What Happens When You Suddenly Stop Drinking For One Month?

The Guardian: Going booze-free? The effects of a month without alcohol

With the start of another new year, people are once again swearing off alcohol for at least a month, often for charity. What are the potential effects of suddenly cutting all alcohol from your system?

Alcohol. It’s a popular social lubricant, provides pleasure, and often tastes nice. It also has long term health consequences, and imposes a heavy burden on our society. Overall, it’s a mixed blessing.

At present it’s becoming ever-more fashionable, even charitable, to abstain from alcohol for the month of January. After the indulgence of the Christmas period, it’s hardly surprising people will want to do something healthy, and what could be healthier than giving up alcohol?

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CSN Editor: Speaking personally .... being irritable will be the first reaction .... but after one month .... the cravings will be there but the impact of not drinking will not.

Is There A Safe Level Of Alcohol Consumption?

Photo courtesy of www.somethingyoushouldread.com

The Guardian: There is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol consumption

The idea that drinking small amounts of alcohol will do you no harm is a myth, claims Professor David Nutt

Last week I attended a discussion group chaired by the Observer's health correspondent Denis Campbell where one of the other experts, a public health doctor, asserted that alcohol should be treated differently from tobacco (and by inference other drugs) because there is no safe dose of tobacco whereas alcohol is safe until a person's drinking gets to "unsafe" levels. Its health benefits for the cardiovascular system are also often used to support the claim that in low doses alcohol is safe, for how else could it be health-promoting?

The myth of a safe level of drinking is a powerful claim. It is one that many health professionals appear to believe in and that the alcohol industry uses to defend its strategy of making the drug readily available at low prices. However, the claim is wrong and the supporting evidence flawed.

There is no safe dose of alcohol for these reasons:

CSN Editor: I need a drink.

Can Drinking Moonshine Really Make Me Go Blind?

Moonshining Former moonshiner John Bowman (right), explaining the ins and outs of a proper moonshine still. via Wikimedia

FYI: Can Drinking Moonshine Really Make Me Go Blind? -- Popular Science

The short answer: yes, it’s possible to go blind from drinking moonshine. But it’s also possible to go blind staring at the sun. When consuming alcoholic beverages of the DIY variety, the important thing is to let common sense be your guide.

The idea that moonshine or other home-distilled liquors can cause blindness is rooted in truth, but it’s important to separate the causes of said blindness from the alcohol distillation process itself. When homemade spirits cause damage to the optic nerve the culprit is almost always methanol, cousin to the ethanol you consume when you toss back any glass of tipple.

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My Comment: I had the unpleasant experience of drinking moonshine in China. I suffered 'white blindness' .... and it was uncomfortable.

Why A Gin And Tonic Is Best Served Cold

The tongue tastes the bitterness in gin and tonic more intensely when it's cold, researchers have found (Source: jonathansloane/iStockphoto)

Evidence Supports A Cold Gin And Tonic -- ABC News (Australia)

Science can finally explain why gin and tonic tastes best when it's served cold.

Sensory scientist Dr Martha Bajec and colleagues from Brock University in Ontario, Canada, report their findings online this month in the journal Chemosensory Perception.

"You want to make sure that your gin and tonic is cold to make sure that it's bitter," says Bajec.

While previous research has suggested temperature can affect people's perception of sweetness, Bajec was surprised to find no one had ever looked at the effect of temperature on bitter tastes.

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My Comment: I guess the same can be said of most drinks .... from beer to putting ice-cubes in any 'hard drink'.

Alcohol Sharpens The Mind

Men who drank the equivalent of two pints of beer answered 40 per cent more test questions correctly. Photo: REUTERS

Alcohol Sharpens The Mind, Research finds -- The Telegraph

Men who drink two pints of beer before tackling brain teasers perform better than those who attempt the riddles sober, scientists have found.

In findings that will be toasted by pub quiz aficionados, researchers found drinkers got more test questions right and were quicker in delivering the right answers.

It is thought alcohol hinders analytical thinking and allows 'creative' thoughts that might otherwise by stifled to take root, allowing test subjects to come up with more imaginative solutions.

