What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health

People who drink a bit... People that are maybe having 1 drink a night with dinner and maybe on the weekend a few more... It could also be 2 or 3 drinks on Friday or 6 drinks only on Saturday. All those groups experience increases in cortisol release from their adrenal glands when they are not drinking. And as a consequence, they feel more stress and more anxiety when they aren't drinking.

The consumption of beer... is less likely to cause a hangover than, say, whiskey ... A glass of whiskey, for instance, is more likely to cause hangover than gin ... A glass of rum or red wine is more likely to cause a hangover than any of the other things I've mentioned so far. At the top, top, top of the list of drinks that induce hangover is brandy.

Even for people that were drinking low to moderate amounts of alcohol, so 1 or 2 drinks per day, there was evidence of thinning of the neocortex—so, loss of neurons in the neocortex—and other brain regions.

People who drink regularly—so, this again could be just 1 or 2 drinks per night, or it could be somebody that drinks just on Fridays or just on Saturdays or maybe just on the weekend, 2-4 drinks—well, those people experience changes in their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis that result in more cortisol, more of this so-called stress hormone, being released at baseline when they are not drinking.

High levels of alcohol consumption, so 12 to 24 drinks per week or more, is certainly causing neurodegeneration ... So, to make very clear, drinking a lot—so, having 3 or 4 drinks per night every night of the week—is clearly bad for the brain.

Alcohol, because of this toxicity of acetaldehyde and related pathways, can alter DNA methylation; it can alter gene expression ... It is associated with a significant increase in cancer risk. In particular, breast cancer ... There has been proposed to be anywhere from 4-13% increase in risk of breast cancer for every 10 grams of alcohol consumed.

Some people will say for every glass of alcohol that you drink, you should drink 1 glass of water. I would say better would be 2 glasses of water given the dehydrating effects of alcohol, and even better would be water with electrolytes. That certainly would set you up for a better day the next day.

Indeed, not just heavy alcohol consumption of 12 to 24 or more drinks per week but also light to moderate alcohol consumption of any type—wine, beer, spirits, etc.—does reduce the thickness of the brain. It really does reduce cortical thickness. In fact, it actually scales with the amount of alcohol that people drink.

It's fair to say that alcohol, and in particular, the toxic metabolites of alcohol, increases the conversion of testosterone to estrogen.

Most humans have been consuming alcohol in order to change their internal state, in order to feel differently than they would otherwise. That feeling of being drunk or inebriated or tipsy or lightheaded is something that many, not all, but many humans seem to enjoy and pursue even though, typically, it leads to a feeling of being less happy, less motivated, more stressed, etc. when the alcohol wears off.

I think most people don't realize that—that being drunk is actually a poison-induced disruption in the way that your neural circuits work.

For the person that drinks, say, every Thursday night or every Friday night or goes out only on Saturdays but every Saturday, there's evidence that there are changes in the neural circuits of the brain that control habitual behavior and impulsive behavior, and they are modified and strengthened in ways that those people are more habitual and more impulsive outside the times in which they are drinking.

If you eat something prior to drinking alcohol or while ingesting alcohol, it will slow the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream. In other words, you won't feel as drunk as fast ... In particular, if that meal includes carbohydrates fats and proteins.

The other thing that predisposes people to abuse of alcohol is age. People who start drinking at younger ages are greatly predisposed to developing alcohol dependence, regardless of your family history of alcoholism.

There is zero evidence that... having 1 drink or 2 drinks every now and again, meaning every 3 or 4 weeks or once a month—that is not going to cause major health concerns or major health issues for most people.

The amount of red wine that one would have to drink in order to get enough resveratrol in order for it to be health-promoting is so outrageously high that it would surely induce other negative effects that would offset the positive effects of resveratrol.

Alcohol is going to increase estrogen levels whether or not you're male or female, and it's largely doing that through the aromatization process—by increasing the aromatase enzyme.

The center of mass of the literature on alcohol is that no consumption, zero consumption, consumption of zero ounces of alcohol, is going to be better for your health than low to moderate consumption of alcohol.

For people that are regular drinkers or that have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, when they drink, they tend to feel very energized and very good for longer periods of time.

So, within minutes... if you have an empty stomach, within 5 to 10 minutes, that alcohol is going to be within your bloodstream and distributed throughout your body, maybe even faster, depending on the type of alcohol and your metabolism.

When we ingest alcohol and it goes into our gut, it kills a lot of the healthy gut microbiota.