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What binge drinking really does to your body
Today, the amount of binge drinking that goes on in middle age is, Angus suggests, pretty comparable to rates among our younger colleagues. Because for your big night out to qualify as a “binge”, you need only sink six units if you’re a woman (that’s two large glasses of wine or a couple of strong cocktails), or eight units if you’re a man (about three pints of cider, four of normal strength beer or five bottled beers).
The other thing to be aware of is that one size does not fit all. “I really think the definition of binge drinking should be different for older adults,” says Tony Rao, visiting researcher at King’s College London. “We currently have the same definition of binge drinking for a 20-year-old as we do for a 70-year-old, and that’s not good for public education or health.”
Susan Laurie, who delivers workplace webinars on mindful drinking, agrees. “Once I hit 40, the impact of alcohol really cranked up a gear or three,” she says. “The older you get, the less forgiving your body and mental health are. My ‘hangxiety’ – those anxious feelings the morning after – would be sky-high.”
The danger of midlife bingeing
“The fancy name for the problem here is ‘zero-order kinetics’,” says Rao. “Basically, no matter how much you drink, your liver will always process it at the same rate.”
That rate is roughly one unit an hour. “If you have binged on eight units of alcohol, it’s only going to be fully metabolized after eight hours. After an hour, you’ll still have seven units of alcohol in your bloodstream.”
The extent to which this is risky, he suggests, varies from person to person, increasing for women, those with a brain injury, heart or liver disease – and older people. The liver shrinks and its function deteriorates with age. “The older you get, the smaller your liver, especially among women, so the rate at which you metabolize alcohol is probably even slower. Toxins therefore stay in our blood for longer, doing more damage to our health.
“Your brain also becomes much more sensitive to alcohol, so you’ll be sedated much more quickly. Plus, you have less water in your blood, so the alcohol is more concentrated.”
What happens that night
You’ve dusted off your glad rags, dashed to the office party, and propped yourself up at the bar. Things are looking up. “When we drink alcohol, one of the first regions of the brain affected is the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for our higher thought processes, such as decision-making,” says Sally Adams, associate professor at the University of Birmingham’s school of psychology , who specializes in the areas of alcohol use and hangovers.
In some ways, this is great: less-inhibited-me is so much more fun… except bingeing clearly leaves you at greater risk of accidents caused by impaired judgment and co-ordination (the so-called “acute risks” of drinking ) than imbibing the same quantity of alcohol across a week. The most probable type of risk changes as you get older, too. You may have matured out of Foster’s fueled bar fights, but as Angus points out: “Older people are more likely to binge drink at home and are more susceptible to acute risks, like falling down the stairs while doing so.”
Other potential, well… downers, including the possibility, for men, that heavy drinking will make it difficult to get, and keep, an erection. Have you ever heard of “holiday heart syndrome”? While a heart attack is caused by a lack of blood supply to the heart, HHS occurs when binge drinking disrupts the firing of the electrical impulses that usually regulate our heart function.
This results in irregular beating, leading to a sudden lack of blood supply to major organs such as the brain and kidneys. “Not only does repeated binge drinking – once a week or more – increase the risk of permanently high blood pressure,” says Rao, “but a single episode of binge drinking also raises blood pressure. Both raise the risk of stroke, particularly in older people.”
The morning after
Oh, dear lord… the dry mouth, the pounding head, the seasick stomach. But most of all, the incessant self-questioning: what did I do? What did I say? Welcome to the world of midlife hangxiety.
“The changes we see in neurotransmitters in the brain do not go back to normal after drinking,” explains Adams. “We see a rebound effect, where our brain is trying to bring neurotransmitter activity back to our usual levels, but it overcompensates.” After the high must come the low.
She suggests that we may feel that we experience worse anxiety as we age as we are “out of practice” when it comes to binge or heavy drinking. Rao, though, points to biological reasons for your
Clear Lake, Garner restaurants among those with department of inspections infractions
CLARK KAUFFMAN Iowa Capital Dispatch
State, city and county food inspectors have cited Iowa restaurants and stores for hundreds of food-safety violations this past month, including moldy taco meat, beef marked “Not For Sale,” long-expired milk, and unskilled workers preparing sushi that failed to meet minimum safety standards.
One Des Moines food store was found to be importing fish directly from Thailand, which meant that none of it went through the usual process of being inspected and certified as safe. At the same store, whole chickens from an unknown, unlabeled source were being sold to the public.
The findings are reported by the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals, which handles food-establishment inspections at the state level. Listed below are some of the more serious findings that stem from inspections at Iowa restaurants, stores, schools, hospitals and other businesses over the past four weeks.
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The state inspections department reminds the public that their reports are a “snapshot” in time, and violations are often corrected on the spot before the inspector leaves the establishment. For a more complete list of all inspections, along with additional details on each of the inspections listed below, visit the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals’ website.
