As counterintuitive as it sounds, exercise and alcohol might just be a match made in heaven. Not because it's healthy, per se, but because it's...well, honest. "The combination of fitness and alcohol has gained popularity because it's honest," says Jason Wimberley, celebrity personal trainer and the founder of The WALL fitness. "As trainers, we know our clients aren't only eating brown rice and chicken, and we also know that a lot of people dedicate themselves to fitness as a means to enjoy their free time and splurge a little, and that's OK."
And frankly, it's a smart business decision on behalf of gyms, studios, and event managers to give the people what they want—the opportunity to celebrate and socialize after a tough workout. Providing post-sweat drinks encourages participants to stick around, get to know their classmates, and leave with a feel-good "high" that goes above and beyond workout-induced endorphins.
The presence of alcohol has also become practically ubiquitous where races and fitness events are concerned. For instance, in 2017, Michelob Ultra was named one of the sponsors of the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon Series. And it's not just major events that incorporate suds. I've participated in small, locally-managed trail runs in two different states that served up alcohol to participants, either during the race or as a post-race "congratulations." In fact, it may be harder to find a race that doesn'tprovide alcohol than one that does.
While post-workout happy hours and post-race drinks aren't exactly new, the marketing of the marriage between these seemingly incongruous partners has changed. Before, trainers, gyms, or event managers might say, "Join us for a post-workout happy hour!" positioning the alcohol as a cap to the end of the workout. But now, drinks are often incorporated into the name of the event or class, making it crystal clear what participants can look forward to. For instance, when you register for the Bend Beer Chase in Bend, Oregon, you know in advance you can expect equal measures of running and (optional) beer.
So if you haven't yet gotten in on the action, and you're looking for a few fun ways to combine your love of exercise with a moderate amount of alcohol (let's keep it healthy, folks), then consider checking out the following opportunities.
1
Sunday Funday at The WALL
Jason Wimberley understands what his clients want, so at his studio, The WALL, he serves mimosas after the "Sunday Funday" class that features the studio's signature 123 Stack format of core activation, circuit training, and cycling.
"While most may not even finish their glass, it's become a fun reward, and more importantly, a way for us to connect and hang after class," Wimberley says. "When you're dripping sweat and exhausted, a light sip of something bubbly can be just enough to help you calm down and soak it all in before heading back out into the real world."
Of course, he also emphasizes the importance of drinking water before diving headlong into the mimosas.
2
bRUNch Running
If you like running, and you like brunch (or really, any meal), bRUNch Running based out of Denver, Colorado, may be your cup of tea (or wine, as it were). The focus of the community's non-competitive training runs is to balance food and fitness in a way that supports an overall active, happy life. Most training runs start and end at restaurants in cities all around the country, with event tickets including the cost of post-run beverages.
And if you can make it to Denver for the official bRUNch Run, you'll experience a 5k or 10k-distance event followed by a post-run festival offering brews, libations, and eats from more than 25 Denver-based eateries. Sponsors include companies like Great Divide Brewing Co., Barefoot Wine & Bubbly, and Tito's Handmade Vodka, so you know it'll be a fun afterparty.
3
Brew You Yoga
Bronx Brewing
"I see yoga and beer as kindred spirits, both ancient traditions steeped in ritual, balance, and community," says Leanne Maciel, a certified health coach and yoga instructor who hosts the Brew You Yoga events at Bronx Brewery once a month. Maciel goes on to liken the brewing process of beer to the "brewing process" of a yoga practice. "Each time we step on the mat we go through our own brewing process, mixing the ingredients within us, balancing them, and giving them good energy," she says. "I tap into this process, teaching about brewing throughout the class, and then we taste beer!"
Maciel loves teaching the class because many people who join are new to yoga. It's less-intimidating to sign up for a yoga class at a brewery than at a high-end studio, making it a low-risk way for people to try something new. She points out that many guys come for the beer (participants receive a tasting flight of five brews following class), but end up loving the yoga.
And it's also an easy way to mingle with other people who share similar interests. "People are tired of hanging out at a bar, getting hit on. [This class] combines things they're already doing, like working out and socializing. They like the unique space, the sounds and smells. It adds a unique twist to the experience."
