How Drinking Alcohol Affects Your Health: Good and Bad

Alcohol is created when grains, fruits, or vegetables are fermented. Fermentation is a process that uses yeast or bacteria to change the sugars in the food into alcohol. Fermentation is used to produce many necessary items, everything from cheese to medications. Alcohol has different forms and can be used as a cleaner, an antiseptic, or a sedative.

Scientists have long advertised the heart benefits of drinking small amounts of alcohol. Newer studies have credited moderate drinking with everything from helping to keep our minds sharp as we age to lowering our risk of developing diabetes.

Does It Help or Hurt?

Drinking alcohol can be decent for your health, but it can also be damaging. It all depends on how much you drink, your age, and other factors.

There's no denying that too much alcohol can lead to serious problems. Additional alcohol can increase your risk of:

• Liver disease
• High blood pressure
• High blood fats (triglycerides)
• Heart failure
• Stroke
• Fetal alcohol syndrome (if you're pregnant)
• Certain cancers
• Injury, violence, and death

If you regularly drink more than the recommended daily limits, it will risk damaging your health.

There's no guaranteed safe level of drinking, but if you drink less than the recommended daily limits, the risks of harming your health are low.

And it's certainly not only people who get drunk or binge drink that are at risk. Most people who repeatedly drink more than the NHS recommends don't see any harmful effects at first.

Alcohol’s hidden harms usually only arise after a number of years. And by then, serious health problems can have developed.

Liver problems, reduced fertility, high blood pressure, increased risk of various cancers and heart attack are some of the numerous harmful effects of regularly drinking more than the recommended levels.

But How Does it Positively Affect Us?

Moderate alcohol consumption may have some substantial health benefits.

According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, "moderate alcohol consumption is defined as having up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men. This definition is referring to the amount consumed on any single day and is not intended as an average over several days."

So we’ve had our reasonable share of finding out why alcohol is bad for us, so here are some of the health benefits of heading down the Pubs in Brighton –

• It Can Lower Your Risk of Cardiovascular Disease
• It Can Lengthen Your Life
• It Can Improve Your Libido
• It Helps Prevent Against the Common Cold
• It Can Decrease Chances of Developing Dementia
• It Can Reduce the Risk of Gallstones
• Lowers the Chance of Diabetes

http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/alcohols-effects-body
http://www.medicaldaily.com/7-health-benefits-drinking-alcohol-247552
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