What’s the truth about alcohol? Does food help absorb alcohol? Does it really kill brain cells? Or does it protect your body against a multitude of diseases, like heart disease?
One of the key factors that helps us process and breakdown alcohol after it enters the body is the production of an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase. A lot of why your body does or doesn’t do a good job in breaking alcohol down and sobering you up has to do with the production (or lack thereof) of this important enzyme.
This enzyme works better in younger men than in either women of all ages, or older men. Why, we don’t know, but it seems to stop working as effectively in men ages 55 and older, bringing them closer to women in their alcohol breaking-down ability.
LifeHacker recently published an article that helps to separate out more alcohol fact from fiction, and explaining how it all works. Excerpts below…
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Great article John.
Another popular alcohol myth is that drinking alcohol will make you fat.
Excerpt from Knowledge and Nonsense: The Science of Nutrition and Exercise:
Sonko and colleagues (1994) investigated the effects of alcohol on post-meal fat storage. The researchers concluded that alcohol has a fat sparing effect similar to that of carbohydrates and will only cause fat gain when consumed in excess of normal energy needs.
Obese people who regularly drink also consume too much food on a regular basis. If you are dieting and want to have a drink, don’t worry about it as long as it’s factored into the calorie
budget. At the same time, beware of the numerous health and social consequences of too much alcohol.
Well done for taking it to the next level to let people know what myths are completely false and what facts are actually true. So many people don’t know which is which these days in relation to alcohol.