Monday, August 22, 2011

Liver care while you drink alcohol


Your liver needs water to do its job. As alcohol acts as a diuretic (makes you pass urine), it dehydrates you and forces the liver to divert water from elsewhere. When the liver is processing alcohol it produces a substance called acetaldehyde. This has a toxic effect on the liver itself, as well as the brain and stomach lining. This is what causes your hangover. Acetaldehyde is subsequently broken down into chemical called acetate, which is broken down further into carbon dioxide and water outside the liver. Regular and heavy drinking over time can strain or disrupt this process, leading to alcoholic liver disease.
You are very unlikely to develop liver problems caused by alcohol if you drink within the recommended safe limits. That is:
  • Pregnant women. The exact amount that is safe is not known. Therefore, advice from experts is that pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant should not drink at all. If you do chose to drink when you are pregnant then limit it to one or two units, once or twice a week. And never binge drink or get drunk.
Keep these pointers in mind;
Set limits. One way to make sure you do not drink to excess is to decide how many drinks your body can safely handle and do not exceed this limit during the course of the night. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to keep track, especially when playing drinking games. Such games may provide entertainment and a chance to feel included in a social group, but they contribute to excessive drinking. The atmosphere created by drinking games is dangerous because it causes you to drink more than you would usually through peer pressure and rapid rate of consumption. Chugging alcohol will delay awareness of how much alcohol is in your body because of the time it takes to raise your BAC.
Eat a meal before you drink. Food in the stomach will slow the entrance of alcohol into your bloodstream by preventing it from entering your small intestine which absorbs alcohol faster than the stomach. High protein foods, like cheese, are best at slowing down the effects of alcohol, and thus help prevent a hangover.
Don’t drink if you’re suffering fatigue. Exhaustion magnifies the effect of alcohol on the body. Unfortunately, alcohol is often used as a reward after periods of high stress that have overworked the body to fatigue.

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