Healthy Eating Tip #6 – Alcohol in Moderation


“When the first reports appeared linking moderate alcohol consumption with lower rates of heart disease, many scientists thought that some other habit shared by drinkers, not the drinking, accounted for the benefit. Today the evidence strongly points to alcohol itself. Based on the best estimates available, one drink a day for women and one or two a day for men cuts the chances of having a heart attack or dying from heart disease by about a third and also decreases the risk of having a clot-caused (ischemic) stroke.

Like many drugs, alcohol’s effects depend on the dose. A little bit can be beneficial. A lot can eventually destroy the liver, lead to various cancers, boost blood pressure, trigger so-called bleeding (hemorrhagic) strokes, progressively weakening the heart muscle, scramble the brain, harm unborn children, and damage lives.

If you don’t drink alcohol, you shouldn’t feel compelled to start. You can get similar benefits by beginning to exercise (if you don’t already) or boosting the intensity and duration of your physical activity, in addition to following the eating strategy we describe. But if you are an adult with no history of depression or alcoholism who is at high risk for heart disease, a daily alcoholic drink may help reduce that risk. This is especially true for people with type 2 diabetes or those with low HDL that just won’t budge upward with diet and exercise. If you already drink alcohol, keep it moderate.”

                             Dr. Walter Willett
                             Professor of Nutrition, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health

In my next blog I will expand on this quote by discussing red wine versus other alcoholic beverages, as well as the importance of folic acid for female drinkers. Additionally, as a special treat I will include the recipe of one of my favorite winter cocktails! 

Dear friends, if you read this blog you are probably a member of my "What's Toxic?" Facebook group. While I thank you for this, I encourage you to join my "actual" blog here. Blog membership is important for me to achieve support for various upcoming projects I am working on. Simply click “join this site” at the top right of this page, log into your account, and click “follow publicly.”  Thanks so much! =)

                                                                                                      -Shahir Masri, M.S. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Climate Change Publication - The Hill

Image
Just had a climate change article published in The Hill over the weekend. The article discusses the connection between climate change and the recent hurricane activity we've experienced here in the U.S. As for the title, there is already a new Hurricane (Maria) tearing through the eastern Caribbean as I share this. According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, it just made landfall on the island of Dominica as a Category 5. Let's hope for the best for our island neighbors. Hurricanes and the climate – is the worst yet to come? "A few weeks ago we witnessed the dramatic saga unfold in Houston as Hurricane Harvey slammed the Texas coast. Lives were lost and entire neighborhoods vanished. According to scientists, Harvey dumped more rain than any previously recorded storm in the contiguous U.S. This week the nation braced again as Hurricane Irma swept through Florida. Are these storms just a fluke, or a sign of things to come? As a scientist who studies climate change, thi...
Read more

Climate Change #4 – The Tipping Point

Image
If you’ve heard of climate change, you’ve probably heard of the “tipping point.” But what does this mean? To understand, you must first understand earth’s “positive feedback” systems. Let me explain.  Major Positive Feedbacks You’re all familiar with positive feedback mechanisms whether you know it or not. Positive feedback is when a change in A leads to a change in B. And the change in B leads to a further change in A, which further changes B. This goes back and forth as both A and B continuously reinforce each other—a sort of snowball effect. Besides snowballs, earth has some positive feedback systems with tremendous implications to the climate. Let’s take a look at a few and discuss how initial small changes can rapidly get out of control and send things down an undesirable path. Snow Cover – As sun hits earth, some light is absorbed and some is reflected. The pleasant climate we enjoy on earth is the result of a delicate balance between this incoming and outgoing energy. Snow ...
Read more

Your Health - What to Prioritize

Image
             Though this blog mostly concerns chemical exposures, it is critical to keep in mind the more important role that our basic health tenants play in good health. That is, the importance of a healthy diet, exercise, and aversion of harmful habits. While avoiding toxic cosmetics, eating organic, and watching the fish you eat are things certainly worthwhile, and things I clearly advocate, their impact to health is relatively low compared to the impacts of eating well and staying active. This reality is often missed by those interested in health. More tragically, minimizing chemical exposures can give the false illusion of healthy living, when in fact a person is not leading a healthy life. You might say, what good is reducing your late-life cancer risk, albeit by a fraction of a percent, if you’re going down the path of a midlife heart attack?               There was a time when en...
Read more