I usually drink 1 bottle of wine per night. It doesn’t get me drunk or anything, but that is probably just because I have a high tolerance now. I’m 36, i’m very healthy,I eat right, exercise alot etc. But I was thinking i’ve had a 1 bottle per night wine habit since I was in my early 20’s at least. Am I gonna destroy my liver?
I dont want to turn this into a debate on whether I am or am not an alcoholic. I just want to know if this is an extreme amount and if I’m damaging my body.
I’m very interested in the answer to this question. I’ve tried to research it (close friend, similar habit) and all the sources seem to agree that it’s too much, but not on what range of effects it might have. I’d welcome an expert opinion.
I don’t have a cite, but the numbers I’ve seen from studies say that up to 1 drink for a typical woman or 2 drinks for a typical man may even be healthy, but anything more than that has more detrimental effects than positive. (Those are per day)
The usual rule of thumb is that 5 ounces of wine is 1 drink. Most wine bottles are 750 ml (25 oz), or about 5 drinks. Even if you have wine with lower than normal alcohol, that’s well in excess of the healthy amount.
Like Dr. Drake, I don’t know how well this correlates to specific side effects like liver damage. It may partly depend on whether you’re downing the bottle at dinner or spreading it out over five or six hours.
We need more info:
*how much do you weigh?
*By “bottle” of wine do you mean a 750ml bottle, a liter, a 1.5 liter, a 3 liter, 5 liter, etc.?
*Whats the proof of the wine?
Let’s do some booze math: if you’re drinking a 750ml bottle of 20 proof white zinfandel, that’s the alcohol equivalent of four 12 ounce bottles of regular beer. Depending on your weight that may not be enough to get you drunk and won’t be as bad for you as drinking 1.5 liters of 30 proof wine.
I’m 6’1". I weigh 185-190 pounds. Its a 750ml bottle of typical red wine. (Merlot, Cab.) etc.
Well, you may be an alcoholic, but you’ve got class.
Anecdotal: my brother has consumed a similar amount of red wine more or less every day since he was about 25, and he was as healthy as a horse at his last physical.
No reason to worry, although it will put you at higher risk of liver damage it’s a reasonably negligible risk.
Probably worse for your belly in all honesty.
There are many countries in the world where this is pretty standard drinking behavior for adults, and some of these countries (Spain, Italy,Portugal) have longer average life spans than here in the USA…
Of course, there are many factors at work besides the wine (diet, health care) but one bottle of wine per day is not excessive to tens of millions of people living today.
How old is he now? It’s really not very much info if he’s 26.
750ml=a little over 2 cans of beer (ounce wise. Alcohol wise depends on the wines strength)
Even if you’re wine is on the high end of proof, my estimate is you’re consuming no more than the alcohol equivalent of 6-7 cans of regular beer. And that’s MAX. It could be more like the equivalent of 4-5 cans of beer.
If 7 cans of beer a day were truly a danger the majority of us in Wisconsin would be on transplant lists!
I’d like to see a cite that people in Spain drink a bottle of wine a day. Mostly because someone must be drinking my allowance.
In fact people in Spain might have a glass or two of wine with their meals but drinking a bottle of wine would be exceptional. And those people DO tend to have health problems. Of course, when they are 30 they say “so far so good”, and think it will last forever. I see people who are not even 60 in bad health and alcohol and tobacco usually have a lot to do with it.
Of course, whenever you see studies that 1-2 drinks per day is optimal, you’ve got to remember that that’s just an average. Some people can’t even drink that much, and some can drink a lot more. It’d be hard enough for a doctor examining you directly to know what amount is OK for you specifically; it’s pretty much impossible for us on a message board.
Let’s see
11.7 litres per capita of alcohol per year in Spain
equates to 32 ml of alcohol per day in Spain per capita [http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/foo_alc_con-food-alcohol-consumption-current]
equates to 267ml of 12% wine per person per capital per day in spain, which is over 1/3 of a bottle.
Double that for luck and we can presume the median Spanish drinker drinks about 2/3 of a bottle per day.
As I expected, the responses come down to YRMV (your results may vary).
I, like Dr. Drake and you, are interested in a factual answer but the variables may make that impossible. We need some actuarial data. Things like smoking, job stress and where you live might influence the data.
I had an aunt that was a very heavy smoker all of her adult life yet lived well beyond what the actuarial tables would have predicted (late 80’s). Likewise, I had a friend that smoked and died in her 20’s from lung cancer. There are undoubtedly similar anecdotes about people that consume alcohol.
TIFWIW, but I’ve heard that alcoholism (and I’m not accusing you of being an alcoholic) is progressive. A bottle of wine in the 30’s that is having no seemingly ill effect, can turn into 2 bottles of wine in the 50’s that is still seemingly having no ill effects but is, in fact, causing a lot of physical harm. On the other hand, there are people that lived to be 100 who drank whiskey every day and swore by it.
