I have never been a fan of alcoholic beverages.  It honestly has little to do with health reasons.  I didn't drink growing up because my parents never did and hearing the high school/college tales of what a hangover feels like, that never appealed to me.  I'm pretty pain averse.  

Another reason is that I just think most of it tastes bad.  When I do find a beverage that tastes good, it's usually super sweet and has bright colors with umbrellas.  By that point, my fragile ego wants to avoid any ridicule of me walking around with a drink that requires accessories.   This doesn't mean I never drink, it's just a rare occurrence. 

With that said, abstaining from alcohol isn't a MUST when I'm working with a client, BUT alcohol is one of the things that can inhibit a person's desired results.  Bottom line, I've never seen it help a scenario and only hinder health improvement.  

This week, I'll go through 3 considerations in which alcohol may be causing a roadblock in your quest for healthy living. 

Metabolism is the process in which your body converts the food you eat into energy and new structures.  Metabolism is the process of building and maintaining life.  It's been erroneously associated with weight stability, though that is a sign of a broken metabolism.

Something unique about alcohol is that it's BOTH water-soluble AND fat-soluble.  That means it's able to be shuttled right into your cells with no barrier of entry.  This is why many medications and even homeopathic remedies are paired with alcohol.  It's faster delivery.

With vitamins, they either need fat or water to be dissolved and used.  They basically need an escort to get into the party.  With medication, they need receptors on a cell to then create a series of communications to create an event.  They basically need a secret password to get into the party.

Alcohol needs no escort nor a password.  It has full access to the party anytime it wants.  It's the most volatile guest you've ever invited.  Unless its behavior is diffused quickly, your house will go up in flames.   

To diffuse the situation, you have to throw a LOT of metabolic resources at alcohol to diffuse the toxic effects.  It enters the cells in the form of ethanol.  This form of alcohol is fit for human consumption but it is still a toxin.  You end up having to bribe ethanol and give it a lot of money to calm down.  

But before it can fully calm down, it gets more volatile.  Ethanol turns into a version of itself called acetaldehyde, which is an outright poison.  It's the build up of this version that wrecks people and gives them hangovers and all the undesired after effects.  With enough time and bribes, acetaldehyde converts into acetate.  

The semi-good news is that acetate can be used as a form of energy and not poison your system.  The problem is that if a person is already metabolically compromised, it's much harder for him to convert ethanol to acetate in a timely manner before the build up of acetaldehyde occurs.  

The other problem is that acetate is just empty calories.  You can't store it and there are no nutrients within it.  Therefore, when you eat food, all those calories will just get stored until you use up the available acetate.  Even if you're not drinking to excess, think about that nightly glass of wine with dinner.  You get very little nutritional value from that steak and asparagus because you have alcohol butting at the front of the line of fuel usage.

This should come as no surprise, but alcohol really disrupts the microbiota (the good bugs) and the gut ecosystem.  When I say "gut," I'm referring to the inner tube from mouth to anus, not just your belly.  The gut isn't just a highway for digestion, its neurological circuitry for immune response, brain signaling, and a host of full body communications.  Your gut produces serotonin,  melatonin, GABA, dopamine, and glutamate.  

For centuries, alcohol has been used as an antiseptic to sterilize wounds and infections.  Just look at the past few years with COVID.  People were dumping alcohol-based hand sanitizer onto their hands and any surface they touched to kill off pathogens.  You want to kill bacteria?  Pour alcohol on it.

Having regular consumption of alcohol is like having regular consumption of antibiotics.  Just like antibiotics, alcohol doesn't differentiate if it's killing off beneficial or non-beneficial bacteria.    

If you're in a situation where "healing your gut" is a top priority, ditching alcohol is going to be an essential step.

There's a process in the body called aromatization.  For this topic of hormones, aromatization will take testosterone and convert it to estrogen for men or women.  Alcohol induces this conversion of testosterone to estrogen in nearly every tissue in the body.      

In females, this may be why there's an increase in estrogen-related cancers with alcohol consumption.  

For you dudes, this conversion of estrogen to testosterone can create things like man-boobs, low sex drive, and increased fat storage (which also increases aromatization).

With that said, these conversions happen more with chronic exposure to alcohol than with occasional consumption.  When I say chronic, it's regular consumption, even if there's not the dose to create inebriation.  

A pet peeve of mine with clinics like the Low T center is that they claim they are "getting to the root" of a man's low testosterone, but do they take time to assess alcohol intake?  Do they see if the man is taking statins to lower cholesterol, which is the building block of testosterone?  Highly doubtful. 

If you're chasing the fountain of youth with hormone optimization, you're probably well served to cut the regular consumption of alcohol.