Moderating Alcohol Consumption for Health

Alcohol is both a tonic and a poison. More than half of all adults drink, but, not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic. It is said that moderate alcohol consumption helps to protect against heart disease by raising HDL (good) cholesterol and reducing plaque accumulations in your arteries, and also has mild anti-coagulating effect, which helps keep platelets from clumping together to form clots.

The effect of alcohol depends upon the person’s size, weight, sex and age. Drinking more than three drinks a day has a direct toxic effect on the heart. The immediate effects of alcohol intake may cause talkativeness, dizziness, nausea and vomiting, if taken in larger quantity. Heavy drinking over the time can damage the heart and lead to high blood pressure, enlarged and weakened heart, congestive heart failure and stroke. Health experts recommend that women should not take more than one standard drink a day, and men take no more than two standard drinks; standard drink is 12 ounces of beer, five ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor. Women should have no more than 12 ounces of beer a day and men no more than 24 ounces —whether the beer is regular or light. By nature, a woman’s body metabolizes alcohol differently so that 1 alcoholic beverage in a woman is equal to 2 in a man. Alcohol remains in a woman’s body longer than in a man’s.

Alcohol may combine with many drugs, both prescription and non-prescription. Mixing alcohol with your medicine can lead to serious untoward effects. Long-term heavy use of alcohol not only destroys the cerebellum of the brain, causing irreversible brain damage but also results in slowed thinking, an unsteady walk and slurred speech

If you are weight conscious you would like to know that a regular beer 12-ounce serving, has about 140 to 150 calories, whereas light beers contain from 95 to 110 calories. Dark beers and ales can have from 150 to 170 calories, while nonalcoholic beers contain about 45 to 75 calories. Beer’s impact on your overall health, however, relates largely to the alcohol content, which is barely influenced by a lower-calorie content. The alcohol content of light beer is only slightly less than regular beers.

If you are want to cut back your alcohol intake try the following things:

•Order an nonalcoholic drink when you go out to drink.
•Discover new places, sports clubs and other things to do rather sitting in a bar and having drinks.
•Start with water to quench your thirst, not alcohol.
•Find support from friends and family.
•Find some thing which you can get involved in creatively
•Have ginger ale or juice with some healthy munchies while watching TV.
Source:http://www.greendivamom.com/author/savneet/