Of course, the Bronx Brewery isn't the only brewery hosting yoga classes. Classes are popping up around the country, you just have to search for them. For instance, if you live in Los Angeles, you can find a slew of options on the Brew Yoga website, or if you're in Charlotte, North Carolina, check out the Work for Your Beer site listing.
4
Yoga Unwined
Love yoga and wine? Then you can't go wrong with Morgan Perry's unique Yoga Unwined classes. These New York City-based events provide a way for busy professionals to make time for an evening workout while also enjoying their wine, and Perry even makes the experience educational by providing fun wine facts throughout the class.
Even though at first glance the combo seems a bit unusual, Perry insists yoga and wine pair quite nicely. "Yoga is all about focus and concentration, which is an excellent tool for wine tasting as well. Yoga also helps us release tension, decreasing levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and the alcohol in wine can help us to relax," Perry says.
This is a major focus of her vinyasa-based classes, which close with a meditative wine tasting. "Meditation allows you to focus inwardly and ignore the outside world. With a meditative wine tasting, we take that idea and apply it to focusing on what is happening in your glass, without the distractions that may happen in a typical wine tasting environment," she adds. "If you're fully present, you're able to better concentrate on what you see, smell, and taste in the glass."
5
CyclePub
Pub crawls used to be self-led events that just kind of developed as a wild night progressed, but these days you can sign up for brewery tours where you and a group of friends cycle from location to location—completely self-powered—as you enjoy a combination of activity and alcohol.
CyclePub, located in Bend, Oregon, is one such company that actually has a liquor license that covers its multi-person bike pubs. This means you can bring along a bottle of wine and a growler of beer to drink with you on-the-go (sharing with your cycle-mates, of course), refilling it as needed at the breweries you stop at along the way. These guided tours last about 2 hours and cover roughly 2 miles of sometimes hilly terrain, firing up your quads for short periods of effort. Ultimately, however, they qualify as more "pub" than "cycle," so while they might make you feel a little bit better about imbibing, they shouldn't replace your normal workout routine.
Similar tours are available in cities across the country. For instance, you can book a tour with Pub Crawler in Austin, TX, or Social Cycle in California. Just be sure you read and understand the company's rules before you book a tour, as they vary by location and license.
Alcohol is a toxic liquid, yet drinking a glass of red wine every night is good for the heart...how is that possible? Red wine contains “resveratrol”, a natural fungicide found in grape skins, which is supposed to have magical antioxidant properties—is that true? If so, is drinking wine worth the risk?
Alcohol is toxic to the brain and body.
Alcohol will not solve any of your health problems, because no health problem is caused by a lack of alcohol.
What is alcohol?
Alcohol is first and foremost a toxin and is treated by the human body as a poison. It damages your cells—especially stomach cells, liver cells, and nerve cells. Alcohol consumption has been associated in epidemiological studies with high blood pressure, stroke, liver disease, many types of cancer, cardiomyopathy (heart muscle dysfunction), and other health problems.
Alcohol is not a necessary nutrient, but it is found in nature, so our bodies have developed a way to protect us from it. Our ancestors would have encountered small amounts of alcohols in naturally fermenting plant foods such as fruits. For example, when the skin of a fruit is damaged, yeasts invade to eat the fruit sugars. You are probably familiar with this problem—at the bottom of a container of fruit you are likely to find a squashed fruit or two with white fuzz growing on it—that’s yeast. Yeasts enjoy eating the fruit sugars, and in a process called fermentation, they create alcohol as a waste product:
Yeast + Sugar →ALCOHOL + Carbon Dioxide Gas
So, when we eat yeasty fruits, we are also taking in tiny amounts of alcohol. Humans developed a special enzyme system devoted solely to the rapid detoxification of alcohol to minimize the damage that it can do to organs. This enzyme system is located primarily in the liver, but also in the stomach and lungs. Below you can see the two-step process that our enzymes use to turn toxic alcohol into harmless acetate:
ALCOHOL (toxic) →Acetaldehyde (toxic) →Acetate
Notice that the chemical in the middle—acetaldehyde—is also toxic. Acetaldehyde causes a variety of unpleasant symptoms, including flushing, nausea, and headache. The final product, acetate, is then either burned for energy or turned into fat.
