To Your Health

Q: My mother does not admit to having a problem with alcohol, but it worries me a lot when I see how much she drinks. Her favorite drink is a margarita and she has one or two almost every day, along with some wine with meals, though I have never seen her actually drunk. Am I being overly anxious and should I just keep quiet?

A: Attitudes about alcohol are greatly influenced by the culture we grow up in, and the line between reasonable consumption and abuse is not easy to determine for another person. Concern expressed in a loving way almost never offends, but be careful: People caught up in substance abuse can be very defensive, even hostile, and if you confront your mother you risk permanent damage to your relationship.

You could start by gently educating your mother regarding the detrimental effects of distilled alcoholic beverages (such as margaritas) compared to nondistilled alcoholic drinks, such as wine at a meal. For some people, alcohol is "all or nothing," but if your mother can restrict her alcohol consumption to nondistilled beverages, this would be better than her present practice.

All our food must be digested, and though the process starts in the mouth we seldom have more than 30 seconds to digest anything there. It is in the stomach and small intestine that digestion succeeds or fails. Food will spend a couple of hours in the stomach, and different types of alcoholic beverages will have vastly differing effects on the process of digestion.

Small amounts of alcohol tend to improve digestion and assimilation. Wine stimulates gastric acid secretions by increasing the hormone gastrin. As we grow older there is a tendency for gastric acid secretions to fall, making digestion more difficult. Stomach acid not only starts the digestion of proteins, it is the signal, through another hormone (secretin), for the pancreas to release its enzymes.

Larger amounts of alcohol, as found in distilled beverages, have the opposite effect, slowing the time it takes for your stomach to empty, and diminishing bowel activity. Distilled alcoholic beverages also increase the risk of cancer all the way down, from mouth to colon, because alcohol and its metabolites generate free radicals. Wine contains several types of antioxidants that are capable of protecting us from these damaging free radicals. The current popularity of daily wine consumption as a guardian against heart disease can be ascribed to these same antioxidants, but bear in mind that grape juice has the same antioxidants without the complication of the alcohol.

Wine kills bacteria that can cause diarrhea and the spirochete (Helicobacter pylori) that causes ulcers. However, in the intestinal tract, where food spends 18-24 hours and is thoroughly digested and absorbed, alcohol can in some cases enhance the growth of yeast organisms such as Candida albicans. Overgrowth of Candida is a serious problem when a person's immune system is compromised.

Alcohol consumption carries the risk of hindering the absorption and increasing the excretion of important nutrients, reducing immune function, and altering hormone balance. Putting it bluntly, if one consumes more than a few drinks per week, mortality from all causes increases exponentially.

Heavy alcohol consumption that deteriorates into alcohol abuse can cause the breakup of families, increase time lost from work, jeopardize life and limb due to automobile and work accidents, degrade reputations, and wound others in dozens of ways. When the potential for human suffering is considered, intervention often makes sense.