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My Comment:I am an easy drunk .... 2 pints usually put me in a sleepy mood.

Making Whiskey In Space

Photo: The unmatured whisky was mixed with charred oak on board the space station to see how low gravity affected the maturation process

Where No Dram Has Gone Before: Whisky Company Matures New Malt In Zero-G On The Space Station -- Daily Mail

* Whisky mixed with charcoal to see how zero-gravity affects flavours
* Mix will remain on Space Station for two years

The astronauts on the International Space Station are used to rocket fuel - but even so, a delivery of a container of rough, unmatured whisky must have come as a surprise.

Thankfully, the delivery was for an experiment, rather than an impromtu celebration, so the astronauts carried out their duties with their usual sober dedication.

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My Comment: It should produce an interesting smell and taste.

Why Do Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers?

Jodi Cobb / National Geographic Creative / Getty Image

From Time Magazine:

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

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My Comment: I am convinced .... and yes .... I need a drink.

Drinking Alcohol Could Help Women Stay Slim

The best drink for keeping the pounds off was red wine, but all four types of tipple included in the study -- red or white wine, beer and spirits -- showed similar results. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

A glass a day could keep excessive weight gain at bay.

Women who drink a couple of glasses of red wine, beer or spirits a day are better at keeping the pounds off than women who do not drink at all, according to a study published Monday.

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston asked more than 19,000, average-weight U.S. women aged 39 or older how many alcoholic beverages they typically drank in a day, and then tracked the women for around 13 years.

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Study Links Violence To Take-Away Alcohol

From BBC:

US scientists have shown what they say is a direct link between the number of shops selling alcohol in an area and the violence occurring there.

The study was conducted in Cincinnati and considered all types of outlet, including bars and restaurants.

The more shops selling alcohol in an area, the scientists say, the more assaults were recorded there.

They presented the study at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.

Professor William Pridemore from Indiana University, who led the study, spoke at the meeting in San Diego.

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Secrets To Superb Malting Barleys Explored

ARS chemist Mark Schmitt is discovering what happens -- biochemically -- inside malting barley grains as they sprout, so that plant breeders will have a better basis for developing superior varieties. (Credit: Image courtesy of USDA/Agricultural Research Service)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 6, 2010) — Many favorite breakfast cereals, candies, beers, and other foods and beverages owe much of their smooth, delicious flavor to malt. Malting barleys--the source of that malt--are the focus of studies at the Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) malting barley laboratory in Madison, Wis., part of the Cereal Crops Research Unit.

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Is Rice Domestication To Blame For Red-Faced Asians?

Red in the face. An Asian man having an alcohol flush reaction. Credit: Wikipedia

From Science Magazine:

If your face turns red after drinking just one glass of wine, blame ancient Chinese farmers. Researchers are reporting that the "Asian Flush" mutation cropped up just as rice was first being domesticated, and it may have protected early farmers from the harms of drinking too much. But some other scientists urge caution, saying that the dates may not match up.

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Did A Thirst For Beer Spark Civilization?

Patrick McGovern in his laboratory, examining and "sniffing" out a 3,000-year-old millet wine, which was preserved inside a tightly lidded bronze vessel from an elite tomb at the Shang Dynasty capital of Anyang in China. Photograph courtesy of P. Kosty, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

From The Independent:

Drunkenness, hangovers, and debauchery tend to come to mind when one thinks about alcohol and its effects. But could alcohol also have been a catalyst for human civilization?

According to archaeologist Patrick McGovern this may have been the case when early man decided to start farming. Why humans turned from hunting and gathering to agriculture could be the result of our ancestors’ simple urge for alcoholic beverages.

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High-Tech Tipples: The Future Of Cocktails

Mixing up a scientific taste sensation (Image: Staff Hood Gamma)

From New Scientist:

IT WOULD be lovely to have access to chromatography," Spike Marchant tells me wistfully. As a science journalist, it's the kind of remark I expect to hear from the people I interview. But Marchant isn't a scientist, he's a bartender.