Fujisan Sushi at Sam’s Club, 305 Airport Road, Ames – During a Nov. 16 visits, a state inspector cited the establishment for food that was holding just above the maximum temperature of 41 degrees, including tempura shrimp at 42 degrees and crab at 43 degrees.
Also, the establishment was not following the required Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points protocol for identifying and managing risks related to sushi and raw-food production. The inspector noted there was no current HACCP plan on the premises, and there were issues with the proper calibration of the pH meter and the process used to test the pH level of the rice. Also, the establishment had not filled out the logbook with the dates of pH testing and other safety-related information.
The inspector also noted that the establishment was thawing crab meat in stagnant water rather than in running water.
Hy-Vee Foods, 2540 Euclid Ave., Des Moines – During a Nov. 16 visit, a state inspector noted that the required shellstock identification tags – used to track the source of shellfish in the event of a food-related outbreak of some kind – were not maintained alongside the store’s Cherrystone Clams, Littleneck Clams and Chesapeake Pride Oysters. Also, an inspection of the store’s Hickory House Kitchen indicated there was raw ground beef stored above a whole roast inside one cooler, and packages of raw chicken were stored above whole-muscle meat on a cart.
In addition, “heat-treated potatoes” were measured at 59 degrees on the breakfast area’s food preparation table; sliced ham was holding at 61 degrees; and cooked sausages were measured at 46 degrees. All of those items had to be discarded as their holding temperatures weren’t hot enough to ensure food safety.
The inspector also noted that sliced turkey, sliced roast beef, cooked chicken, sausages, pico de gallo, and other foods were not marked with their preparation or opening dates. In the Hy-Vee Chinese area, packages of raw, unwashed mushrooms were stored directly on uncovered pans of cooked beef and chicken inside a walk-in cooler.
In addition, crab Rangoon was being held at 88 degrees, which was too cool to ensure safety; and egg rolls were held at 128 degrees. The egg rolls were reheated to 165 degrees and the crab Rangoon was discarded. In the Hy-Vee Chinese area, “pooling water and debris” was accumulating on the floor below the wok and the adjacent reach-in cooler. In the Hickory House Kitchen area, water was pooling on the floor near a handwashing sink.
The inspection was in response to three non-illness complaints. One complaint maintained to sanitation in the bottle-redemption area; one concerned sanitation in the Market Grille area; and the third concern alleged adulterated food in the meat, dairy and Hy-Vee Chinese areas. All three complaints were deemed unverifiable.
Seven Stars Family Restaurant, 2309 3rd Ave., Clear Lake – During a Nov. 2 visits, a Cerro Gordo County inspector found two half-gallons of milk in the refrigerator, with one having expired Sept. 26 and the other on Oct. 6. In addition, some food items in the walk-in cooler had no date markings on them, and cooked bacon was left in a pan, uncovered, on the floor of the walk-in cooler.
Hy-Vee Foods, 1025 Quincy Ave., Ottumwa – During a Nov. 1 visit, a state inspector found potatoes, presumably cooked, that were “on the counter for about 4 to 4.5 hours at an internal temperature of about 65 degrees” and had to be discarded. Also, the inside of an ice machine was soiled with a buildup of debris.
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The reason why it is no longer recommended to drink two liters of water a day
Is drinking two liters of water a day a myth or a reality? According to a new study published in the journal ‘Science‘, science has never supported the idea of eight glasses of water (two liters) as a proper guideline.
Thus ends with the idea that you have to drink two liters of water a day to meet the daily needs of the human body. However, this new study reveals that there is a wide range of amounts of water depending on the needs of each person.
Dale Schoeller, a professor emeritus of nutrition at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) who participated in the research, has spent years studying water and metabolism. “Total water turnover with water from beverages and a lot of your water comes from the food you eat,” he said.
An investigation with more than 5,600 people
Schoeller believes this work is the best they have done so far to measure the amount of water people actually consume on a daily basis taking into account the turnover of water in and out of the body.
To do this, water renewal was measured in more than 5,600 people from 26 countries and aged between 8 and 96 years old. Thus, daily averages were found that oscillated between 1 liter and 6 liters per day. Even with outliers as high as 10 liters per day.
This study differs from previous ones in that, to carry it out, people were randomly selected, while the others used volunteers who remembered and reported their consumption of water and food or were focused observations.
The new research measured the time it takes for water to circulate through the body of the participants by following the rotation of the “labeled water”. Study subjects drank an amount of water that contained traceable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen. In this way, they were able to observe the rate at which a person excretes stable isotopes through urine over the course of a week, thus indicating how much water you are replacing and how many calories you are burning.
Babies renew more body water
More than 90 researchers participated in the study. Together they collected and analyzed the data of the participants, comparing environmental factors – such as temperature, humidity and altitude of the city – with measurements of water renewal, energy expenditure, body mass, sex, age and athletic status.
The volume of water renewal reached its peak in men aged 20 years, while in women it was between 20 and 55 years. on the other hand, newborns are the ones who renew the most water on a daily basis, coming to replace about 28% of the water in their body.