A little drinking can make you happy, but drunkenness can harm your health - lies at the drinking table

This is the 4485th article of Da Yi Xiao Hu

During holidays, many friends and family have already made reservations for dinners. Since ancient times, alcoholic beverages have often accompanied the dining table, both at home and abroad. Whether it is white wine, red wine, beer, or rice wine, each type of alcohol has its own fans. In this regard, Dr. Shi believes that a little drinking can make you happy, but being drunk can still harm your body. Don't be fooled by some lies on the wine table.

1. Someone said, you are a man and you are big, so you won’t get drunk?

Theoretically, when taking the same amount of alcohol, people with larger bodies, that is, fat and tall people, have more body fluids including blood and water, and the alcohol in the blood can be better diluted. It seems that it is not easy to get drunk if the alcohol concentration is low. But in fact, there are also strong individual differences in alcohol tolerance. For example, gender, genes, metabolism, physical condition, and even medication status can affect the possibility of drunkenness or even blackouts.

2. Some people say that if you drink more, your alcohol tolerance will improve after getting drunk once?

If you only see that long-term drinking constantly stimulates the secretion of alcohol detoxification enzymes, and people feel that their alcohol tolerance improves after being drunk, all this is an illusion. Alcohol is no less harmful to the body. Alcohol relies on liver metabolism. Long-term and large-scale intake will overload the liver, cause liver lesions, and produce fatty liver, cirrhosis, and liver failure. At the same time, alcohol poisoning will damage the nervous system, induce cardiovascular and cerebrovascular accidents, reduce fertility, and increase the risk of cancer.

3. Some people say that drinking alcohol warms the body and can also strengthen the body?

After drinking, the human body feels warm because the blood vessels in the whole body are stimulated by alcohol to expand, and the blood flows to the skin faster, carrying the heat energy generated by the body itself. Its essence is a consumption of heat, not a large amount of heat generation. The truth is often that after a short period of warmth, the blood vessels cannot shrink in time, but will accelerate the heat dissipation, causing the person to feel cold. When the cold and the heat alternate, the human body's defense system is more likely to be unable to resist the constant attack of pathogens.

4. Some people say, I just like drinking and eating meat, and I won’t get drunk easily if I mix several kinds of wine together?

Some people like to eat fatty foods while drinking, thinking that this can slow down the process of getting drunk. However, this does not reduce the alcohol content in essence. The body will get drunk later but still, and the damage caused by alcohol is no less. In addition, fatty foods increase the burden on the liver, and slowing down the process of sobering up means increasing the risk of alcohol poisoning. Different alcohols have different alcohol strengths, and the absorption speed is naturally different. The overall alcohol intake is even more difficult to control. Once you have consumed too much alcohol before you realize it, it will irritate and even damage the stomach and liver.

5. Some people say that getting drunk can relieve all your worries, and you can be a brave man again when you wake up?

Don't believe that drinking to drown your sorrows will only make you more sorrowful. Alcohol will paralyze the central nervous system of the brain and reduce self-control. It is common for drunk people to lose their composure in life. At first, they are overly emotional, noisy, and overly excited. In layman's terms, they "do things without thinking." As the blood alcohol concentration increases further, it becomes more and more inhibited, depressed, frustrated, and even suicidal. There are also some rules for sleeping after drinking. Drunk people often vomit. If they lie flat, acidic gastric juice and vomit will flow back into the airway, which can induce aspiration pneumonia at the mildest, and block the airway or suffocate to death at the worst. So if a drunk wants to recover, please lie on your side and clean up the vomit in time. Do not sober up alone in an unfamiliar environment without supervision.

Author: Shanghai Putuo District Central Hospital

Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine