Posted on

What I tell my friends when they say they could never start running

 

Posted on

No Level of Alcohol is Safe.@ClevelandClinic

Stopping for happy hour with colleagues after work. Cracking open a cold beer (or two) while watching the game. Meeting up with girlfriends for a glass of pinot noir. Having an alcoholic beverage of choice is a common way to unwind. But according to a recent study, even casual drinking can put your long-term health at risk.

Liver specialist Jamile Wakim-Fleming, MD, did not take part in the study, but says the research found that alcohol was a leading risk factor for both disease and premature death.

“They found that alcohol was the seventh leading cause of death worldwide,” she says. “But even more alarming, is that it was the first leading cause of death of people between the ages of 15-49.” 

What the study examined

The study looked at global data from hundreds of previous studies and found that for all ages, alcohol was associated with 2.8 million deaths each year.

Researchers found that alcohol-related cancer and heart disease, infectious diseases, intentional injury, traffic accidents and accidental injury were some of the leading causes of alcohol-related deaths.

But isn’t alcohol good for your heart?

Dr. Wakim-Fleming says people often believe that a little bit of alcohol, wine in particular, may be good for their heart. But the study results didn’t show any health benefit to drinking any amount of alcohol.

She says this information, along with previous research that has shown more young people are dying from alcohol-related liver disease, indicates that excessive drinking among young adults is a growing problem.

The damage grows over time

And like any substance-abuse problem, Dr. Wakim-Fleming says the damage to the body from alcohol increases over your lifespan.

“It’s a cumulative effect,” she explains. “If you do it all at once, then you’re going to have the effect now. If you drink on a regular basis, over years it’s going to be cumulative and you will end up with a problem later on.” 

Dr. Wakim-Fleming notes that anything we do in life involves risk, but it’s important to know what the risks are so that we can make the best decisions for our health.

Complete results of the study can be found in The Lancet.

Posted on

No Level of Alcohol is Safe.@ClevelandClinic

Stopping for happy hour with colleagues after work. Cracking open a cold beer (or two) while watching the game. Meeting up with girlfriends for a glass of pinot noir. Having an alcoholic beverage of choice is a common way to unwind. But according to a recent study, even casual drinking can put your long-term health at risk.

Liver specialist Jamile Wakim-Fleming, MD, did not take part in the study, but says the research found that alcohol was a leading risk factor for both disease and premature death.

“They found that alcohol was the seventh leading cause of death worldwide,” she says. “But even more alarming, is that it was the first leading cause of death of people between the ages of 15-49.” 

What the study examined

The study looked at global data from hundreds of previous studies and found that for all ages, alcohol was associated with 2.8 million deaths each year.

Researchers found that alcohol-related cancer and heart disease, infectious diseases, intentional injury, traffic accidents and accidental injury were some of the leading causes of alcohol-related deaths.

But isn’t alcohol good for your heart?

Dr. Wakim-Fleming says people often believe that a little bit of alcohol, wine in particular, may be good for their heart. But the study results didn’t show any health benefit to drinking any amount of alcohol.

She says this information, along with previous research that has shown more young people are dying from alcohol-related liver disease, indicates that excessive drinking among young adults is a growing problem.

The damage grows over time

And like any substance-abuse problem, Dr. Wakim-Fleming says the damage to the body from alcohol increases over your lifespan.

“It’s a cumulative effect,” she explains. “If you do it all at once, then you’re going to have the effect now. If you drink on a regular basis, over years it’s going to be cumulative and you will end up with a problem later on.” 

Dr. Wakim-Fleming notes that anything we do in life involves risk, but it’s important to know what the risks are so that we can make the best decisions for our health.

Complete results of the study can be found in The Lancet.

Posted on

What Actually Happens In Your Body When You Drink Wine

by Dr. Mark MenolascinoNovember 4, 2015 6:04 AM

Nothing’s better than hearing that the delicious foods we’re already eating also have some pretty big health benefits. (Case in point: dark chocolate and avocados.) So it’s not surprising that the media lit up recently with the exciting news that drinking red wine could be beneficial to our brains.

A study had found that resveratrol — an antioxidant found in red wine — could help slow Alzheimer’s disease. It was suggested that if resveratrol can slow Alzheimer’s, and resveratrol is in red wine, then consuming red wine must also ease the progression of Alzheimer’s.

The damage of drinking anything more than one glass of wine a day far outweighs any benefits.

Unfortunately, that logic just doesn’t work. The reality is that consuming wine in all but the most moderate doses (that’s one glass a day for women, and two for men) will most likely increase the risk of dementia.

And while the data suggests that small amounts of alcohol do offer some protection to the heart, wine is statistically no more protective than any other alcohol.

What Actually Happens In Your Body When You Drink Wine

So how could consuming too much alcohol be linked to dementia? That’s due to a number of factors, including the inflammatory effects, the sugar load, and the toxin demands on the liver.

In fact, as a doctor of internal medicine, I show my patients a picture of a wineglass full of sugar and tell them to imagine this every time they look at a third glass of wine (or beer or liquor). Of course, there isn’t that much sugar in wine, but from a health perspective, that drink is a glass of inflammation.

Here’s how it works: The first inflammatory effect is on the microflora of the gut, where excessive alcohol consumption causes an increase in lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which mimics infection and triggers an immune response. Excessive LPS also hobbles the communication between organs, exacerbating the effect of alcohol on other parts of the body and ultimately increasing the permeability of the gut, as well as the permeability of the blood brain barrier — an emerging factor in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

The second inflammatory effect of consuming too much wine is when it reaches the intestine and is absorbed as nutrition for processing by the liver. This is where healthy carbohydrates are transformed into glycogen by the liver’s packaging department and then stored or sent to the muscles for storage to be burned as needed.

You’d need to drink 1,000 bottles of wine in a day to get a therapeutic dose of resveratrol.

Unfortunately, the sugar in wine, beer, white bread. and soda hits the liver in such a fast-burning stampede that the liver is overloaded. As a result, it sends it off to the body as raw sugar in the blood, or converts it directly into hard-to-burn fat. Our metabolic process is simply not optimized to handle fast-burning sugars.

And research shows that overall, inflammation creates conditions that increase the risk of cancer, depression, dementia, and heart disease.

Then there are the toxins in the alcohol itself. Your liver is an incredible machine. It protects us from vast amounts of environmental toxins, but its capacity is limited. If you increase the demands on your liver, your liver will age faster. Studies have shown that the biological age of a person’s organs can be more than a decade older or younger than the person’s calendar age. As your organs age, their ability to protect your body and brain deteriorates.

As our organ’s capabilities decline, there is increased damage caused by environmental toxins, increased inflammation, and further reduced organ reserve. It’s a deadly cycle.

The Bottom Line

When you drink wine and other sugary drinks, you increase your internal inflammation and reduce your body’s ability to process future toxins. We don’t yet know exactly what causes Alzheimer’s, but chronic inflammation and toxin exposure are high on the list.

In fact, the link between dementia and alcohol is strong enough that Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recently amended their guidelines for dementia prevention to encourage people to reduce the amount they drink as much as possible.

And as far as that recent study goes? While resveratrol is a great molecule in the test tube, you’d need to drink 1,000 bottles of wine in a day to get a therapeutic dose. Riding a bike for an hour a day will do far more to reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s — and it has the added benefit of making you feel and look great.

So go ahead and enjoy that first glass. But any more than that, and the damage of drinking wine will far outweigh the benefit of a sprinkle of resveratrol.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-22330/the-1-health-myth-you-still-believe-about-red-wine-but-shouldnt.htm