Good morning everyone.
Last weekend I caught up with some friends I met earlier this summer. After 12 weeks of reading my infallible words, they’re now fully converted disciples of the Running On Butter lifestyle.
Shout-out to: Cathrine, Abigail, Britton, Caleb, Joseph, Abbie, Cagan, Monroe, Joy, Ally, Katherine, Tate, Ashley, Eva, Ava, Josh, and Anson.
You guys are the real ones.
How’s sobriety treating you, America?
We’re reportedly drinking less alcohol.
I’m not a big drinker myself. In the past year my alcohol consumption has been eight ounces of wine and a Moscow Mule. I’m not saying this to prove I’m better than you (sorry if you’re just learning this).
I say it because alcohol should be consumed extremely sparingly.
If that makes you mad: congrats, you’re an alcoholic. Welcome to AA. Let’s get started.
Anson, would you like to share first? Cagan, you’re on deck. Ashley, there’s a box of tissues on the counter. Yep, right there next to the 12 Steps pamphlets. Can you pass one to Catherine?
Alcohol’s Influence on Humanity
Most of my friends drink. I don’t object when they enjoy a crafty IPA or a $20 seasonal cocktail. No judgment, no disappointment. Good for them. Happy for them.
With this being true, we must also ascertain this truth: alcohol objectively causes a lot of harm to humanity.
I’ve seen the bottle end marriages, send fathers to jail, and cut lives short. I’m sure you have too because according to the data, what I’ve witnessed isn’t unique.
An increase of just one liter of alcohol per capita correlates with a 20% spike in divorce rates.
55% of domestic abuse cases involve alcohol by the perpetrator.
140,000 annual U.S. deaths are directly attributed to alcohol.
These stats aren’t Ameircan problems. They’re global truths. And they make me question its utility to humanity.
What is it about this one drink that fuels so much tragedy, heartbreak, and violence?
I can hear my alcohol-enjoying friends saying something like, “Vance, it’s not the alcohol! It’s the people who drink the alcohol that cause problems. Just like how guns aren’t the cause of shootings but rather the criminals who pull the trigger.”
To which I say: fair point.
However, alcohol isn’t only as dangerous as the person holding the glass. Unlike the gun analogy, it doesn’t sit idle until someone misuses it. Alcohol itself reshapes people.
It can awaken habits and behaviors that weren’t there before. It’s not just that it accompanies destructive people; it can catalyze people into becoming destructive.
How it Treats the Body
Alcohol is a poison. This means when you consume it, your body immediately goes to work to mitigate its toxicity. And it’s metabolically expensive to pull this off.
First, alcohol is converted to acetaldehyde, which is about as volatile as the last girl I went out with. (Very.)
The body’s master antioxidant—glutathione—is then called into action. It helps neutralize the free radicals and oxidative stress charged by alcohol. But glutathione isn’t free nor unlimited. It’s hard to make, and when it’s depleted the body’s in a bad place—susceptible to oxidation, et al.
Alcohol blocks the absorption of B vitamins, zinc, and magnesium.
It also drains NAD⁺, a compound essential for energy and longevity.
It temporarily inhibits the body’s ability to make glucose. Think: blood sugar dips.
Hormone havoc: alcohol spikes cortisol, lowers testosterone in men, and dysregulates leptin the appetite hormone. This is why people who drink more tend to eat more too.
Last: When you consume alcohol, your metabolism turns all its attention to burn through it. This then turns off fat burning.
What about the Antioxidants in Wine?
Doctors and sommeliers love to defend wine as a health food because of its antioxidants. The story goes that wine’s polyphenols are behind its supposed heart-protective effects.
This is a stretch.
Wine does contain polyphenols from its grapes. But you’re far better off getting better quantities and quality from herbs, spices, or a handful of blackberries a vine of actual grapes.
And those “heart benefits”? They come from observational studies—data that can’t prove cause and effect and are riddled with confounding factors. This is the same sketchy science that demonized butter.
Research hasn’t shown wine to be any more beneficial—or less harmful—than beer or liquor. The French love their wine and boast low heart disease rates. But so do the Japanese. And they’re sipping sake, not Cabernet.
And the final irony: your body burns through its master antioxidant, glutathione, to detoxify wine. If it’s such great antioxidant, why does the body respond defensively?
Jesus’ First Miracle
I’d be negligent if I ignored the wine-filled passages of Scripture. This is interesting not only from a faith perspective, but also from a historical and nutritional one.
Alcohol is ancient. And my general rule of thumb is this: if a food has been around since the dawn of time, it’s usually good to go. Running On Butter verified, if you will.
But alcohol may be the exception. For one, ancient alcohols were made from better ingredients—grape varieties, for example—free from synthetic pesticides and lower in contaminants like heavy metals. And they were often lower in alcohol content than what we brew today.
And Scripturally, wine is obviously never outright forbidden. Have you been to a Catholic wedding? Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine, which seems like pretty solid divine endorsement. Hard to argue with that.
But the Bible also doesn’t mince words about alcohol’s power to destroy lives: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1). And that’s just one of many warnings.
I don’t fully know what to make of this tension. Life is complicated.
The Verdict
My job is to give you the best information so you can live your healthiest lives. Other than world domination, my only goal is that you have more energy, fewer bad days, a higher capacity, and a longer, joy-filled life.
