HELLO BEER & WINE -SHOULD WE AVOID YOU?
Are Beer and Wine Alcohol ? So should you avoid them? A lot of my friends and collegues ask me this question. Beer , Wine are alcohol too, so please treat them with the same gravity that you treat whisky, vodka etc…..
Athough beer has some advantages like high levels of silicon, which is good for bone strength etc but if you are more concerned about your Kidney safety, Hormone levels etc, it is always better to avoid beer and wine. Plant foods contain more silicon than animal foods, so vegetarians often have higher silicon intakes than beer lovers or meat eaters do. Foods that contain silicon are, brown rice, whole grain, mineral water, barley,oats, whole wheat, root vegetable, bananas, dried fruit, spinach, seafood ,drinking water etc.
In Astrology I accuse Rahu in Alcoholism. Rahu in 5th house gives a tendency towards alcoholism. So also declining moon.
My close friends , family members and near and dear ones may be reading this, I am not against these drinks per se, just against the mentality that is turning them in to what they are not.
From my below analysis I am doing my best to explain the reasons and importance of avoiding beer and wine and other alcoholic drinks to my esteemed readers.
Broad Analysis :
1) Alcohol is treated as foreign substance by the body. This is the first thing to remember rather than how many calories it has ( which is by the way high in calories 7 calories per gram almost double than that of carbohydrates).Alcohol gets converted by liver in to a substance called Acetaldehyde. This is then converted in to Acetate and Hydrogen. The body prefers hydrogen to fatty acids for its energy requirements, forcing the unutilized fatty acids to get stored as fat. In addition, the chemical reaction may promote fatty acid synthesis, thereby increasing your accumulation of fat.
Put simply it means : The human body doesn’t burn fuel on a first come first serve basis. It has fuel preference for alcohol. So when you drink alcohol, the alcohol gets burned off for energy , before the fat gets a chance to start burning. This give rise to more fat in your body. ( obesity /fat gain)
2) Fat gain leads to high estrogen hormone levels in your body. High estrogen levels are not going to do your body any good. You may doubt, how Fat gain increases estrogen levels . Here it goes.. Estrogen is basically a female hormone. Though it is identified with a specific gender, it is found in women and men. Women have more estrogen. Men have little estrogen. Women synthesize estrogen in their ovaries. Men lack this female anatomy, so they produce estrogen from an enzyme called “ aromatase” which is found in body fat.Aromatase found in body fat converts testosterone in to estrogen. There fore more fat will produce more aromatase and therefore higher estrogen levels and suppress/less testosterone. ( testosterone is a male hormones, men should have more testosterone, not more estrogen). Estrogen causes more feminine body shape,more fat deposition under the skin, hips, breasts etc. It can also cause larger breasts in men ( gynecomastia). It can also cause beer belly in men. Women naturally have more fat on their stomach because this is where the foetus grows, as nature intended and estrogen replicates this in men.
3) Alcohols affects your liver more directly . The rate of blood flow to your kidneys is actually kept at a certain level so that your kidneys can filter your blood well. Liver disease impairs this important balancing act. Thus liver disease give rise to associated kidney dysfunction. So you get both Liver and Kidney attack under one umbrella !!!!
4) One of the function of kidney is to filter harmful substance from your blood. One of these substances is alcohol. The Alcohol affects the ability of your kidneys to do it. Thus filtering capacity lessens. The other function of the kidneys is to keep right amount of water in your body. Alcohol affects the ability of your kidneys to do it. Alcohol can raise your blood pressure. High blood pressure can damage the tiny filters in your kidneys leading kidney disease.
5) Alcohol in beer can affect the nitrogen balance in the body, increase protein decomposition and further increase the accumulation of urea nitrogen in blood. This will definitely increase burdens and strains to the kidneys.
6) Since alcohol intake increases estrogen levels, and studies shows that estrogen is prime carcinogen.( cancer causing). Exactly how this works is not clear. Where ever estrogens are abundant, cancer grow more easily.
From the above analysis , we can see that the reasons and importance of avoiding beer and other alcoholic drinks.