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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2398 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 24, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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I feel like my drinking has gotten steadily worse this year. I'm drinking nearly every night. A light nights its just a light beer or two. On heavy nights its probably 2-5 light beers, and 2-4 drinks of liquor. (usually never the max of both).

I would like to do this far less. So I'll report back here every month or so on decreased drinking to try and hold myself accountable.

This is just my own curiosity but - doesn't that make you feel like crap the next day?

I really like drinking, and that's the main thing that holds me back apart from trying to avoid weight gain: that upset stomach/headache feeling persists all the following day for me, and I almost never go beyond 4 total drinks. For context I'm in my mid-30s and in fairly good physical condition.

Sugary drinks gave me the worst hangovers. And I don't have sugar anymore cuz of a diabetes diagnosis. So hangovers are pretty mild.

My sleep schedule has also been real shitty lately, and bad sleep can feel about as bad as a hangover for me.

I am certain the drinking is not helping my sleeping, so it's another reason I'd like to cut back.

I am a doctor but I am not your doctor. The following is essentially a reminder of the importance of healthy life style.

I find that the medical establishment tends to be rather alarmist about alcohol (not necessarily incorrectly, but perhaps unnecessarily aggressively) but the presence of DM (2, presumably) means that curtailing drinking is a lot more important - people who would never drink six bottles of coke will down a six pack over the course of the evening and not realize it's worse for you than the soda.

Diabetes increases the risk of various things with or without obesity and we routinely advise diabetics to avoid extra "hits" to their health accordingly.

Others point out some other considerations here - the potential concern for genetic predisposition to alcoholism, the important of habits and so on.

If it's really just a slide into an unhealthier habit without addiction I'd advise just stopping altogether for a few months to prove to yourself you can. If you can't, that's evidence, what you do with that evidence is up to you. If you can stop, after a while you can try reintroducing and see if you manage it in a healthier way.

If you want help people in your life are almost always going to be better than strangers on the internet. Doesn't need to be phrased in a scary way "hey honey/bro, for health reasons I want to try and skip my after dinner drinks for a little while, can you help nag me?"

An alternate strategy may be a harm reduction approach - Friday nights only or special occasions, something like that.

Since you're dishing out common sense advice that most doctors won't give their patients...

Let's say that you were forced to drink a whole bottle of wine in one night. What would you do to mitigate the worst affects of it?

ChatGPT just tells me not to drink the bottle, lol.

Well. I am not sure I have peer reviewed data for you, but I can tell you what I know as a semi reformed party animal.

  1. A bottle of wine is not a lot of alcohol. Get swole or something if it's a problem.
  2. Don't do other stuff that increases risk of acute or chronic morbidity. Don't drive. Don't take Tylenol. Don't mix in benzos or percs or anything else. Don't be on antibiotics or have liver damage or relevant chronic disease etc etc.
  3. Don't take medication before or after unless you know what you are doing. It'd be rare for a healthy person but Tylenol after drinking could kill you. Other stuff may be more effective and safe but it'd be less responsible to guide with this. 2 and 3 above will protect you if you meant he worst of it in terms of health effects.

If you mean the morning after:

  1. A good chunk of a hangover is mineral and fluid status related. Drink Pedialyte. Maybe Liquid IV. Gatorade and just regular water will help somewhat but the drop off is pretty sharp from something that's actually correct solute wise. If you are rich you could use an IV and that'd work great. Supplement other missing shit (vitamins and minerals) in your morning meal. Eat a banana. In addition to drinking fluid after, do it before.
  2. A good chunk of a hangover is residual hyperglycemia. Go for a run. Light cardio may be the best you can do for most people.
  3. A good chunk of a hangover is nausea and other related stuff. Take a shit. Shower. Get some fluid. Lore is that fatty stuff helps, don't sure what that comes from evidence wise but might be legit. Medical people often use anti-emetics.
  4. A good chunk of a hangover is sleep deprivation. Alcohol makes you pass out. It doesn't make you sleep. These are not the same. Go home/shower/get comfortable then go back to bed. Be less tired and/or exhausted before you drink.
  5. You can also avoid sugary drinks, or sugar in your meals before. Red wine is worse than white, composition of the alcohol, impurities, tannins, all kinds of other stuff can exacerbate hangovers.

If you mean not seeming drunk:

  1. A full stomach seems to reduce total experience of alcohol and damage to the body, maybe? Someone needs to do a paper lol. It does mean you'll seemingly be drunk for potentially longer but will reduce the damage and drunkenness by slowing metabolism down.
  2. Pace yourself. A glass of wine then a glass of water then repeat. People process about a drink an hour (very roughly) go light for long and you might not even notice.
  3. DO NOT RECOMMEND: use of other substances like caffeine can reduce subjective and objective drunkenness. This is obviously highly hazardous to your health, and it reduces subjective a lot more than objective which can be problematic.

Special situation:

  1. If you are asian you might have an actual enzyme deficiency. Google this if you want to try some of the stuff people do to address that.

This brought to you by currently drunk.

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