Mojito at 143 calories.
• Next time I’m checking out a new bar for work, I’ll order plenty of snacks to go with the drinks.