How much alcohol can the body handle?
Mother Nature probably didn’t predict that we would go out of our way to create big bottles of alcohol for voluntary consumption (silly humans), because we weren’t designed to be able to handle large amounts of alcohol. Our enzymes can only process 7 grams of pure alcohol (ethanol) per hour, which is about one drink (one beer, one 1.5 oz shot, or 5 oz of wine) every 2 hours. There are natural variations in the activity of these enzymes in the human population, so some people metabolize alcohol more easily than others. For example, most men process alcohol faster than most women do. Many Asians have a genetic difference in the second enzyme (acetaldehyde dehydrogenase), so they break down acetaldehyde more slowly and can quickly feel sick if they drink alcohol. Only you know what your tolerance is.
If your tolerance is average, and you drink more than one drink every 2 hours, your enzymes will become overwhelmed. Alcohol will then spill over into an emergency backup detoxification system, hijacking critical anti-oxidant molecules needed for normal body function. This throws off your internal oxidant/anti-oxidant balance,tipping it into oxidation mode. Alcohol is, therefore, a “pro-oxidant.” Oxidation damages healthy DNA, which is the first step on the road to cancer. Alcohol is a known carcinogen, raising the risk of many types of cancer.
How does alcohol affect mental health?
Alcohol has a powerful impact on your mood and sleep, but the effects are different during the first couple of hours after drinking compared to a few hours later. To see how alcohol and other popular foods and beverages act on your nervous system, I recommend reading my Psychology Today article 5 Foods Proven to Cause Anxiety and Insomnia.
Is alcohol good for the heart?
While there is no such thing as a safe amount of alcohol to drink, you may have heard that drinking modest amounts of alcohol, especially red wine, might be good for your heart. While most physicians, and the American Heart Association, strongly advise against it, some researchers do recommend alcohol in moderation to reduce risk of heart attacks.
Interest first arose in this connection in the 1990’s because of the “French Paradox”, which was the observation that people in France had a lower risk of heart attacks than people in other Western countries, despite eating significant amounts of saturated fat. [To understand why this is not a surprising paradox at all, see: cholesterol]. When scientists noticed that the French had fewer heart attacks, their minds jumped to the tempting possibility that red wine was the magic ingredient, and launched all kinds of studies to try to prove that their guess was right.
Anyway, there are two reasons why we are told that alcohol in moderation is good for the heart: epidemiologic studies and resveratrol.
Epidemiological studies
Epidemiological studies are simply observational studies which attempt to describe differences in patterns of diseases between large groups of people; they are not capable of determining cause and effect, and therefore they can’t tell us what we really want to know—whether alcohol is good for us or not.
Many epidemiological studies find that “moderate” drinkers tend to have fewer heart attacks. Moderate drinking means: ½ to 1 drink per day for women and 1-2 drinks per day for men. The observed reduction in risk varies, depending on the study, from 17% to 29%. Keep in mind that just because two things appear to be associated doesn’t mean that one causes the other—there may be other reasons why people who drink moderately have lower risks of heart attacks. [Read my post, The Problem with Epidemiological Studies to learn why we should be wary of these types of studies.]
So, how could a poison be good for your heart?
It is not entirely clear why alcohol appears to be associated with reduced risk for heart attacks. If the association is real, we can only guess as to how the two are related. It would be nearly impossible to design a study that proves the connection, because that study would have to compare moderate drinkers to people who don’t drink at all, and who have no other major differences in their lifestyles, follow them for years, and watch to see which group develops more heart attacks.
Instead, what researchers have done is conducted short interventional studies to see how alcohol affects various markers of heart disease. In these types of studies, researchers give one group of people alcohol and the other group (the control group) a non-alcoholic beverage, and then test their blood for markers associated with heart attack risk, like cholesterol levels. The best available analysis of these short-term, clinical intervention studies (Brien 2011) found that moderate alcohol intake:
Raises HDL by an average of 4 points.
