5 Reasons Why Alcohol Is Bad For Your Health

❌ 100% FREE VIDEO TRAINING (2025) ❌ New Method To Control Alcohol in 48 Hours ➡️ https://www.soberclear.com/video/?el=podcast

🔥 APPLY FOR SOBERCLEAR PROGRAM 🔥 Currently Accepting New Clients. Apply Here ➡️ https://www.soberclear.com/quiz/el=podcast

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mission
• 0:23 Five Science Reasons Preview
• 1:36 Credibility And Coaching Method
• 1:40 Reason 1: Evolutionary Novelty And Empty Calories
• 4:35 Reason 2: Oxidative Stress And Aging
• 6:50 Reason 3: Chronic Inflammation And Organ Damage
• 9:57 Reason 4: Endocrine Disruption And Hormones
• 12:59 Reason 5: DNA Damage And Broken Repair
• 15:11 Action Step And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Stop Drinking Podcast, where we help you make stopping drinking a simple, logical, and easy decision. We help you with tips, tools, and strategies to start living your best life when alcohol free. If you want to learn more about stop drinking coaching, then head over to www.soberclear.com. Alcohol isn't just bad for you, it's a poison disguised as a drink. It shrinks your brain, wrecks, and even rewires your hormones. Ladies and gentlemen, in this video, I'll give you five scientific reasons why alcohol is one of the most destructive drugs on earth. Reasons that will make you rethink every single sip. And please make sure to watch this entire video because reason number five is by far the most terrifying of them all. It's the one that proves alcohol damages you all the way down to your DNA. And why should you listen to me? Well, my name is Leon Sylvester. I'm the founder of soberclear.com, which is a coaching company that uses a totally new method to help people get control of their drinking. I myself struggled with alcohol for close to a decade, trying to stop drinking with willpower, going to AA meetings, stopping and starting all the time, but seven years ago something shifted and I haven't drank since. And now I help other people do the same thing. My company's approach has been scientifically validated with a 96% client-rated success, and you can find an academic paper of the method by going to Google Scholar and searching the word sober clear. So when I share these five reasons why alcohol is devastating for your health, it's not just an opinion. This is going to be hard science combined with personal experience and years of helping thousands of people break free. So, number one, it's a highly unusual evolutionary novelty. Ethanol, the chemical name for what we call alcohol, is a pretty unique molecule. It's the only widely consumed drug that is both highly toxic and very calorie dense. The toxicity is why you have to dilute it. If you drank a bottle of straight ethanol in one sitting, you would die on the spot. According to the CDC, several thousand people do die in the US annually from acute alcohol poisoning. This is only the people who overdose in one sitting, not counting any long-term health effects. Alcohol is also extremely calorie dense. One gram of ethanol will give you 7.1 calories of energy, which is astonishingly high. For comparison, lettuce gives you 0.1 calories per gram, steak 2.5 calories, and bacon 5. Now, our ancestors first discovered fermented alcohol about 10,000 years ago. And natural selection is still in the very early stages of dealing with it. So we are dealing with a very toxic and calorie-dense substance that our body simply hasn't evolved to deal with. It can't handle alcohol properly. Given how rapidly our technology and medicine are improving, it's difficult to know how evolution will play out. But if natural selection is allowed to do its thing, then in a few hundred or thousand generations, all people will find alcohol disgusting. Just like, say, ammonia. Mother Nature will solve the problem of alcohol for good. In the meantime, our body is left with the unpleasant task of dealing with this toxin. Now, regular food contains necessary macro and micronutrients that are extracted and processed in various useful ways during digestion. With alcohol, on the other hand, we extract the calories, but there is no other useful contribution to the body's functioning. That's why our body doesn't register them like normal calories, and why it doesn't compensate our appetite for them. In other words, when you have a juicy steak with its 2.5 calories per gram, you break it down in your digestive tract, you extract the proteins and other nutrients, and send a signal to your brain to reduce the appetite. When you have a beer, on the other hand, it quickly passes into the blood, reaches the brain and other organs, and wrecks some havoc and is then sent to the liver to be metabolized. The liver being the organ tasked with breaking down toxins. Tragically, the liver will first metabolize ethanol into acetaldehyde. This is an extremely harmful molecule, between 10 to 30 times more toxic than ethanol. The acetaldehyde is then broken down into ever simpler molecules, which are eventually expelled from the body. And it's during this process, when your liver is dealing with all these toxic chemicals, that you extract the calories from alcohol. So you have this real catastrophe where you absorb all the empty calories from this super calorie dense source, you keep on eating as normal because your brain doesn't register the calories, and you destroy your liver in the process. So let's look at the second thing, how it raises something called oxidative