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Apr 2016The Right Way To Drink Like A Man
Posted by Drink Responsibly / in Responsible Drinking / No comments yet
Bloating like a drunken fish is probably the last thing you’d want to do on weekends, and blacking out like a first-timer on cheap vodka is definitely not your idea of a perfect night at the bar. Most of us chug beers down to celebrate and have a great time with family and friends. Drinking irresponsibly or in copious amounts every time may begin to hamper your body’s ability to process alcohol which means your body asks for more alcohol every time , weakening your liver and making it prone to deadly diseases.
Even when the occurrence of these diseases are found across races, the incidence of ill effects of alcohol are found more on women than on men. This is not a genetic tendency, but as conclusive research suggests, this has more to do with the difference in physiology of men and women. Before we get into how people are affected, lets us first understand why people either do not identify or stop themselves from binge drinking.
In 1967, a revolutionary theory was presented by Hoffman which explained ‘Tolerance’ as the primary cause of alcohol-related addiction and disease. Tolerance as term is much misunderstood even today and has become a blurry zone between guidelines as recommended by government bodies and doctors who treat thousands of people inflicted with tolerance and addiction every day.
What is tolerance?
By definition, tolerance is “the capacity to endure continued subjection to something such as a drug or environmental conditions without adverse reaction.” That just means you need more and more alcohol to achieve desired effects. For instance, you may have felt the alcohol buzz setting in after 2 glasses of wine. As you develop tolerance, you may have to guzzle down many more cups of wine to attain the same degree of drunken elation. As a result, you get thrown into an endless loop of drinking more and more. Some factors that affect tolerance include –
- Gender
- Body size
- Stress
- Medication
- Gender – A woman can never ‘drink like a man’
Men in general have higher tolerance for alcohol than women of the same age. In party terms, women get drunk faster than men. (Unfortunately, that is a real-world fact). This happens because Women have a smaller body size than men. Also, the dozen of enzymes that process alcohol are almost double in concentration in men than in women. This may be the reason for the study by the University of Notre Dame, IN which suggests “a woman will absorb about 30% more alcohol into her bloodstream than a man of the same weight who has consumed an equal amount.”
Although, there is definitely an upside to this! Given the fact that men have a higher degree of tolerance, they are exposed to a greater risk of alcohol abuse and possibly, acute alcoholism. On the other hand, women with lesser tolerance are comparatively safer than their male counterparts.
- Body Size – Elves or Cowboys
People with smaller bodies tend to get drunk quicker than the biggies. The degree of alcohol consumption and effects is measured by body weight. The smaller a person, the faster the alcohol sets in into their bloodstream and the sooner they get drunk.
- Stress – Don’t drown your sorrows
Studies have shown stress can make you drink more than usual. When the body is under stress (be it emotional as in the case of sadness, or physical as in the case of injury), alcohol is absorbed faster into the blood stream. This is clearly not an effective coping mechanism and has serious ill-effects. When you’re most tempted to binge-drink is the time you’re at maximum risk of alcohol going wrong.
- Medication – A Doctor’s shot
This is one of the cardinal rules of drinking. Medication when mixed with alcohol can throw the liver off balance. This is closely related with tolerance, because reactions that may take place inside the body when alcohol mixes with medication can be extremely dangerous.
In conclusion, when it comes to alcohol consumption and health, moderate drinking is essentially the key. There is no standard formula that can help you calculate the ideal ‘moderate’ limit for you, but in general, women are advised to drink not more than 2-3 units of alcohol (ie, roughly 2 pints of beer or 2 glasses of red wine) and men to not exceed 3-4 units of alcohol in a day. These of course, are approximations and alcohol consumption should be kept to minimum as far as possible.
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