HDL is the so-called “good cholesterol.” 4 points is not much, but theoretically it is associated with up to a 17% reduction in heart attack risk. The most effective way to raise HDL is to reduce the amount of carbohydrate in your diet (see: Cholesterol).
Reduces fibrinogen by an average of 0.2 g/L.
Fibrinogen is a protein that helps your blood form clots. Studies find that a reduction in fibrinogen of 0.2 g/L is associated with up to a 36% reduction in risk for heart attack. Normal fibrinogen levels are between 1.5 and 2.77 g/L.
Raises adiponectin by an average of 0.56 ug/ml.
Adiponectin is a hormone produced by fat cells that improves insulin sensitivity. Normal adiponectin levels range from about 5 to 15 ug/ml, so an increase of 0.56 is rather small, and is associated with a heart attack risk reduction of only about 1.5%. A safer and more effective way to improve insulin sensitivity is to reduce dietary carbohydrate.
All of these things—higher HDL, lower fibrinogen, and improved insulin sensitivity, are associated with lower risk of heart attacks, so any or all of these may be possible reasons why moderate drinkers appear to have fewer heart attacks. Now, my way of looking at this is to ask why our HDL, fibrinogen and insulin sensitivity are not at healthy levels to begin with, but maybe that’s just me…anyway…so, is it worth it to drink toxic alcohol? My opinion is no, based on the following:
The alcohol intervention studies cited above compared alcohol to a variety of “control” beverages–water, non-alcoholic beer or wine, or fruit juice, depending on the study. This means that these studies need to be taken with a grain of salt. Fruit juice in particular, due to its high content of fructose and other sugars, is a high glycemic index beverage, and the American Heart Association concluded that sweet beverages increase the risk of heart disease. It could be that the alcoholic beverages looked better by comparison because they were lower in sugar; it may have nothing to do with the alcohol content of the beverages.
There are significant risks to drinking alcohol that, for most people, likely outweigh the small potential benefits. These risks include liver damage, anxiety, nerve damage, accidents, digestive tract damage, risky behaviors, breast and gastrointestinal tract cancers, depression, insomnia, addiction, and dependence.
Alcohol can lower blood sugar levels in the hours following a meal containing carbohydrate, by raising insulin levels. While reductions in blood sugar are desirable, elevated insulin levels are undesirable for many reasons (see my Carbohydrate page)
There is mounting evidence and a slowly growing consensus that the most powerful dietary risk factors for heart disease are refined and high glycemic index carbohydrates, not a lack of alcohol intake. Therefore, it is much safer, much wiser, and likely much more effective to reduce dangerous refined carbohydrates in your diet than to add a toxic liquid to your diet that may or may not reduce your risk.
Resveratrol—the red wine antioxidant
There’s been a lot of buzz about resveratrol, a polyphenol antioxidant found in grape skins. Since red wine is made with grape skins and white wine is not, red wine has been (wrongly) elevated to the status of a health food. There is no reason to believe that red wine or even resveratrol itself is good for you, much as we would love to think it’s true. Numerous studies, most of them done in animals and test tubes, suggest that resveratrol might be beneficial as an anti-aging and anticancer drug. However, there is, as of yet, no convincing evidence in human trials to support its benefits.
What is resveratrol?
Resveratrol is a chemical that certain plants (like grapevines) produce under stress to protect themselves against enemies, such as fungi, worms, and insects. Resveratrol can kill a fungus in 30 minutes by destroying the membranes of its endoplasmic reticulum, nucleus, and mitochondria. These structures are critical to the life of all cells, so fungi cannot live without them. As with all “healthy antioxidants” produced by plants, I can’t help but wonder what damage they might be able to do to our own vital cellular components (see: my Vegetablespage).
Is red wine special?
Studies find no difference in heart disease rates between people who drink red wine and people who drink other types of alcoholic beverages, which do not contain resveratrol, so red wine is not special. If there is a connection between alcohol and reduced heart attack incidence, it has to do with the alcohol itself, not the resveratrol.
How much resveratrol is in red wine?