stress. So another unfortunate consequence of ethanol's metabolism involves the creation of molecules which scientists call reactive. As the name suggests, these reactive molecules, which include free radicals and reactive oxygen species or ROS, just don't sit idly in the body. Instead, they like to interact with other stable molecules. They do this by either stealing particles from them to convert them into free radicals or combining with them to form new free radicals. So what does this mean? Well, this can set off a chain reaction of damage, with the instability spreading from one molecule to another. To deal with these reactive molecules, our body uses various molecules that scientists collectively call antioxidants. The antioxidants combine with free radicals and reactive oxygen species, and rather than becoming unstable, they neutralize them. So the reactive molecules are neutralized and the chain reaction is killed in its tracts. In a healthy body, this system works smoothly, keeping the damage in check. But when there's an imbalance when too many reactive molecules are produced or not enough antioxidants are available, the body enters a state known as oxidative stress. And this is what you get with drinking alcohol, because alcohol generates reactive molecules while simultaneously depleting essential antioxidant defenses. Oxidative stress is now recognized as a key factor in aging, and part of the reason why heavy drinkers often look prematurely aged, particularly in the face. But the effects go way beyond just superficial appearances. Oxidative stress is now considered an aggravating factor in the development of numerous chronic health problems. These include cardiovascular disease, cancer, fatigue, and neurodegenerative conditions. Oxidative stress also leads to persistent inflammation in the brain. It also inflames other organs, which sets the stage for degenerative diseases like dementia and pancreatitis. Research increasingly suggests that psychological disorders like depression and anxiety might also be linked to oxidative stress in the brain. This does help explain why so many drinkers suffer from mood swings, brain fog, and emotional instability. Number three, it keeps you chronically inflamed. So we just saw that a consequence of oxidative stress is the triggering of inflammatory processes. This is so fundamental to our health that I need us to elaborate on this a bit. So inflammation is basically a defense mechanism. It's our body's natural response to things like injuries and infections. It removes what's causing the damage, clears out the damaged tissues, and initiates the healing process. The problem is that inflammation comes at a price. It takes a toll on the body, and when you become chronically inflamed, your tissues and organs begin to suffer. This chronic inflammation also activates immune cells that generate additional reactive oxygen species. This creates a self-perpetuating chain of oxidative stress and inflammation at various levels. It becomes a vicious cycle. Another major factor driving the inflammation is the damage to the gut's mucosal barrier. Alcohol damages the intestinal lining, allowing toxic bacterial components to enter the bloodstream. You might have heard this referred to as leaky gut syndrome. These toxic bacterial components provoke an immune response in the body, which further aggravate the inflammation. So now you have chronic inflammation and you're setting the stage for serious life-altering diseases. The inflammation is across the entire body, but certain organs are especially affected, starting with the brain, where chronic neuroinflammation literally kills off countless neurons. This contributes to brain atrophy, cognitive dysfunction, mood disorders, and eventually neurogenerative conditions like early onset dementia. And this can strike drinkers as young as their 30s and 40s. The liver will also suffer. Most drinkers suffer from fatty liver, a condition where the cells accumulate fat and the entire liver swells. While this has no overt symptoms, many of those with fatty liver will progress to the next stage of liver disease, alcoholic hepatitis. Now the liver becomes chronically inflamed, and you get the first nasty symptoms of liver disease: loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, weakness, and jaundice. It's a similar story with the pancreas, where inflammation is called pancreatitis. Luckily, pancreatitis is not as common as liver disease, even in heavy drinkers. On the other hand, when it does strike, it's generally far nastier and the pain can be excruciating. Oxidative stress and inflammation are two of the main pillars of alcohol toxicity within your body. They are what is corroding your health at every level, from molecular up to cellular, then tissue, all the way to the organs. Initially, oxidative stress is more prominent, causing widespread cellular damage. As the damage accumulates, it triggers inflammatory responses throughout the body, but certain organs and systems do become particularly inflamed. This persistent inflammation further exacerbates oxidative stress, creating a vicious cycle of ever-increasing toxicity. Over time, the person develops serious health conditions. These can include liver disease, cardiovascular disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancers. Number four, it upsets your endocrine system. By endocrine system, we refer to the collection of glands that produce hormones, which are chemical