This week on the Health Made Simple Show, we’re talking about wine and alcohol. It’s a subject that comes up literally every day in my office and I think it’s a topic a lot of people misunderstand when it comes to health and weight loss. 

Watch the live show below:

Before we dive into that conversation, though, I’m going to share a few clinical insights. This first one deals with how what we focus on will expand. I have a patient in her 50s who is an entrepreneur in the restaurant business from New Orleans. She makes the 4-5 hour drive up here to replenish and refuel herself. It’s almost like beach rehab for her. When she goes back into her home environment, though, she usually drops a lot of her good habits. I always encourage patients to find someone who comes from a long way to find a home chiropractor. She never does though, because as she says, “There’s no other Dr. Bart”. While I’m totally flattered, there are other great practitioners and maybe even some better. You just have to look outside of your box in order to find someone who can best serve your needs.

She also told me she can’t find anyplace healthy to eat in New Orleans. Now, I’ve been there and I know this isn’t true. I’ve had to keep encouraging her to look outside her box and stay persistent. The happy ending to that story is that she’s found a great chiropractor to work with and she’s also been able to find a place that will deliver juice to her three days a week! She was willing to stay at it and now her environment at home is able to support her health journey as well.

Next, I see another very interesting gentleman in his 40s. He’s been with me for a long time and I love how honest he is with me. The reality is, he has awful health habits, particularly with eating and drinking. The beauty is that he never tries to hide it. He will come into my office and tell me he’s dying or he probably should be based on his behavior. He’s not one of those people who comes into my office and says “Everything’s great!”. I’m not here to judge or scold, I’m here to assess where you’re at and help you move forward. Today, he came in with a new issue. He told me he just didn’t have any motivation anymore. While I appreciated his honesty, as I always do, it doesn’t make me soften my tone or change my approach. But, because of his honesty with me and with himself, we’re able to come up with a plan. His new morning routine is to start his day by putting on his sneakers and shorts. What he does after that is his choice, but this is the beginning of a process in his brain. Once you get the ball rolling, it’s so much easier to keep it going. I hope you have people in your life you can be honest with who can also hold you accountable in that way. 

I had three cases today of young girls coming in with lives completely disrupted by anxiety. Their lives have been completely upside down in the last several years and they are certainly experiencing the effects of that. I give them a lot of the same anxiety advice I give often. Change your environment if you can, if you feel a panic attack coming on. Also, talk to your doctor about Ashwagandha Forte and Kava which are both super supportive and can be a way to keep yourself out of the ER. Once you begin to face anxiety head-on and do something about it, that’s when your healing really begins. Anxiety is not your fault and it’s not just something wrong with you. It’s a winnable situation with the right tools and the right plan. 

So, let’s dive into this conversation about alcohol. Let’s address some of the most commonly asked questions about alcohol use.

1. Should I be having a drink a day?

If you go out to eat and start with a glass of wine, your body is only metabolizing the alcohol in your system. Your body is not going to digest the food you ate, it’s going to store it in fat cells. If you’re drinking the “one glass” (yeah right) while making dinner, you’re shutting down your body’s ability to digest anything after that. When you drink alcohol, your body has to use enzymes to bind toxins. Some of those enzymes are the B Vitamins. We hear a lot about NAD, one of the B Vitamins, as one of the main antioxidants in the body. If you run out of that, you can’t really detoxify at all because you’re shutting down the body’s metabolic activity. The challenge here is how frequently this is happening. The more frequently it happens, the faster it happens. 

Some people choose to do an NAD IV treatment which could run you $300-$600 every two weeks. This would be effective, but a very expensive long-term solution. In addition, it will help you detox, but it won’t help you on your weight loss journey. You should also beware of anything calling itself an “NAD Supplement”. That technology just isn’t there yet and they haven’t figured out an effective way to put that in a supplement. 

2. What if I only drink on the weekends?

Your brain will begin to adjust to using acetate even before glucose as a source of energy. The more you use alcohol, your body starts to rely on this new fuel source. We’ve talked for a long time about getting the body to use ketones for fuel because it’s clean. Acetate, however, is an even worse fuel source than glucose. The acetate will be found in your body for days after you’ve finished drinking. Even if you’ve given up drinking for a week or so, you haven’t even begun to clean out your brain or the rest of your body. In addition, even if you’re just a “weekend warrior”, you’re filling your body with toxins for the week to come. 

3. Is one alcohol better for me than the other?

People may argue this because of the calories and sugar in something like vodka as opposed to something like wine. But, let’s dig into that lifestyle-wise. Does anyone go to the bar and just drink vodka neat? No, it’s drunk with cranberry juice and other unhealthy things alongside. In addition, drinking is almost always accompanied by snacking, studies say to the tune of 500+ extra calories. Also, think about the morning after drinking. Most people aren’t immediately reaching for the celery juice. They’re eating greasy foods that are certainly outside of most people’s health journeys. Also, if you’re trying to stick to a health journey, drinking something that significantly lowers your inhibitions isn’t a great way to stay on that journey. Rarely does anyone drink and not put anything else into their body and everything else you put in your body is getting stored. The calories don’t even matter at this point, because the few calories you save on a “low-cal” beer are going to be more than made up in all of the other ways we ingest and store calories throughout the entire night of drinking. 

4. What if I only drink when I go out with friends or need to relax?

Alcohol can often change your personality and lower your inhibitions and it can trick you into thinking that you’re a better version of yourself. Ask a sober friend who was around you when you were drunk? Were you really a better version of yourself? It’s essential to observe your relationship with alcohol, especially in the context of its toxicity. Giving up alcohol certainly will change the experience of going out. It will force you to find other things to bring joy to your life and you’ll have to learn how to find joy without it. I have people drill me with questions about alternatives to giving up alcohol because they cannot imagine their lives without it. What you’re looking to replace, though, isn’t alcohol or drunkenness, it’s that happiness response in your brain.

I also have to speak to my red wine drinkers. Yes, I acknowledge that if you’re drinking from an organic, dry farm, red wine would be considered a part of God’s Garden. There is a company out there called Dry Farm Wine that produces wine that’s better for you and contains less sugar because of the way it’s made. However, we still need to talk about what wine depletes in your body. First, we already discussed the B Vitamins. When you run out of the B Vitamins, you run out of energy. We use a product called Cataplex B that will help replenish those. 

There was a time when red wine was marketed as the “Healthy alcohol” because of some of the herbs in there. That having been said, the amount of red wine you’d have to consume to absorb a healthy amount of Reservitrol would be impossible. There are much better ways to get that herb into your body. Certainly, there is also truth to the saying that people who drink red wine can be more relaxed and feel better. This, of course, does not mean that it’s in any way good for you. If your doctor is telling you it’s good to drink while you’re trying to lose weight, they simply do not understand the physiology of the body. If you’ve been a chronic drinker and you’ve slowed down, alcohol can still have the same effect as before. It’s a great idea to keep stretching it out and eventually quit using something that doesn’t serve your life. Whatever your drinking habits are or aren’t, you can never go wrong with Milk Thistle Forte for that extra liver support.

Last, but certainly not least, this week’s action to become superhuman is…

Be Honest.

Be honest with yourself about every aspect of your life and health including your alcohol consumption. Honesty is empowering and having that honesty with yourself and your health care practitioner is an essential part of becoming superhuman.

What’s Next?

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This library of health content is low cost, so we can help you on your journey to becoming superhuman! 

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Dr. Bart Precourt

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