Merits & Demerits of Drinking Alcoholic Beverages

Now depending on the person you ask, alcohol is can act as a blessing or a curse. Even Harvard School of Public Health refers to it as "both a tonic and a poison," depending on the dose. In as much as a cocktail, beer or glass of wine get be both relaxing and good for the heart, it might equally play a role in cancer development, liver and heart damage and depression. How alcohol impacts someone is dependent on the person, so everyone should analyze the advantage and disadvantages of consuming alcohol frequently. How Moderate Drinking Is Defined The pros of consuming alcohol are mostly always measured in terms of taking alcohol moderately. That implies one to two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women, according to Harvard. Analyzing it even further, one drink is generally seen as 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of spirits, totaling about 12 to 14 grams of alcohol in each of the drink. Advantages of Drinking According to Harvard, more than 100 scientific researches show a relationship between moderate drinking and a lowered risk of death from heart attacks, clot-caused strokes and overall cardiovascular causes. Alcohol in reasonable quantities raises your levels of high-density lipoprotein, equally known as “good” cholesterol, which assists protect against heart disease. Some kinds of alcohol are better protectants than others -- red wine, particularly, has a high concentration of polyphenols that can lower blood pressure. Additionally, the University of Rochester Medical Center notes that moderate drinking can assist protect blood vessels in the brain, as well as those in the heart, lowering the risk for dementia. Cons of Drinking Much of the drawbacks of alcohol surface when you round the curve from drinking moderately to drinking heavily or binge drinking. Heavy drinking can result to inflammation of the liver, medically referred to as alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis, or scarring of the liver. It equally increases blood pressure, can damage the heart muscle and mostly plays a role in the development of several cancers, including breast, colon, mouth and liver, says Harvard. In addition, heavy drinking heightens the risk for osteoporosis, mostly in young women, noted University of Rochester Medical Center. Alcohol can disrupt sleep patterns and result in weight gain, given that it serves up 7 calories per gram without providing any nutrients along with it. Drinking can equally cloud your judgment, creating the way for destructive decisions such as getting behind the wheel of a vehicle. What are the effects of Binge Drinking? When it has to do with drinking, the law of averages doesn’t apply in anyway. Although one drink a day might benefit your health in the long run, the same does not apply to saving up all those weekday drinks and taking six to seven drinks on one weekend night. This habit is called binge drinking, and it’s the riskiest pattern of alcohol consumption, Sharon C. Wilsnack, a professor of clinical neuroscience at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences, spoke to “The Washington Post.” When you binge-drink -- meaning that you take more than five drinks in an hour or two if you’re a man and four drinks if you’re a woman -- the health implications are much like those of a heavy drinker. Apart from the increased rates of binge drinking related automobile crashes, is also the high rates of high blood pressure increase, and you are more likely to develop a stroke.