Today I thought I would talk about some of the dangers of alcohol and most importantly, how to lessen the damage if you do decide to drink.
We all know that drinking alcohol has a dark side, but do you really know what it is doing to you? Many of your symptoms could simply be caused by that daily tipple. We go over, what it is doing and how you can protect yourself.
I have known about this for a very long time, and there was a time when I didn’t drink anything for many years. Then it sneaked into my life, by stealth !! And for the last couple of years, I was drinking daily, thinking I was doing ok. Now I have had over 3 months off, with the Ultimate Detox and oh my, I feel so much better without it!! I have had the occasional glass of wine since being on the strict part of the program and I really don’t like the way it makes me feel!!
Here are a few reasons to either knock alcohol on the head or at least limit its consumption.
Alcohol poisons your brain, and that is why you feel drunk. It shrinks neurons, destroys your gut lining and leads to inflammation within your whole body, not just your gut. It depletes NAD levels, which are critical for longevity and ruins your sleep.
Here’s what it does to you
Gut Damage
The first place it harms is your gut.
Alcohol disrupts the microbiome leading to dysbiosis—this in turn compromises the gut lining, which leads to a leaky gut allowing endotoxins to pass into your bloodstream causing loads of inflammation and constipation plus other gut issues
Liver Damage
Alcohol causes many to have liver damage. The reason is that with the gut lining being compromised, the gut lining allows endotoxins to pass through to the liver causing inflammation and oxidative stress as well as fat deposits in and around the liver.
Alcohol depletes the liver’s detoxification pathways and in turn, disrupts the ability to detoxify other harmful substances. Which can cause so many other health problems as we go along.
Brain damage
Ethanol is very toxic to the brain as it bypasses the blood-brain barrier. It is what causes us to feel the effects of alcohol when we are drunk.
One of the ways it causes damage is via gut and liver damage – these are the long-term effects of that night on the town. It does this via an immune activation and inflammation is caused in your brain. Hence the hangover effect.