Townsend, Montana | John Burns - 4/8/2024 06:58
Yes that is why the Germans are famous for being beer drinkers. They had bad water.
My best guess is the dose makes the poison.
Alcohol damages cells. Brain cells too.
But a small amount of damage in an otherwise healthy body in the course of sleep and other repair times can repair and replace damage cells in the course of natural anatomy functions.
At least that is my working theory as I tell myself and drink a beer. Self delusion probably.
Funny thing is I never liked beer early in life. Have only grown a taste for it after giving up most carbs. Of course beer is heavy in carbs, so maybe that is it. At home I hardly ever have one. Maybe in a social setting. Down here after the second scuba dive of the day tastes pretty good a couple times a week.
From what I can read/listen to, carbs from ethanol are digested differently by our bodies than most other carbs. Something to do with how the liver breaks it down - something to do with glycogen. Basically alcohol carbs are only worth about 1/5 of normal carbs. And in the process of breaking down ethanol, our insulin levels can decrease in some instances. From what I gather, the cause of a hangover is our brain starving for energy because our bodies quit metabolizing carbs.
The above is what I have learned from internet doctors. The following is my personal experience:
I learned in high school that after a night of moderate (3-4 drinks) drinking, eating a 1/2 pint of ice cream (actual high fat ice cream - I have always been picky about high quality vanilla ice cream) before bed not only eliminated any chance of a hangover, but actually gave me a boost of energy the next morning. This may sound absurd, but I actually picked this up from my 8th grade science teacher (I was in high school at the time). It worked for her, and it works for me. Still to this day, if I get in late and need to be up early, I will drink two beers and down a 1/2 pint of ice cream.
The more I learn about fat and how our body utilizes it, I have found the same results with 1/2 pound of fatty bacon in place of the ice cream.
My theory is this (and don't hesitate to correct me and prove me wrong): Alcohol tends to be hypoglycemic (a quick google search backs this up). As we liquor up, our blood sugar AND insulin drop, regardless of weather we are metabolically healthy or not. If we are not metabolically healthy, our bodies literally begin starving for energy because we can't access our fat reserves. This is why it is said that ethanol kills brain cells (dementia/Alzheimer's link to diabetes?...).
Now if we take a metabolically healthy person, which most of us were in high school and I believe that I currently am, our bodies can easily switch from burning glucose for energy to ketones. Normally our bodies have several hours to make the switch as the carbs in our stomach are used up and insulin slowly drops, ketone production slowly ramps up to keep our energy production stable. If we add ethanol to the mix though, insulin drops rapidly and slams the door on glucose production before ketone production can get ramped up. Here we have a lag time where our bodies (and brains) are short on energy. Instead if we eat a bunch of healthy fat, it gives our bodies something to make energy from right now, in a form it can use since the ethanol has suppressed our glucose and insulin levels.
Last summer I went to a wedding when I was solidly in ketosis (carnivore diet for several weeks for my allergies/farmer lung). I drank WAY too much (but it was fun) and called it quits about midnight. 6 hours later I woke up a little before 6 and felt pretty good, considering. No hangover, not tired, no bloodshot eyes, no headache, etc. Got several comments from people that couldn't believe that I was awake and how perky I was considering my condition the evening prior.
Please excuse my uneducated rambling. I am probably way off base, but I'm not so sure that ethanol is the complete poison it has been made out to be. Maybe not good, but maybe not as bad as we are told - kinda like butter, eggs, red meat, animal fat in general, etc. I'm kinda thinking that if we get rid of the real poisons (synthetic additives and processed foods) that overload our liver, our liver is plumb content just dealing with a little booze from time to time. We've all been told that alcohol causes fatty liver disease, yet alcohol consumption hasn't changed a whole lot in the past 150 years but fatty liver disease has never been this prevalent (24% of all Americans) before. Is it the booze? Or the rest of the diet?
And to top it all off, It's commonly accepted that alcohol makes us fat, and yet alcoholics tend to be on the thinner side...
Edited by 1972RedNeck 4/8/2024 23:15
|
Early modern human diet