Which is why I have to say something you probably won’t welcome with open arms: alcohol isn’t here for your health.
I’m not saying a drink a few times a year will derail your life and health. But I am saying—based on mountains of research—that alcohol does far more harm to humanity and health than it does good.
I’m sorry it has to be this way.
Can someone grab some more tissues for Catherine?
Excerpt from Pages 104-106 of Nutrition and Your Mind by George Watson, PhD, (1972)
If I were to ask you to name all the types of fuel the body can utilize, although the reply appears obviously simple, you would probably answer incorrectly. For while carbohydrate, fat and protein do indeed represent all types of food we customarily think of, yet biochemically - and socially - something very important must be added: ethyl alcohol.
Although in many ways alcohol does not act as we expect food to act, since it may produce profound pathological reactions, yet from a biochemical point of view the utilization of alcohol can be looked at in the very same way that we have examined the breakdown of sugar and fat in cells of the tissues. And while we lack a full understanding of the effects of alcohol on the system, we do know that there are two related nutritional phases to its metabolism.
First, alcohol increases the blood-sugar level by causing the liver to give up part of its stored sugar (glycogen); hence alcohol stimulates carbohydrate metabolism. Second, alcohol itself is directly broken down - principally in the liver - to produce energy-rich intermediate acetate (acetyl coenzyme A), which in either oxidized in the citric acid cycle to produce ATP (energy) or converted to other substances such as body fat and cholesterol.
Alcohol is a rich source of acetate, ounce for ounce producing more than sugar or protein, but not quite as much as fat. In addition, however - and this point has an important bearing on its use and abuse - alcohol may be thought of as almost “instant acetate.”
Let us suppose that you’re physically and mentally exhausted - cold, tired, dispirited. Biochemically your cellular acetate is minimal, your blood sugar is low, and you’ve just about run out of ready nutritional reserves. Then someone puts a stiff drink of two ounces of 100-proof whiskey in your hand. As you sip it slowly for a few minutes, life, strength, and hope seem to push out the ache, cold, and despair.
If alcohol is new to you, in this moment you have had an almost unforgettable learning experience. You’ve been rewarded at a time and in a way that will be long remembered - consciously or unconsciously. And the next time your energy reserves are gone, and you’re mentally and physically spent, you’ll probably think “whiskey!” You will also have gained a personal insight into the experience behind the word, which comes from the Gaelic usquebaugh, meaning “water of life.”
Water of life it would indeed be if the whole story of alcohol were to end with its nutritional biochemistry, and it was simply another easily utilizable and wholesome source of energy. But it is not. Every drop of alcohol burned in the tissues creates a nutritional demand for carbohydrates and for the many biochemicals that it does not by itself supply, the vitamins and minerals necessary to process it. Consequently, continued, constant, or frequent use of alcohol can lead to depletion of cellular nutritional reserves needed for normal metabolism.
The paradox of alcohol is that while producing acetate and stimulating the breakdown of glucose, which in special circumstances results in apparent immediate physical and mental relief from stress, at the very same time this substance is a dangerous drug, both physically and psychologically.
One might think that since alcohol is metabolized in the normal nutritional pathways of the citric acid cycle, alcoholism is a nutritional disease, one that can be successfully treated by good nutrition. And indeed we have witnessed some dramatic successes using this approach. When psychological dependency has resulted from using alcohol as a substitute for food, then optimum nutrition can help erase the conditions of mental and physical fatigue which provide a stimulus to “think whiskey.”
For literally speaking, if you think you “need a drink” you don’t need a drink; you need ATP (energy) derived from acetate, through the breakdown of blood sugar, fat, and protein. If one is really well nourished, his energy reserves are as high as they can be. This is why truly healthy individuals cannot tolerate alcohol: Their cellular acetate breakdown is near maximum, and any rapid increase such as will result from a drink of whiskey may lead to headache, sweating, nausea, and possibly vomiting. In short, one’s tolerance to alcohol reflects one’s nutritional biochemical health. The more one can drink without adverse effect the worse off he is. It is just palin utter biochemical nonsense for people to pride themselves on being able to hold their liquor, for only those in very bad shape can do so.
Unfortunately, the use of alcohol as a nutritional crutch is far from the whole story, however, for there are many reasons why people drink other than nutritional ones. For example, I had a young man tell me he was stopping his optimum diet and vitamin/mineral formula because he was “losing his taste for Scotch.” He preferred the “pleasures of drinking” to the alternative I was offering of increased mental and physical functioning.
However, for those who don’t want to drink, who find alcohol a problem rather than a continuing source of pleasure, their first goal should be to to adopt an intensive nutritional program which will build them up to the point where they not only do not feel that they “need a drink” – they couldn’t tolerate one without feeling ill if they drank it, amazing as the sounds.
Nutrition alone may not be able to accomplish this for individuals who have vastly overcommitted themselves to a wild and unrealistic round of daily activities. If you are one of these, take a hard look at your current life-style, and reshape it so that energy output is fully compensated for by rest, sleep, and intensive nutrition.
Thanks for this article. I've never felt any pressure to fit in with drinking people around me. I don't know who they are when it comes to alcohol.