originally posted by MLipton:
Alcohol and healthAs your self-appointed health reporter, I wanted to see whether the recent revision of medical thinking on the impact of alcohol consumption on health (and the related redefinition of moderate drinking) has affected your wine consumption in any way. I am mindful of the old saw that there are more old wine drinkers than old doctors, but at the same time it is now clear that alcohol raises your risk for cancer, hypertension and fatty liver diseases. So, has this shift in thinking altered your consumption pattern in any way?
Mark Lipton
A timely question, Mark, not only in terms of the medical zeitgeist, but also in terms of my family.
Until last year, for almost 15 years my wife Marcia (who is an MD) and I used to share a bottle every night with dinner, usually 60/40 in my favor, sometimes 50/50 (if she liked the wine a lot). Early this year she decided to cut down her share to half a bottle or less, “forcing” me to cut my consumption so that the bottle would now last two nights (otherwise my cellar management becomes a nightmare). We are both super healthy, exercise every day, and eat very conscientiously, so there's no immediate threat (I'm 69 and she's 55).
The background is that last year we began to drive a 100% electric and adopted a mostly plant-based diet (not dogmatically; we include dairy and eggs, plus some fish, and will eat “normally” in other people’s homes). In her case, the change in diet was driven by a need to avoid saturated fats for cholesterol-related reasons (a subject she researches almost daily, as well as keeping up with the oncology and cardiology literature) and a focus on building a healthy microbiota for all of us in the household. I, on the other hand, have the cholesterol levels of a teenager, so, in my case, it was the result of seeing the documentary
Eating our way to extinction (see link below), which makes a compelling case, among others, that the biggest driver of deforestation is big aggro’s massive increase in the production of cereals, aided by pesticides and herbicides, to feed the growth of livestock breeding to meet the proportional growth of demand for red meat from countries like China and India, where a general increase in wealth is making it possible for the first time to afford it. Of course, our sacrifice (I love red meat) makes almost no difference, but to continue as before while blaming others for climate change seemed intolerably hypocritical on my part. I don't and won't go around preaching, in part because only this late did we decide to do our very tiny part.
More specifically, Marcia reduced her alcohol consumption not so much because it is toxic, which it is, but because the liver enzymes can only absorb so much in the aftermath of ingestion, after which the alcohol circulates in the body for hours, biding its time to be absorbed (affecting the brain, from sleepy tipsiness all the way to hangovers); as I understand it, it is when this excess circulates that it is more likely to be a risk factor for certain types of cancer (usually related to the digestive tract, all the way from the throat to the colon) and more lastingly harmful to the brain. If we only drink with meals, absorption occurs more slowly, so there is less chance of excess alcohol circulating, which is why drinking in moderation is less likely to cause cancer. But there is no “safe amount,” at least not for everyone. Alas, no more jeebs, unless spitting and discarding almost everything. Of course, almost all the research on this subject is based on observational studies, with the usual caveats, and it is impossible to do double-blind, etc., given all the surrounding variables.