The average glass of red wine contains a maximum of 1 mg of resveratrol. Many of the studies that make resveratrol sound promising are done in laboratory animals, using concentrations of resveratrol that are impossible to get from drinking red wine. For example, one important mouse study published in the journal Nature (Baur 2006) used doses between 5-22 mg/kg body weight. A 150 lb (68 kg) human being would have to drink between 340 and 1500 glasses of red wine to obtain that much resveratrol.
Is resveratrol safe?
In brief trials, humans can tolerate up to about 1 gram (1000 mg) of resveratrol extract per day without getting sick. When researchers at the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline tested high-dose resveratrol in people with a form of cancer called multiple myeloma, they decided to end the trial early because it was associated with an increased risk of kidney failure, and caused nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
How is resveratrol handled by the body?
Even if resveratrol were a miracle antioxidant, it probably wouldn’t matter, because our bodies transform it into other compounds within less than 30 minutes of entering our bloodstream.
Most importantly, alcohol is a proven pro-oxidant, and is toxic to humans. It doesn’t make sense to drink red wine, which is a toxic pro-oxidant, known to damage cells throughout the body, in order to (maybe) get (a little bit of) anti-oxidant benefit from resveratrol to (perhaps) reduce your risk of one single health problem—heart attacks.
If you believe in the potential power of resveratrol, despite the lack of evidence for benefits to human health, best to find a source that does not contain alcohol.
BOTTOM LINE ABOUT ALCOHOL:
There are no studies proving that alcohol is beneficial to human health.
The risks of drinking alcohol FAR outweigh any potential benefits.
If you are not a problem drinker, and do not have any significant medical reasons why you shouldn’t drink, and you enjoy drinking alcohol from time to time, that’s one thing. That’s a personal decision and you can weigh the risks and benefits for yourself.
However, if you are drinking alcohol because you believe that it has medicinal benefits and that it’s good for your heart, I wouldn’t recommend it. I would recommend paying attention to the overall quality of your diet and reducing the amount of high glycemic and refined carbohydrates you eat instead.
Middle aged drinkers who down just one large glass of wine a day increase their risk of stroke by a third, warns a new study.
The mass study, which tracked more than 11,000 twins over 43 years, found that otherwise healthy people who drank at such levels had a higher risk of stroke than others with conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
The study, published in the journal Stroke, followed 11,644 twins over 43 years.
The results showed drinkers in their fifties and sixties who had at least two alcoholic drinks a day - the equivalent of one large glass of wine, or pint of strong lager - had a 34 per cent greater risk of stroke than those who consumed just under half the amount.
Current Government guidelines recommend men should not regularly drink more than three or four units of alcohol a day, while for women it is two to three units a day.
A large glass of wine served in pubs is 250ml, or one third of a bottle, and with an alcohol content of 12 per cent has three units of alcohol.
Previous studies have shown that alcohol affects stroke risk - but this one is the first to properly pinpoint differences with age.
The findings show that blood pressure and diabetes appeared to take over as one of the main influences on having a stroke at around the age of 75.
Pavla Kadlecová, of St. Anne's University Hospital in the Czech Republic, said: "We now have a clearer picture about these risk factors, how they change with age and how the influence of drinking alcohol shifts as we get older.
"For mid-aged adults, avoiding more than two drinks a day could be a way to prevent stroke in later productive age."
Researchers looked at results from the Swedish Twin Registry of same-sex twins who answered questionnaires in 1967-70, all of whom were under the age of 60 at the time.
Follow-up records in 2010 showed 43 years of follow-up information, including hospital discharge and cause of death data.
The experts were then able to look at the data and find incidences of stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes and other cardiovascular events.
Among identical twin pairs, siblings who had a stroke drank more than their siblings who hadn't had a stroke, suggesting that mid-life drinking raises stroke risks regardless of genetics and lifestyle.
Dr Shamim Quadir, Research Communications Manager at the Stroke Association, said: “Alcohol is one of the world’s leading causes of ill-health, and regularly drinking large amounts can significantly increase your risk of a stroke.
“These important findings suggest that heavy drinkers in their 50s and 60s could be putting themselves at increased risk of stroke. The results also indicate that heavy drinking during middle-age is a higher risk factor for stroke than high blood pressure and diabetes.
