Tag Archives: drinking

Questions & Answers

Is Cooking With Alcohol Bad For The Gut?

Does cooking with alcohol harm the gut?

There’s no doubt about it; alcohol does have a negative effect on the gut. There can be positives to alcohol as well, but it has a lot to do with the amount you consume.

People who drink large quantities of alcohol daily are going to destroy their health.
What about people who are sensible and have small quantities of alcohol now and then? They aren’t likely going to damage their health.

Research tells us that when you cook alcohol for twenty to thirty minutes, up to 60% of the alcohol will evaporate away. If you cook the food for 1 ½ to 2 hours, only about 5% of the original alcohol remains.

I occasionally will make a lovely beef casserole that includes some red wine. I will use a cup of red wine and cook the dish for four or five hours. By the time the stew is ready to eat, there is less than 2% of the alcohol left. That’s a risk I’m willing to take for a delicious meal.

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I haven’t experienced any adverse effects on my gut health from my very moderate use of alcohol.
I have seen some research that neutral spirits like vodka and gin might be a little less damaging to the gut when compared to non-neutral spirits like brandy and whiskey. If the alcohol is transparent and white, it’s a neutral spirit.

But vodka and gin will still have negative effects on your liver, especially if you’re drinking every day and eating a poor diet. You need to replace the nutrients that are lost through the alcohol detoxification process.

If you want a substitute for wine or brandy, you could always try fruit juice. The sugar is still high, but at least there is no alcohol. I would use fruit juice sparingly due to the fructose content. You don’t want to overload your kidneys, liver, or digestive system with alcohol or sugar.

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Questions & Answers

8 Things You Shouldn’t Do If You Want A Healthy Gut

What are the things that can cause harm to your gut health?

1. Having too restricted a diet is going to impact your gut microbial growth negatively. From what I’ve read, people in western countries, only consume between 12 and 15 types of vegetables and four or five different types of animals. If you look at indigenous people in Africa, who don’t suffer from the chronic diseases seen in the developed world, they eat a far more diverse range of plants and have a much wider range of bacteria in their gut with all the associated benefits.

2. Lack of prebiotic in the diet is another common problems. Most people don’t include high-quality, sour yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, or kombucha in their diet. Fifty or sixty years ago, cultured and fermented foods were commonplace. Now it’s become something special rather than routine.

3. Drinking too much alcohol with a detrimental impact on the gut is a common habit. Studies have shown, for example, that when you consume spirits like gin or vodka, you dramatically reduce the population of beneficial bacteria. If you can stick with small quantities of red wine with a high polyphenol content, you can increase the beneficial bacteria content of your gut.

4. Antibiotics are very challenging for the gut flora. Some clients I had would go on antibiotics twice a year for infections that could have been fixed by natural methods. You don’t’ have to automatically jump to ciprofloxacin as soon as someone has a mild sore throat or a little skin rash. Herbs have been used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years for these sorts of reasons. See a naturopath or a functional medicine doctor if you want a second opinion about antibiotic use. Antibiotics are one of the key factors that undermine gut function.

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5. Lack of activity can be a detriment to your gut flora. Exercise is very beneficial for your microbiome. I read a study of professional rugby players that demonstrated they had much higher levels of good bacteria compared to less active men of the same weight and age.

6. Smoking can harm the GI tract, particularly if you’re a heavy smoker. Not only are smokers more prone to strokes and heart attacks, they also have higher inca1dence of inflammatory bowel disease. For example, the risk of Crohn’s disease is twice as high in smokers as in non-smokers.

7. Sleep deprivation can damage gut health. When someone has a healthy circadian rhythm, they have a far better balance of microbes and range of beneficial bacteria in their gut. Good sleep patterns are correlated wth good microbiome patterns. Disturbed sleep can interfere with hormonal levels and thereby impact the appetite and immune systems, including the immune system in the gut.

8. Too much stress can be very damaging to the gut. It can also interfere with appetite regulation and lead to snacking on junk food, which in turn changes the microbiome for the worse. People with low-stress lifestyles tend to have much better gut health.

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