Encouraging Health

Drink to your health? It’s a great promise. But with all the contradictory headlines about alcohol’s health effects, it’s hard to know if that glass a day will keep the doctor away or land you in her office. On the one hand, enjoying the occasional cocktail has been shown to cut the risk for heart disease, stroke and more. But too much tippling is a serious national problem:Alcohol-related illnesses and drunk driving claim nearly 80,000 lives per year, and downing two or more drinks a day has been linked to metabolic syndrome, a predecessor to heart disease — the very condition alcohol is touted to help prevent.

So is alcohol good or bad for you? Like many things in science, the answer is yes … and yes. The benefits accrue with moderate consumption, which is one drink a day for women. “We start to see an increase in health problems in women who have between one and two drinks per day,” says Sharon Wilsnack, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Grand Forks, who leads an ongoing 30-year study of women and alcohol. The key, then, is sticking to a single drink per day, defined as 12 ounces of beer or 5 ounces of wine or 1 1/2 ounces of hard alcohol.

If only it were that easy. Instead, this guideline raises all sorts of questions. Can I have two drinks tonight if I stay dry tomorrow? Is one drink better than another? Our guide to healthier drinking tackles these questions and more so you can enjoy the party season without worry.

Drunk, defined

Odds are, you know how tipsy feels. Here’s why you feel woozy.

First stop: Your stomach
If you ate beforehand, the food will sit in your stomach for a while and delay the alcohol from moving through your system, according to Sean O’Connor, M.D., professor of psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. If you’re drinking on an empty stomach, the alcohol dumps fairly speedily into the upper intestine, bloodstream and then into …

Your liver
Here, enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenase begin to break down ethanol (the stuff in alcoholic beverages that causes inebriation). Too much ethanol, and your liver can’t filter it fast enough, so it reenters the bloodstream, traveling quickly to …

Your brain
Ethanol is a tiny molecule, small enough to sit in the crevices of the signal-receptor proteins on neural cells. While nestled there, ethanol inhibits the receptor proteins from binding with data-carrying molecules, disrupting communication between neurons. The result: Info is blurred, and several brain functions — speech, memory, judgment and more — are drowned out and slowed down.

Back to your liver
Depending on how much you’ve had to drink, most of the ethanol you consumed makes hundreds of passes around the body before it is eliminated. A healthy liver gets rid of about one drink’s worth per hour; chug more than that and you will get drunk.

Be a mix master

Pouring your own? Shake and stir smart.

DO toss more rocks into the glass. As the ice melts, it increases your drink’s water content, which slows alcohol’s entry into your bloodstream.

DON’T mix it up with energy drinks. Pairing high-caffeine beverages such as Red Bull with spirits can make you feel less buzzed than you are, reports a study at the Federal University of São Paulo in Brazil, which can lead to risky behavior like drunk driving.

DO add fresh fruit or fruit juice. Pomegranate, cranberry and tomato juices or chunks of fresh fruit (as in sangria) add disease-fighting antioxidants.

DON’T make it diet. You’ll stay steady longer if you nix calorie-free soda mixers. They empty out of the stomach faster than regular sodas, so the alcohol enters your system sooner, according to a study published in The American Journal of Medicine.

DO have a glass of water. Before having a second drink, have an H2O chaser. It increases hydration and helps you drink less throughout the evening.

DON’T believe the saying “Beer before liquor, never sicker; liquor before beer, never fear.” Ethanol — as well as its effects — is the same regardless of whether wine, liquor or beer enters your body first.