“Enjoying alcohol in moderation, taking regular exercise and eating a balanced diet are simple ways to reduce your stroke risk. Anyone with any concerns should have a chat with their GP.”
Last week a separate study suggested that a small glass of wine a day could reduce the risk of heart failure by 20 per cent.
The Harvard research compared middle aged men who drink small amounts of alcohol - half a pint of beer a day, or a small glass of wine - with teetotallers.
Experts said both studies suggest a small quantities of alcohol could have a protective effect on the heart, but that larger amounts were risky.
The first is that beer could help you live longer. Last year, a study of 80,000 adults conducted by the Pennsylvania State University found a pint or two a day could help reduce the risk of having a stroke or developing heart disease.
The research, conducted among Chinese adults, discovered a moderate daily alcohol intake (that would include beer) helps top up your high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or “good” cholesterol .
Guinness may be good for you after all. A research team at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania found dark ales and stouts can curb heart attack rates by cutting down the risk of atherosclerosis (furred up arteries) by a half.
Studies by both Harvard Medical School and the American Stroke Association have shown people who drink moderate amounts of beer can also cut their risk of strokes to half, compared to non-drinkers.
When you drink beer, your arteries become flexible and blood flow improves significantly. Last year, a study suggested that the risk of getting kidney stones decreases with increasing beer consumption.
"Alcohol switches the brain into starvation mode, increasing hunger and appetite, scientists have discovered," BBC News reports.
Research in mice found alcohol increased activity in a set of brain cells used to regulate appetite.
Scientists have long been puzzled about why people often eat more when they've been drinking alcohol, despite the high number of calories in alcoholic drinks. Alcohol is second only to fat in its calorie density.
The body's regulatory system should register calories arriving in the body, so that the person would not feel hungry. But with alcohol the opposite happens – people feel hungry and eat more.
Researchers found that mice ate more when given alcohol. They saw spikes in electrical activity in Agouti-related peptide cells (AGRP cells) from the mice brains when they were exposed to alcohol. AGRP cells are specialised brain cells the body uses to regulate appetite. While hunger may hit you in your stomach, the entire process of "hunger, eat, reward" is controlled by your brain.
When the mice's AGRP cells were chemically blocked, they no longer ate more when given alcohol.
Research in animals doesn't always translate to humans, so we don't know for sure if this means the same thing happens in human brains. However, it is plausible.
It's also a reminder that if you're trying to watch your weight – alcohol will set you back in more ways than one; it is chock full of calories in its own right, and it may well make you eat more on top.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from the Francis Crick Institute and University College London and was funded by the Francis Crick Institute, which itself is funded by Cancer Research UK, the UK Medical Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust.
The BBC summarised the results reasonably accurately, saying that while the research was in mice, the researchers "believe the same is probably true in humans".
But the Daily Mail barely mentioned that the research was carried out in mice, and that animal research does not necessarily translate into humans.
What kind of research was this?
This was experimental animal research, carried out in a laboratory on mice bred for experimental purposes. While animal research can give us clues to what may be happening in human bodies, there are plenty of differences between mice and humans. This means we can't rely on the results being true for humans.
What did the research involve?
Scientists carried out a series of experiments on laboratory mice, to see what effect ethanol (pure alcohol) had on their eating behaviour and brain cells. They examined tissue from mice brains, to see how certain brain cells responded to ethanol, and looked to see what happened when they blocked receptors for those cells.
The first experiments included giving 10 mice the mouse equivalent of 18 human units of alcohol a day (about a standard bottle and a half of wine) for three days. The alcohol was given by injection into the body, to ensure all mice got the same amount and that their appetites weren't affected by the taste. Researchers weighed how much food the mice ate each day. This was compared to food eaten on the days before and after the alcohol dose.
They then took brain samples from genetically modified mice and looked to see what effect ethanol had on AGRP nerve cells from the hypothalamus of the brain. They used calcium activity markers (a technique that helps brain activity to show up on brain scans) and measured electrical activity. They also blocked AGRP cells using chemicals, and looked to see what effect that had on brain cells and on mice eating habits, with and without alcohol.
What were the basic results?