messengers that regulate various functions in the body. This system includes the hypothalamus, pituitary and thyroid glands, pancreas and reproductive organs like the ovaries in women and testes in men. One of the main functions of the endocrine system is to achieve a constant internal environment, so-called homeostasis. This allows our body to respond appropriately to changes in the external and internal environment without being thrown off balance. Now, the effects of alcohol on the endocrine system are far too extensive to cover in this video. So I'm gonna focus on a couple of key points. An important way in which alcohol upsets your endocrine system involves cortisol. Cortisol, along with adrenaline, is a key hormone in our body's so-called fight or flight response, which was critical during human evolution. But what exactly do we mean by fight or flight? Essentially, when we confront an urgent and potentially threatening situation, the fight or flight response mobilizes our body's resources. So we will either stand our ground and confront the threat or we will simply flee. What happens is our heart rate and blood pressure increase, blood sugar levels rise, and blood flows to the muscle, and we're put on this red alert. The problem, just like inflammation, is that this is a very costly response. It's great in an emergency, but it's not something that you can keep up indefinitely without damaging your body. And the damage is widespread, as cortisol activates a wide range of tissues in our body. So the symptoms can include anything from high blood pressure to immune problems, psychological issues, bone problems, sexual dysfunction, and cognitive issues. Drinkers do tend to have chronically elevated cortisol levels, which is a part of the reason why they are prone to all of these conditions. Essentially, they are in a state of chronic stress, and their body is accumulating tremendous wear and tear. And when they eventually do stop drinking, their cortisol levels will spike even more before coming back down. The spike lasts for a few weeks after the last drink. Interestingly, during this peak, the person's fight or flight response is also blunted. In other words, they won't show the expected physiological responses to a stressful situation. Another way alcohol damages our endocrine system is through its action on the sex hormones. In men, chronic consumption affects testicular cells and lowers blood testosterone levels. It also interferes with sperm production, reduces libido, and increases the risk of impotence. In women, it raises estrogen levels, contributing to an increased risk of breast cancer. And this is by far the most common cancer in women. Sadly, one out of every eight women will have to deal with it in their lifetime. And with each daily drink, the breast cancer risk rises by a whopping 7%. All these problems will sooner or later affect fertility, which is why one of the first medical recommendations for couples who are struggling to conceive is to cut out alcohol. Number five, it interferes with cellular repair mechanisms. So far, we've looked at the various ways in which alcohol damages your cells. We've discussed the role of acetaldehyde, oxidative stress, and inflammation. But something we haven't touched on yet is our cells' ability to repair themselves after damage. And guess what? Here, alcohol is just as destructive. Again, the topic is far too wide to cover in detail in this video. So we're gonna take a look at a couple of topics to give you a general sense of this damage. One key area involves the repair of DNA, the molecule that form our genetic code, the building blocks of life, as they're often called. Now, acetaldehyde in particular likes to interact with DNA, combining with it to form large molecules called adducts. These adducts distort the normal structure of DNA, interfering with its replication and expression. When DNA adducts accumulate, they can lead to mutations, which in turn may trigger uncontrolled cell growth and ultimately cancer. Normally, our cells use sophisticated repair mechanisms to quickly fix such damage. But alcohol impairs these repair systems by interfering with dedicated enzymes that normally repair the damage. This overwhelms cells' natural ability to keep their genetic blueprint intact. Aside from raising cancer risks, this process accelerates cellular aging. It impairs the ability of our tissues to regenerate and it compromises our immune system. Alcohol also disrupts another crucial cellular repair process known as autophagy. This is our built-in recycling mechanism whereby cells identify, break down, and recycle damaged proteins, microscopic cell organelles, and other debris. Autophagy keeps our cells healthy by clearing out faulty, non-functioning components and maintaining a balanced internal environment. Alcohol interferes with some key proteins involved in autophagy, throwing a monkey wrench in the cell's ability to keep a clean house. Damaged cellular components begin to accumulate, raising oxidative stress and leading to profoundly dysfunctional cellular environments. With autophagy compromised, your cells lose one of their most effective repair mechanisms, setting the stage for chronic diseases and further health decline. So what do we do about this? Stop drinking. Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking podcast by SoberClear. If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly, then make sure to visit www.soberclear.com.