New Years’ Eve is here and with it we round out the holiday season and prepare for an evening of cheer and toasting. However, with flu season and corona looming in the background, it might make sense to consider what the last party of the year might do to our precious, and possibly taxed, immune system.
We’ve talked about eating well but let’s briefly dive into one of our favorite party guests, alcohol. Alcohol is undoubtedly popular and we all know it isn’t the most healthy thing to put into one’s body, but is it really all that bad?
Beyond the impairment and dangers of functioning under the influence, alcohol itself carries a pretty heavy toll on our body’s immune system. Put simply, in any quantity, big or small, frequent or rare, it weakens us. Just one drink can suppress the immune system for as long as 24 hours. If you’ve ever had heavy drinkers in your family, you probably already know that chronic drinking carries a significant risk of several different forms of cancer. The risk of esophageal cancer, especially for those who do not process alcohol well due to an enzyme deficiency, is significantly increased by consuming alcohol, along with colorectal cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, and various cancers located in the head and neck. This increase in risk is measurable even when someone only has one drink a day or occasionally binge drinks. It’s also important to not that binge drinking here doesn’t mean getting blackout drunk. Binge drinking means having 4 or 5 drinks at one time and yes, a shot counts as a drink.
Cancer may seem like it is just a scare word sometimes and almost everything you engage with can give you some form of cancer but that’s not all alcohol is tied to. It’s also tied to the degradation of your liver, kidneys, lungs, and heart. It impacts the brain as you might assume and most notably for this COVID plagued time, it significantly impacts the lungs.
The immune system is suppressed by alcohol consumption and is more susceptible to infection by bacteria, virus and even physical injury. Injuries heal slower and alcohol especially stifles the healing of burns, hemorrhagic shock and traumatic brain injuries. It disrupts the microbiome in our gut which is involved in everything from breaking down our food to regulating our hormones. The system of organisms cohabitating in our gut also supports our immune system and just one serving of alcohol can throw that system into complete disarray. Frankly, the list of things not impacted in some way by that one ingredient would probably be shorter.
So, this New Year’s make sure you are considering all the risks and weighing them appropriately and keeping the very best of company before you partake of this literal bomb to the body’s homeostasis. Cheers!
Resources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4590612/pdf/arcr-37-2-153.pdf
https://adf.org.au/insights/alcohol-immune-system-covid-19/
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohols-effects-body