The mice ate between 10% and 25% more food on the days when they'd been given ethanol. This dropped back down to previous levels after the alcohol was stopped.
Experiments on brain tissue showed that AGRP cells were activated and had spikes in electrical activity when exposed to alcohol.
When the researchers blocked the mice's AGRP cells with an inert drug, alcohol no longer had an effect on how much the mice ate. Blocking the cells, without alcohol, made less difference to how much they ate, suggesting that the interplay of AGRP and alcohol was what affected the mice's eating most strongly.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers suggest that the alcohol-associated activity of the AGRP brain cells "is the critical step in alcohol-induced overeating".
They say their findings "provide an explanation for how a commonly consumed nutrient [alcohol] may generate a positive feedback on energy intake," and that this may help doctors better understand over-eating leading to ill-health in humans.
Conclusion
Alcohol is no friend of people trying to lose weight, or stick to a healthy weight. Not only is it high in calories (the second most energy-dense nutrient after fat), but it tends to be linked to a desire to eat more.
Scientists have suggested various theories to explain this. One theory is that alcohol erodes willpower, meaning people are likely to eat more than they intended after a drink. That could also explain why people often pick less healthy options, such as crisps or kebabs, if they've been drinking.
This new research suggests an alternative explanation – that the specific effect of alcohol on brain cells could trigger "an attack of the munchies".
But while the results seem reasonably convincing for mice, we still don't know if they hold true for humans. Also, rather than drinking it, the mice were given injections of alcohol, which might have a different effect.
Even so, the research is a reminder that alcohol and overeating can go hand in hand. If you're planning on shifting a few pounds in 2017, cutting back on alcohol, or avoiding it entirely, could be a positive first step.
In the UK, the government recommends that men and women drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week. That is:
nine small glasses of average strength wine
seven pints of average strength beer or lager
14 single measures of spirits
The advice is to spread those units over three or more days, and to have several alcohol-free days each week.
If you've already had a stroke, making these changes can help reduce your risk of having another one in the future.
Diet
An unhealthy diet can increase your chances of having a stroke because it may lead to an increase in your blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
A low-fat, high-fibre diet is usually recommended, including plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables (5 A DAY) and wholegrains.
Ensuring a balance in your diet is important. Don't eat too much of any single food, particularly foods high in salt and processed foods.
You should limit the amount of salt you eat to no more than 6g (0.2oz) a day as too much salt will increase your blood pressure. Six grams of salt is about one teaspoonful.
Combining a healthy diet with regular exercise is the best way to maintain a healthy weight. Regular exercise can also help lower your cholesterol and keep your blood pressure healthy.
For most people, at least 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, such as cycling or fast walking, every week is recommended.
If you're recovering from a stroke, you should discuss possible exercise plans with the members of your rehabilitation team.
Regular exercise may not be possible in the first weeks or months after a stroke, but you should be able to begin exercising once your rehabilitation has progressed.
Smoking significantly increases your risk of having a stroke. This is because it narrows your arteries and makes your blood more likely to clot.
You can reduce your risk of having a stroke by stopping smoking. Not smoking will also improve your general health and reduce your risk of developing other serious conditions, such as lung cancer and heart disease.
The NHS Smoking Helpline can offer advice and encouragement to help you quit smoking. Call 0300 123 1044, or visit NHS Smokefree.
Excessive alcohol consumption can lead to high blood pressure and trigger an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation), both of which can increase your risk of having a stroke.
Because alcoholic drinks are high in calories, they also cause weight gain. Heavy drinking multiplies the risk of stroke by more than three times.
If you choose to drink alcohol and have fully recovered, you should aim not to exceed the recommended limits:
men and women are advised not to regularly drink more than 14 units a week
spread your drinking over three days or more if you drink as much as 14 units a week
If you haven't fully recovered from your stroke, you may find you've become particularly sensitive to alcohol and even the recommended safe limits may be too much for you.
If you've been diagnosed with a condition known to increase your risk of stroke, ensuring the condition is well controlled is also important in helping prevent strokes.
The lifestyle changes mentioned above can help control these conditions to a large degree, but you may also need to take regular medication.
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