From the hand sanitizer at your favorite food truck to those single-use wipes at the doctor’s office, alcohols are used to disinfect things all the time.
So every time you have an alcoholic drink, it’s basically
like microbe-killing juice… which doesn’t sound so great for the helpful
critters in your gut. But, turns out, drinking in moderation could actually
kill the microbes that cause food poisoning and diarrhea, while helping the
bacteria that help you.

High concentrations of alcohol—like the 70% isopropanol in
antibacterial wipes—dissolve cell membranes, killing bacteria and viruses on
contact. But a straight shot of vodka is only about 40% ethanol, while the
average glass of wine is 12%, and beer is 5%. Even though they’re below
membrane-nuking concentrations, innumerable drinks will kill microorganism and
viruses.

That could be part of why alcohol was so popular on long sea
voyages, and not just for Captain Jack Sparrow-types: it was safer to drink rum
or beer than probably-contaminated water. Booze doesn’t just kill cholera,
either. Case studies have shown that wine, in particular, might be able to kill
the nasty bugs that cause food poisoning like Salmonella and Norovirus, before
they set up shop in your bowels.
And one study on around 80 people found that drinking wine
and other beverages with more than 10% alcohol kept people from being infected
with hepatitis A from contaminated oysters, which can cause liver disease. Of
course, we now know that there are also beneficial bacteria that live on and
inside us, and you wouldn’t want to kill a bunch of them with every shot of
tequila.
So it’s a good thing that doesn’t really happen, partially
because a lot of the microbes that matter are in your colon, not your stomach. By
the time your drink mixes with stomach acid and makes its way through your
upper intestines, most of the alcohol is already absorbed.
That said, some scientists think a glass of wine every night
could affect your lower intestines—in a good way. Some of the non-alcoholic
compounds in wine called polyphenols feed helpful bacteria, and get broken into
smaller useful molecules. Some scientists think these molecules can bind to the
cell membranes of disease-causing bacteria, like those in the genus
Clostridium, and kill them off. Or they might even boost your health.
One study suggested that polyphenol byproducts could explain
why regular wine drinkers seem to have fewer heart problems. And another found
that they might help counteract some of the metabolic problems caused by
obesity. But don’t go tapping that keg in celebration just yet. These potential
benefits aren’t a sure thing, and they refer to moderate drinking—so, like, a
glass of wine or a couple beers a day. Binge drinking and alcoholism are a
totally different ballgame. For example, a fairly large study published in 2001
found that regularly drinking a little alcohol seemed to reduce the chance of
being infected with Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that causes severe stomach
ulcers. But the researchers found that drinking more wasn’t better.
After a precise point, as alcohol consumption accrued, therefore
did the chance of infection. In fact, the upper intestines in both short and
long term heavy drinkers tend to have too much bacteria. Scientists think that
large doses of alcohol could slow down intestinal movement and take a toll on
helpful bacteria, which could give harmful microbes the time and space to gain
a foothold.
Alcohol can also mess with the genes in cells that line your
intestines and stomach, which can lead to things like producing too much or
almost no stomach acid after long term abuse. And this isn’t great because
stomach acid is one of the most effective defenses against disease-causing
bacteria. Chronic alcohol abuse also cripples your immune system, making you
much more vulnerable to pathogens in general.
If you picture your gut lining as a sturdy trash bag made of
cells, alcohols and their byproducts can punch a ton of little holes in it.
This lets junk like bacterial toxins leak out, which your
liver has to clean up. And the harder it has to work, the more damaged it
becomes. So a glass of red wine with dinner might actually help you resist some
food poisoning. But if you go overboard, hangovers will be the least of your
concerns.
0 Comments