The truth is that no one needs alcohol to live, so regardless of what you’ve heard or want to believe, alcohol is not essential in our diets.
Good nutrition can help to improve your health and prevent diseases. The essential nutrients that your body needs are carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, and water. The term “essential” means that if you remove any of these nutrients from your diet, there will be a deficiency that could cause health problems. Alcohol would not fall under the category of an essential nutrient because not having it in your diet does not lead to any sort of deficiency.
Alcoholic beverages primarily consist of water, alcohol (ethanol), and different amounts of sugar. The calories come from the alcohol and sugar and are considered “empty calories” because of the lack of the other essential nutrients. It’s something that you may choose to add to your diet, but it’s not something that you need.
Once alcohol is in your system, your body makes metabolizing it a priority. That means that it will stop metabolizing anything else in order to take care of the alcohol. This happens because unlike protein, carbohydrates, and fat, there is nowhere for alcohol to be stored in our body.
Your liver is the primary site for alcohol metabolism; this is why you can have liver problems from consuming too much alcohol.
Now we often wonder if alcohol has any benefits to consuming it or its just an avenue to unwanted medical conditions. The truth is that any potential benefits of alcohol are relatively small and may not apply to all individuals.
The benefits of taking alcohol relates to heart health because there has been some evidence that drinking the occasional glass of red wine may be good for your heart either by preventing heart disease or lowering your risk of heart disease but it’s also not a good idea to start drinking alcohol in an effort to lower your risk of heart disease because overindulging in alcohol can also result in an irregular heartbeat. So the negative consequences of alcohol when consumed in excess outweigh any health benefit it has to offer.
Long-term alcohol consumption can cause problems related to your brain, liver (cirrhosis, steatosis, alcoholic hepatitis, fibrosis), heart (high blood pressure, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias, stroke), pancreas (pancreatitis), and immune system. It can also put you at risk for certain cancers, including those of the mouth, esophagus, throat, breast, and liver. It can cause fetal alcohol syndrome in the infant when consumed by pregnant women. There is no known safe level for alcohol consumption in pregnant and lactating women.
Alcohol also has an effect on weight gain because your body tends to take in more calories than needed. Simply put, when you consume alcohol, you are consuming calories. When those calories take you above the level that your body needs, you gain weight.
Alcohol consumption also causes nutritional deficiencies for some nutrients such as Vitamin B1, Folate, Vitamin B12, Vitamin A and Calcium and this is because when alcohol replaces foods in a person’s diet, the decreased intake of nutrients can cause primary malnutrition. Consuming too little of any of the essential nutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and/or minerals) can lead to deficiencies and health problems.
So if you choose to consume alcohol, you need to do so with the knowledge of how much is safe for you personally with the disadvantages and not based on what others around you are consuming or the potential health benefits.
So I hope we all learnt a thing or two from today’s blog. Don’t forget to share this post and follow us on all our social media pages
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