Alcohol and health - are they compatible?
Alcohol is present in almost every person's life. Someone drinks only on holidays, someone likes to relax with a portion of alcohol on weekends, and someone abuses alcohol all the time. It just so happened that we take and love alcohol, we cannot imagine the slightest significant event without an impressive range of various alcoholic beverages. Wedding, Birthday, Funeral, New Year - none of these dates are complete without a glass or bottle. A Russian person just has a craving for alcohol in his blood, and we speak about him respectfully, affectionately, "a glass", "beer", "vodka".
The effect of alcohol on behavior depends on the amount of alcohol reaching the brain through the blood. This "blood alcohol level" is determined by several other factors besides the amount of alcohol consumed:
- The size of the liver determines the rate of oxidation and elimination of alcohol.
- The mass of a person himself determines the amount of blood in the body, since the volume of blood is proportional to it. The larger the person, the more the blood dilutes the alcohol consumed and the more it is needed to have the same effect.
- The speed and manner of drinking alcohol are also important. The slower a person drinks a certain amount of alcohol, the weaker its effect.
- Fasting alcohol consumption has a stronger and faster effect than consumption during or after meals. The food acts as a buffer for absorption.
Alcohol in small doses can have health benefits. There is more and more scientific evidence about this. Alcohol lowers blood cholesterol, prevents blood clots, dilates blood vessels and thus promotes more intense blood circulation. As a result, the likelihood of developing cardiovascular and some other diseases is reduced. The measure of consumption is very important and well-known: two or three glasses of wine a day for men and a maximum of one and a half for women. And one glass of red wine with dinner is better for heart health. Too much wine is more dangerous than a shortage of wine - all healing qualities from excessiveness turn into harmful ones.
Excessive alcohol consumption causes public discontent, hangovers and reduced performance in the short term; in the long term, it causes irreversible liver damage, memory loss and impaired mental functioning, insomnia, slow reflexes with a corresponding increase in the risk of accidents, and impairment of sanity and emotional control. Although alcohol resistance is higher in men than in women, alcoholic men are at greater risk of liver damage, many forms of cancer, and immune system disorders.
In general, women who abuse alcohol are 2.5 times more likely than non-drinkers to have various gynecological diseases. Alcohol abuse, destroying a woman's body, depletes her nervous and endocrine systems and ultimately leads to infertility. In addition, women who abuse alcohol often lead a promiscuous sex life, which is inevitably accompanied by inflammatory diseases of the genital organs and ends in infertility. The state of intoxication at the moment of conception can have an extremely negative effect on the health of the unborn child, since alcohol is dangerous not only for maturing germ cells, but can play its fatal role at the time of fertilization of completely full (normal) germ cells. Moreover, the strength of the damaging effect of alcohol at the time of conception is unpredictable: it can be as mild violations,and severe organic lesions of various organs and tissues of the unborn child.
If you want to lose weight, you will have to eliminate alcohol from your diet. This must be done for the following reasons:
alcoholic beverages have a high energy value due to the ethyl alcohol itself and carbohydrates included in many drinks - glucose, sucrose, maltose;
- alcohol intake weakens control over the amount of food eaten and can increase appetite;
- spirits, in particular vodka, have a low nutritional value (with a high calorie content), since they do not contain any nutrients.
Russia is more than a special country in terms of alcohol consumption. Here, alas, sad traditions, their own standards. Usage prevails in the form of "shock doses": a large amount of drunk in a short time. More often during the day. In other words, the most unfavorable, so-called “northern” type of drinking dominates in Russia. And historically we drink more and more.
