Alcohol consumption

Definition

Alcohol consumption is drinking beer, wine, or distilled spirits such as gin, whiskey, or vodka, that contains ethyl alcohol.

Purpose

In earlier times, when subsistence agriculture was the norm, alcoholic beverages, usually beer or mead (fermented honey and water), provided a substantial percentage of calories in the diet. Today people drink alcohol to relax and socialize, to get high, or because they are physically addicted to it.

Description

Ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, is produced by yeast fermentation of the natural sugars in plants, such as grapes (wine), hops (beer), sugar cane (rum), agave (tequila), or rice (saki). The process of fermenting plants to produce alcohol is at least 10,000 years old and appears to have developed independently in many cultures.

Alcohol affects almost every system of the body.

Research suggests that when alcohol is consumed in moderation, there are some health benefits and some health risks. Heavy use of alcohol has no health benefits and many health risks. The federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005. define moderate alcohol consumption as one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men. This difference by gender is because women tend to be smaller than men, and their bodies contain a lower percentage of water, so an equivalent amount of alcohol in a woman’s blood- stream will be more concentrated than in a man’s.

A ‘‘drink’’ according to these guidelines contains about 14 grams of alcohol and is defined as:

•  12 fluid ounces of regular beer
•  5 fluid ounces of wine
•  1.5 fluid ounces of 80 proof distilled spirits

Using this definition, one regular beer contains about 145 calories. One glass of red wine has 105 calories, and white wine has about 100 calories. One shot of distilled spirits has about 95 calories plus any calories in the mixer used mixed drinks.

Benefits of moderate alcohol consumption

Good evidence based on more than 100 studies shows that moderate alcohol consumption can help prevent heart attack, sudden cardiac death, peripheral vascular disease, and stroke caused by blood clots (ischemic stroke). The risk of these diseases is reduced between 25% and 40% in both men and women. The reduction isseenin both people who have no apparentheartdisease and those who are at high risk of heart disease because they have type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure (hyper- tension), angina (chest pain), or have already had one heart attack. Researchers suggest that this protective effect occurs because alcohol increases the amount of HDL or ‘‘good’’ cholesterol and also affects various proteins in ways that make blood clotting less likely.

In two other large studies, people who were moderate drinkers also were less likely to develop type 2 diabetes and gallstones. Gallstones are hard masses of cholesterol and calcium that form in the gallbladder. Finally, moderate drinking serves a social purpose that can provide psychological benefits.