Sorry for being unspecific but I’m skeptical that the question can be answered. We need some actuarial statistics.
Qadgop answered something akin to this question within the last year(I think). I personally tend to drink a bottle of red wine over the course of an evening(5 hours), and wondered the same thing. I don’t want to answer for him as I may have misremembered. I’ll send him a msg to respond to the thread.
Here is one of the cites I believe Qadgop has directed us to in the past its from New England Journal of Medicine - on Alcohol Consumption Mortality in Middle aged US Population.
In my opinion, there may be some misinformation posted in this thread. Specifically, and among other things, I believe that a bottle of wine consumed daily puts you at more than a “negligible” risk for liver disease.
First of all, though, I want to clarify that it doesn’t matter whether alcohol is ingested as wine, spirits, or beer. Alcohol is alcohol. Second, there are other risk factors at play which may increase or decrease the likelihood of developing liver disease from alcohol. For example, people with the so-called “metabolic syndrome” (typically manifesting with mild obesity, high blood pressure, high blood fats, and “mild” diabetes) are at increased risk of liver disease even in the absence of alcohol. Add alcohol to the metabolic syndrome risk and the chance of liver disease goes up multiplicatively. Other factors which augment the toxic effect of alcohol on the liver include: occult (or overt) viral hepatitis, e.g. hep B or hep C, occult iron excess (the most common single gene disease in whites), . . . the list goes on.
Third, we must define 1 “unit” of alcohol (in order to compare apples with apples). On average, wine is about 10% alcohol (yes, some has more, some less - I’m just talking about averages). On average, beer is about 5% alcohol (in Canada), and on average, spirits are approximately 40% alcohol.
(it’s easier to use grams for what follows. Remember that 1 ounce is about 28 grams).
So, 5 ounces of wine equals 140 grams of wine. If wine is 10% alcohol, then 140 grams of wine equals 14 grams of alcohol.
Ten ounces of beer equals 280 grams of beer. If beer is 5% alcohol, then 280 grams of beer equals 14 grams of alcohol.
One and a quarter ounces of spirits (a “shot”) equals about 35 grams of spirits. If spirits average about 40% alcohol, then 35 grams of spirits equals 14 grams of alcohol.
In other words, a glass of wine, a bottle of beer, and a shot of spirits all contain about the same amount of alcohol. (It’s very important to keep in mind that people who make and/or pour their own drinks will almost always have more than the above figures. A ‘glass’ of wine at home might be 8 ounces, not 5, and a ‘shot’ of rye poured in your own living room might be closer to 2 ounces than 1¼.)
In any case, empirically it is known that chronic* consumption of more than 60 to 70 grams of alcohol per day for a woman, and 70 to 80 grams per day for a man can be expected to lead to liver disease. (likelihood of about 50% for 20 or more years of drinking).
*chronic = at least 10 to 20 years
We also should keep in mind that alcohol does a lot of other ‘bad’ things besides rotting your liver. A few lesser known ones are:
breast cancer (in women) - for every 10 grams of alcohol ingested (about ¾ of a drink), a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer goes up by 9%. So, five drinks a day, increases a woman’s chance by almost 50%. Note that in Italy where alcohol consumption is fairly high, 11% of breast cancers are due to alcohol
cancer of the mouth, throat (pharynx), and swallowing tube (esophagus) - unlike the case for cardiovascular disease, where modest consumption of alcohol seems to confer some protection, even occasional and one-drink-per-day ingestion of alcohol are associated with a 12 and 37% increase respectively in the risk of cancer of the esophagus.
inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis) - this is a very nasty illness which you don’t want to get. It is considered to be one of the most painful conditions that someone can have (up there with kidney stones and labour). Pancreatitis has the potential for many complications, none of which are good news or very pleasant for the patient. It can also kill you. About 10% of chronic alcoholics will develop pancreatitis at some stage. In fact, anyone who goes out boozing places themselves at increased risk for pancreatitis, albeit just for a day or so. But consider someone who drinks every day. Their risk of pancreatitis will stay elevated.
I hope all this has been of interest to somebody.
– KG
I have no way of finding cites for this, or if the cites even exist…
I was just going on personal observations that I have made upon spending time in said countries.
Who knows, these observations were made on occasions when I was on vacation, so maybe I was just haging around in places that attracted heavy handed wine-o’s, but it seemed to me that 3 or 4 glasses (which is about one bottle) was standard for many locals in the evening, spread out over several hours, usually with food.
Where did you learn your math?
Well, I am interested, but I always did prefer objective data over misinformation.
Thanks, KG for the elegant summary.