Unpacking the Impact of Alcohol on Nutrition & Health
Illustration © D. Yael Bernhard
Pictured above is a scene from a children’s book I illustrated about the special relationship between a young girl and her grandfather, who owns a winery. Soon after this scene, the grandfather dies. No reason is given in the story. In this country, it’s unusual for children’s books to even hint at death, much less follow a child’s journey through grief. Not surprisingly, this book was published not here in the U.S. but in Korea, as part of a series about family-owned trades in other cultures.
The ripple effects of alcohol abuse on families is well known to anyone who has dealt with this addiction. But what about the effects of moderate, regular drinking? How does alcohol consumption impact our everyday health and nutrition?
Alcoholic beverages are made from ethanol, which is medically defined as a depressant drug.1 Even though it has calories, these calories contain no nutrition, therefore alcohol is not considered a food. Unlike food, which requires digestion before it can be absorbed, ethanol can diffuse right through the stomach wall into the bloodstream. It degrades the lining of the stomach, causing it to over-secrete both acids and histamine, producing inflammation and causing acid reflux. In the intestines, it damages the delicate mucosal lining and contributes to leaky gut, which may lead to numerous downstream troubles. Both water and fat soluble, ethanol has the ability to dissolve lipids, easily penetrating a cell’s outer membrane. Once inside, alcohol disrupts the cell’s structures and can injure or kill the cell. This is why alcohol makes useful disinfectants and solvents.
Alcohol also acts as a social lubricant, and dissolves barriers of self-expression – and self-restraint. Used wisely, alcohol plays a role in relieving stress, lightening moods, and binding together cultural traditions that center around food. Wine in particular has been an important part of both religious and secular celebrations; and the cultivation of wine is an art that stretches way back before the Common Era. Together with olive oil, wine has been a driving force of history and culture, dating back to Biblical times when kings and priests were anointed with oil and consecrated with wine. Sacred ceremonies, however, do not require regular use of alcohol.
What price do we pay in our modern lives for the benefits of alcohol that we enjoy? As with any drug, in order to make an informed choice one must weigh the benefits against the risks. Let’s begin with the immune system, a subject of increasing concern in today’s world. Alcohol is inflammatory, increasing the production of cytokines such as TNF-alpha and IL6 – which may in turn disrupt the neural circuits that control the intake of alcohol, thus compounding the effects of drinking.2 Low-grade, chronic inflammation degrades the immune system’s ability to fight off viral, bacterial, and fungal infections, and may lead to a long list of chronic conditions such as liver disease, candida, cancer, dementia, cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis, and more.
Contrary to common belief, alcohol does not improve digestion. Regular consumption, even in amounts of less than one drink per day, can cause or contribute to cancer of the throat, esophagus, stomach, colon, and liver – every organ it comes in contact with – as well as the breast. Alcohol’s effect on the microbiome is both profound and immediate. It destroys the beneficial gut bacteria that are essential to good digestion and overall health (see my article The World Within You for more on this subject). Just as a topical antiseptic sanitizes a cut, each and every alcoholic beverage you drink damages your microbiome, which is weakened at least temporarily, depending on how often you drink and what you eat in between. Consuming fermented foods on a regular basis may help replenish your microbiome. Folate (derived from leafy green vegetables), vitamin B12 (from eggs, meat, seafood, and dairy), and electrolytes (from mineral salts) may also lessen the damage done by drinking.
All alcohol is processed by the liver, which converts it into acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is even more toxic than alcohol, but a second liver enzyme can break it down further into a nontoxic substance. Women produce less of this enzyme than men. If a person drinks slowly enough, the liver will process nearly all the alcohol without much effect on other parts of the body. The liver’s activity to break down excess alcohol depletes it of glutathione, an important antioxidant, and cysteine, an amino acid. Once this depletion takes place, only time can clear the body of circulating toxins from overconsumption of alcohol. Metabolizing alcohol drains the liver of its resources for detoxifying other substances and neutralizing abnormal or damaged cells. Alcohol is mutagenic, affecting methylation pathways and gene expression, thus raising the risk of cancer, especially breast cancer. It also causes liver cells to lose efficiency in activating vitamin D, a crucial component of the immune system as well as bone health and numerous metabolic functions.
