april awareness

April Awareness

Hello dear Jen,

You know, when I found out how many teaspoons of sugar were in a can of soft drink, and how bad sugar was for my body, it wasn’t hard to give it up – pretty much cold turkey. It hasn’t been a part of my life now for many years. I don’t crave it, nor do I drink it.

This month I have come across some research which, frankly, has been very hard for me to swallow (pun intended). You see I was born in Australia in 1962 and have spent every decade of my life seeing and accepting that drinking alcohol is part of a happy and healthy life. We drink when we get home from work, we drink at dinner, we drink when we meet up with friends and family, we drink at christenings, weddings and wakes, we drink to celebrate our birthdays. I mean, heck people even say, It must be beer/wine o’clock somewhere in the world. We don’t really need an excuse, apart from the dopamine hit we are going to get. There’s either a Dan’s, BWS, Liquorland or a Black Sheep outlet probably less than a 15-minute drive away. No? Well, if you polish off one bottle, you can just get another one delivered! I always believed that drinking in moderation was even beneficial for one’s heart health. The good old one glass of red wine with dinner aids digestion and has resveratrol – that kind of rhetoric.

Just this week I have seen two mind-blowing YouTube videos which have turned the alcohol is ok in moderation argument completely on its head.

The first one is Mel Robbin’s interview with Harvard’s Dr. Sarah Wakeman, who spells out medically how each sip of that alcoholic beverage is impacting our gut health, our brain, our liver etc. You can watch it here.

The second awakening I had this week was from the cheeky French biochemist, Jessie Inchauspé aka the GlucoseGoddess who also spells out the facts in her fabulously entertaining and informative video. Did you know that two major studies from 2022 reveal that just one drink a day is linked to brain shrinkage, cognitive decline and neuron loss!

One of the reasons we all thought alcohol was ok in moderation (and some people still do) is because studies in the past revealed that people who drank in moderation lived longer and were healthier than people who didn’t drink alcohol. But guess what? This research was flawed because the majority of people who didn’t drink were abstaining because they had to due to major debilitating health conditions – which is why in the data they didn’t appear as healthy as people who did drink!

Since I’m turning 63 this year (karma willing 😊) I’m taking all this research seriously and am even considering eliminating booze from my life altogether – just like I did with soft drinks all those years ago. I gave up alcohol for a year during my 40s, so I reckon that now I know the hard cold facts, I could potentially abstain for even longer. If the latest science is telling us that alcohol is actually a number 1 carcinogen, why would I ignore the research? In the USA they’re talking about putting warning stickers on booze like there are on cigarette packets.

A lot of people seem to be talking about reassessing their relationship with alcohol and this morning I watched a short Youtube video from Dr. Alex George who has abstained from alcohol for 2 years! He talks about the benefits you can expect in the first 4 weeks of sobriety. Some of these include better sleep, no indigestion or reflux, better taste of food, skin glows and looks younger, weight loss, increased energy levels, improved mental health, embracing a calmer version of yourself as well as saving heaps of money to spend on other things. For me, this time, it’s been 8 days. I try not to be too ambitious and just take one day at a time whilst also being mindful of how I’m feeling in any given moment.

So, think about it the next time you hear someone ask you, What’s your poison?

Click here to read my poem about alcohol.

Cheers! (with passionfruit kombucha)

Jen x