This is the 3610th article of Da Yi Xiao Nursing
The Spring Festival is coming, and the lively table is naturally inseparable from the figure of wine. Chinese has been making wine since the Shang and Zhou Dynasties three thousand years ago, and wine culture has penetrated the entire history of Chinese civilization, from culture and art to catering and entertainment, wine is an indispensable and important element. Especially in terms of health care, people are convinced that wine has magical effects. The Yuan Dynasty medicine "Drinking and Eating" said, "The wine tastes sweet and spicy, the heat is poisonous, the main medicine is powerful, killing hundreds of evils, passing through the blood veins, thick gastrointestinal tract, and eliminating sorrows." Until modern times, the media is still full of advertisements for various health care medicinal liquors, and a casual check on the Internet can find a large number of soft articles promoting the health care and health benefits of liquor.
However, the fact may be surprising, drinking alcohol not only has no health effect, alcohol has long been listed by the World Health Organization as a Class I carcinogen, 800,000 people get cancer every year because of alcohol. Alcohol causes 5.5% of cancers and 5.8% of cancer deaths worldwide, and one in every 18 cancers is related to alcohol consumption. Cancers that occur in tissues in direct contact with alcohol, such as oral, laryngeal, and esophageal cancers, are highly correlated with alcohol consumption.
Why does alcohol consumption cause cancer? In fact, alcohol itself is not a carcinogen, the real culprit is its metabolite acetaldehyde in the body. Alcohol chemical name ethanol, it enters the human body after most of the metabolism in the liver, first under the action of ethanol dehydrogenase is metabolized to acetaldehyde, and then acetaldehyde is metabolized by acetaldehyde dehydrogenase to acetic acid. Ethanol and acetic acid are relatively safe for the human body, while acetaldehyde can directly bind to DNA to induce genetic mutations. Acetaldehyde can directly induce hematopoietic stem cell gene mutations to cause patients with anemia, immunocompromise, easy to infect, prone to stroke and other hazards.
One might argue that it's safe to drink too much alcohol, and official U.S. guidelines also recommend that women drink no more than 350 milliliters of beer, 150 milliliters of red wine, or 35 milliliters of white wine per day; while men should not drink more than twice that amount. But what this advice actually means is that if you can't stop drinking, then it's best not to exceed this dose. Drinking less is also harmful, and women drinking alcohol is more harmful to the body than men, and it is safest to drop alcohol without sticking.
Compared with Westerners who love beer and wine, Chinese tend to prefer strong liquor. However, there are a large number of people in China who carry defects in the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) gene, and these people are characterized by easy blushing after drinking alcohol. Because the lack of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase leads to the accumulation of acetaldehyde in the body after drinking alcohol, and acetaldehyde can make the capillaries of the whole body expand rapidly, especially the capillaries of the frontal face are significantly expanded, resulting in blushing after drinking. These people were more vulnerable to alcohol, and experiments showed that mice carrying defects in the ALDH2 gene had 4 times more DNA mutations than regular mice after drinking alcohol.
There is a popular saying that drinking a small amount of red wine is good for the body, softening blood vessels and promoting blood circulation. And it is also based on the fact that wine contains antioxidant substances such as resveratrol, anthocyanins, and tannins. In fact, the health benefits of red wine are completely nonsense, the so-called antioxidant substances are not only scarce in content, but also do not have enough scientific basis for taking antioxidants for health. A study in Europe and the United States analyzed data from 12 million women and found that even if they only drank one glass of red wine a day, the probability of breast cancer in women increased significantly.
It is true that early studies have shown that drinking a small amount of red wine can reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease, but new, larger experimental results do not support this view. Moreover, studies have shown that the incidence of coronary heart disease and stroke is lower than that of people who drink a small amount of alcohol. Alcohol consumption affects fat metabolism and increases the risk of hyperlipidemia; reduces the efficiency of lipid metabolism and promotes the occurrence of atherosclerosis; excites nerves, increases heart rate, and increases the burden on the heart. These can increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Alcohol consumption also affects the digestive system and the central nervous system, etc., and is related to mental diseases such as hypertension, stroke, osteoarthritis, peptic ulcer, depression and so on.
Some people may be flustered when they see this, what should I do if I have been drinking for many years? Hurry up and quit drinking! After 20 years of abstinence from alcohol, the risk of oral, throat, and esophageal cancer is the same as that of people who do not drink alcohol. Put down the wine glass in your hand and firmly say "no" to the wine.
Author: Songjiang Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine
Wang Xuemin