Alcohol diverts blood flow to the skin, making you feel warmer (though it actually cools the body). It depresses the activity of the brain, and also dehydrates the brain and body. As alcohol wears off, the brain cells rehydrate and swell, causing the headache of a hangover. In large amounts it raises blood pressure, which is detrimental to the heart.
Alcohol easily crosses the blood-brain barrier, and is no friend to your brain.3 Even one or two drinks per day degenerate the neocortex of the brain – the outer layers that enable us to think and plan, form associations and memories, and suppress impulsive behavior. It also damages neurons in other regions of the brain and shuts off memory circuits in the hippocampus. This cocktail of negative effects makes it clear that alcohol consumption and long-term cognitive health simply do not mix.
The hormonal system is also impacted by regular drinking, which changes the relationship between the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands. As a result, more cortisol is released when the person is not drinking, which results in higher levels of baseline stress and lower mood overall. Alcohol also increases the conversion of testosterone to estrogen via a pathway called aromatization.4 Neurotransmitters are also affected by alcohol, particularly serotonin, which is mostly produced in the gut, and controls mood. The elevated mood that alcohol produces in the short term may be caused by overstimulated serotonin, but this is followed by a significant drop. By contrast, an authentic good mood is created by homeostasis in the brain, which comes from good nutrition, regular exercise, quality sleep, and a healthy lifestyle. This takes time, but the rewards are genuine, don’t do harm, and are not dependent on a substance.
Alcohol is high in calories, and burdens the body with unwanted fat. A typical 8oz glass of wine contains approximately 180 calories. Also, mixed drinks such as pina colada often present many additional calories. Alcohol promotes fat storage, often in the central abdominal area, which in turn raises triglycerides. Alcohol is therefore associated with heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.
Alcohol disrupts every tissue’s metabolism of nutrients. Alcohol interferes with intestinal absorption of thiamin, folate, vitamin B12, and other vitamins. It also impedes the cells of the retina from producing the form of vitamin A needed for healthy vision. Alcohol causes the kidneys to over-excrete magnesium, calcium, potassium, and zinc – all crucial components of numerous cellular functions, particularly heart rhythms. Alcohol actually expels folate from the body, interfering with the production of new cells, especially of the intestine and the blood. Folate deficiency is a common cause of birth defects. Alcohol disrupts electrolytes, causing the kidneys to excrete sodium, which is critical for nerve function, and may also cause the blood’s acid-base balance to falter. Nutritional deficiencies and imbalances are thus an inevitable consequence of regular alcohol consumption.
Numerous studies show that alcohol causes or contributes to insomnia.5 It may allow people to fall asleep quicker, but it reduces REM sleep – a vital part of healthy, restorative sleep cycles – and disrupts sleep in the second half of the night. Disruptions in REM sleep may cause daytime drowsiness and poor concentration.
The harmful effects of alcohol increase with age, and may cause irreversible damage. The greater the intake and the longer the exposure, the greater the risk. Prolonged drinking beyond a person’s capacity to recover can severely and irreversibly damage the brain, liver, kidneys, heart and all other bodily systems – negatively affecting vision, memory, learning, reasoning, speech, and other brain functions. Excess drinking is associated with cognitive decline, depression, bone deficiencies, and hypertension.
The good news is that after a period of abstinence, the system will reset with time – especially with herbal support for the liver (see my two-part article Love Your Liver, Pamper Your Pancreas for more on this subject).
