Is Alcohol Good for Health?

Is it feasible to consume alcohol and be healthy? Alcohol is considered to be healthy as well as harmful too for your health. It actually depends the quantity of alcohol you are drinking.

In accordance to many research, moderate amount of alcohol is quite beneficial for your health. Reasearch suggests men and women who take one or two alcoholic drinks per day have a lower death rate from coronary heart disease than abstainers. The weekly consumption of alcohol for men should be 21 units and for women, it should be 14 units ( one unit is equivalent to 8g of alcohol). Consuming little amount of alcohol can increase your "good cholesterol" levels provided you are eating healthy foods and doing regular physical activities. Alcohol has the potential to stimulate the appetite, therefore it is always recommended to eat food while you drink.

Do you have any idea what is actually alcohol? Alcohol is produced when grains, vegetables or fruits are fermented. During the fermentation process, the bacteria or yeast changes the sugar of the food into alcohol. So while drinking, the alcohol gets absorbed into our bloodstream. And from there, it affects the central nervous system such as brain or spinal cord. This might changes the person's perceptions, vision, hearing, movement or emotions. But if you are stick to the moderate amount of alcohol, you will be more relaxed and less anxious.

Excessive drinking may also cause Alcohol Dementia after certain periods of time, which can cause problems with memory, learning or other cognitive skills. Alcohol drinking can also damage your liver and thus cause liver cirrhosis.

Too much drinking might disrupts your sleep too. If you have consumed excess amount of alcohol, you will feel drowsy and sleepy. However, within just a few hours, the effects of the alcohol will wake you up. It is recommended to drink lots of water after a hangover in order to rehydrate your body again. Drinking alcohol piles on the calories that can cause obesity and risk of diabetes.

The bottom line is that to get any healthy benefits from alcohol, we must drink responsibly.