How alcohol will affect your body depends largely on who you are and how much you drink. Alcohol affects everyone differently, depending on age, size, medical condition, even gender. For the most part, if you drink moderately, alcohol does have its health benefits, but it also has its risks.
Drinking alcohol, even moderately, can increase your risk for colon and breast cancer, but on the other hand, it can actually boost your heart health.
If you don’t drink already, it’s not necessary to start. You should not start feeling froggy and go jumping into a drinking habit, even if heart disease runs in your family. If you are already a drinker and you drink heavily, you should definitely begin cutting back. Too much alcohol of any kind is dangerous. It can cause liver damage, high blood pressure, even increase your chance of getting cancer, not to mention the risk for dependency.
If you take any medications that react adversely with alcohol, then the risks most definitely outweigh the benefits. A pregnant woman should never consume alcohol because it could cause brain damage in her unborn baby.
So, what is moderation? One drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men is the general guideline. Twelve ounces of beer, five ounces of wine or one and a half ounces of hard liquor is considered a drink. It really doesn’t matter that much which type of alcohol you drink as long as you remember that moderation is the key.
If you choose to drink, even moderately, you may want to add a multivitamin to your diet that contains folate. Folate will help decrease your risk of developing cancer since the alcohol robs your body of the folate it has stored.
If you are concerned about your drinking habits, please talk to your doctor.
Sources:
Dietary guidelines for Americans 2005. U.S. Department of Agriculture
Plasma folate, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, homocysteine, and risk of breast cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2003; 95:373-80.