Are there any health benefits of alcohol? When used as an extracting medium for healing herbal tinctures taken in droplet doses, yes. Some studies suggest low to moderate alcohol intake may raise “good” HDL cholesterol, benefit the heart, and help prevent diabetes. The alcohol industry, with a net worth of $260 billion in the U.S. alone,6 is surely behind these studies, which are designed to demonstrate favorable outcomes. The benefits of resveratrol, an antioxidant found in red wine, are also debatable. Regardless of its value, resveratrol is not available to the body in sufficient quantity from red wine. In order to obtain enough, a person would have to drink over 700 glasses per day!7 But you could just as easily skip the wine and get the same antioxidants from berries and grapes.
In the United States, almost 100,000 deaths per year are associated with alcohol-related causes. Alcohol-impaired driving accounts for another 10,000 deaths per year. The leading causes of alcohol-attributable deaths due to chronic conditions are liver disease, stroke, digestive and liver cancer, cardiac dysrhythmia, breast cancer, and hypertension. Early death due to alcohol typically shortens the person’s life by an average of 29 years.8
These sobering facts are worthy of individual consideration. The one-size-fits-all recommended limit of one or two drinks per day (365-730 drinks per year) does not take into account a person’s total health. If you’ve been drinking for many years, or if you’re coping with or at risk for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, depression, nutritional deficiencies, insomnia, dementia, chronic inflammation, arthritis, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, obesity or abdominal fat – how much of this toxic, dehydrating drug is too much for you? How often can you really afford to derail your digestive tract? How well can your liver cope with the unavoidable plastics, emissions, and chemical insults that fill our lives, in addition to the burden of alcohol? To what degree does your health and well-being benefit from alcohol, and to what degree is it harmed?
Only you can decide. As a health and nutrition coach, my aim is to help people make informed decisions. Personally, I consider myself blessed to have a lifelong aversion to the taste of alcohol. Apparently it’s genetic, as my son has inherited this trait as well (but not my two daughters). The only alcohol I consume is in herbal tinctures, by the half teaspoon. I try to evaporate the alcohol by dropping the extract into a hot cup of tea.
As if raising a glass with the best of intentions, I end each of my articles with a toast to your good health. May your cup runneth over with a natural, non-toxic beverage that nourishes your tissues and enhances your brain. And may you find healthy ways to relax and unwind from a hard day’s work, to socialize with ease, and to express your authentic self. In a forthcoming article I’ll be writing about foods and herbs for relaxation. For altering consciousness and healing trauma, great strides have been made in research on cannabis and psychedelics. Rather than killing brain cells, healing plants and fungi help replenish the myelin sheaths that keep our nerves alive, and support neuroplasticity. As these new doors open, perhaps the picture above will change, and rather than following her grandfather’s footsteps to a too-early grave, the little girl in the blue dress will live long enough to see her own grandchildren grow up.
To your good health –
Yael Bernhard
Certified Integrative Health & Nutrition Coach
Have you seen my other Substack, Image of the Week? Check it out here, and learn about my illustrations and fine art paintings, and the stories and creative process behind them.
Yael Bernhard is a writer, illustrator, book designer and fine art painter with a lifelong passion for nutrition and herbal medicine. She was certified by Duke University as an Integrative Health Coach in 2021 and by Cornell University in Nutrition & Healthy Living in 2022. For information about private health coaching or nutrition programs for schools, please respond directly to this newsletter, or email dyaelbernhard@protonmail.com. Visit her online gallery of illustration, fine art, and children’s books here.
Information in this newsletter is provided for educational – and inspirational – purposes only.
Nutrition: Concepts & Controversies (college textbook, Empire State College), 15th edition
Youtube.com/ watch?v=DkS1pkKpILY
https://draxe.com/health/how-does-alcohol-affect-the-brain/
Youtube.com/ watch?v=DkS1pkKpILY
https://www.webmd.com/connect-to-care/addiction-treatment-recovery/conditions- linked-alcoholism
https://www.parkstreet.com/alcoholic-beverage-market-overview/
https://drhyman.com/blog/2010/06/01/resveratrol-eat-whatever-and-live-to-120-2/
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and- statistics