A very special breed of bartender, mind you. What Heston Blumenthal, Ferran Adrià and others have done for food, Marchant and his colleagues are aiming to do for booze. "We're not scientists but we use the ideas of scientists," says Tony Conigliaro, the creative force behind 69 Colebrook Row, a cosy cocktail bar in north London where I have come to learn about, and taste, the future of cocktails.

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Alcohol Substitute That Avoids Drunkenness And Hangovers In Development

From The Telegraph:

An alcohol substitute that mimics its pleasant buzz without leading to drunkenness and hangovers is being developed by scientists.

The new substance could have the added bonus of being "switched off" instantaneously with a pill, to allow drinkers to drive home or return to work.

The synthetic alcohol, being developed from chemicals related to Valium, works like alcohol on nerves in the brain that provide a feeling of well being and relaxation.

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Darker Liquor Makes You Sicker

Overall, bourbon drinkers reported feeling worse than vodka drinkers, rating higher on scales that measure the severity of hangover malaise. Getty Images

From Discover News:

Before heading out to that holiday party this weekend, consider carefully how you pick your poison.

A new study may help drinkers pick their poison. In a head-to-head comparison, bourbon gave drinkers a more severe hangover than vodka, report Damaris Rohsenow of Brown University and colleagues in an upcoming issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

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Dark Liquor Makes For Worse Hangovers

From Wired Science:

A new study may help drinkers pick their poison. In a head-to-head comparison, bourbon gave drinkers a more severe hangover than vodka, report Damaris Rohsenow of Brown University and colleagues in an upcoming issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

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Alcohol 'Protects Men's Hearts'

From The BBC:

Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, a major study suggests.

The Spanish research involving more than 15,500 men and 26,000 women found large quantities of alcohol could be even more beneficial for men.

Female drinkers did not benefit to the same extent, the study in Heart found.

Experts are critical, warning heavy drinking can increase the risk of other diseases, with alcohol responsible for 1.8 million deaths globally per year.

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Drink Culture: It's As Old As The Hills

From The New Scientist:

QUESTS don't come much more appealing than this. But while for most people the quest ends in the nearest bar, biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern has gone much further. He has spent decades travelling the world and journeying back in time, scraping dirty crusts from ancient cauldrons, retrieving dribbles of liquid from sealed jars and extracting residues from the pores of prehistoric pots, all in the name of investigating the origins of ancient alcoholic beverages.

After he famously identified the world's oldest wine - a resinated grape wine found in two clay jars from the Neolithic village of Hajji Firuz in Iran, in 2004 he found an even older sample in China. At a 9000-year-old site called Jiahu on the banks of the Yellow river, he recovered the remains of grog made from rice, hawthorn fruit, grapes and honey. Another of his recent revelations is that the people of Central America got drunk on fermented chocolate, giving new meaning to the word chocoholic.

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Drunken Fruit Flies Help Scientists Find Potential Drug Target For Alcoholism

Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) breeding in a test tube.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Joe Pogliano)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 7, 2009) — A group of drunken fruit flies have helped researchers from North Carolina State and Boston universities identify entire networks of genes -- also present in humans -- that play a key role in alcohol drinking behavior.

This discovery, published in the October 2009 print issue of the journal Genetics, provides a crucial explanation of why some people seem to tolerate alcohol better than others, as well as a potential target for drugs aimed at preventing or eliminating alcoholism. In addition, this discovery sheds new light on many of the negative side effects of drinking, such as liver damage.

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Drink Responsibly: Which Is Better For The Planet, Beer Or Wine?

From Slate:

I'm hosting a dinner party next week, and I'll be serving both beer and wine alongside the meal. But it got me wondering: Which has the lower carbon footprint? Beer has to be kept refrigerated, which requires energy, but shipping wine in those heavy bottles can't be good for the planet, either.

It's hard to come up with a simple answer for this one, because so many factors affect the calculation: Where was your beverage made? What's it packaged in, and how did that package get to you? How was it stored at the point of sale? Accounting for all these variables can make your head spin, but the best available research suggests that parsing out the difference might not be worth the headache.

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