How Alcohol Slows Down Digestion

When alcohol is consumed along with food, it slows down the digestion process. This has a detrimental impact on health leading to complications.

To provide people, not acquainted with the digestion process, a lucid idea of what this vital function is all about, and the outcomes that transpire when alcohol is consumed along with food, we cite from Dr. Henry Monroe, an English physician’s lecture on “The Physiological Action of Alcohol.” According to him:

“Every type of substance that man uses to make food contains starch, sugar, glutinous matters and oil, mixed together in different proportions; these are intended for propping up the animal structure. The glutinous matters of food like albumen, casein and fibrine, are used to develop the frame; while the starch, sugar and oil are mainly employed to produce heat in the human body.

“The digestive process starts with the food being broken up in the mouth with the teeth and jaws. After this, the salivary glands discharge saliva, which is a viscid fluid, into the mouth, where it blends with the food, and executes an extremely vital role in the digestion process, as it makes the food starch soluble, and it slowly converts it into a kind of sugar, following which the other substances easily blend with it. In an adult, almost a pint of saliva tends to be supplied every 24 hours for use. Once the food is chewed and blended with the saliva, then it enters the stomach, where a juice produced by the stomach filaments act upon it, and it is discharged in great quantities into the stomach every time food touches its mucous linings. It comprises a dilute acid called as hydrochloric acid by chemists, which is made up of chlorine and hydrogen, combined together in some specific quantities. Besides, the gastric juice holds a strange organic-ferment or moldering substance that consists of nitrogen, which is something like yeast called pepsine that dissolves without difficulty in the above-mentioned acid. The fact that gastric juice serves as a regular chemical solvent is well known as following death, it dissolves the stomach itself.”

Now, it is totally wrong to think that after an excellent supper, a glass of alcohol or beer helps in digestion; or to believe that any liquor comprising alcohol like even bitter beer could in any way aid digestion. Blend some meat and bread with gastric juice; put them in a tiny bottle, and place that bottle in a sand-bath, exposed to a slow heat of ninety eight degrees, now and then vigorously agitating the contents to copy the stomach’s actions; you will discover, following 6-8 hours, the entire contents mixed into a single pultaceous mass. If I put in a glass of light beer or a measure of alcohol, to another phial containing gastric juice and food, dealt with in an identical way, after 7-8 hours, or perhaps a few days, the food hardly is acted upon in any way. This is really true; and if you question why, I reply, since alcohol has the strange ability of chemically influencing or moldering the gastric juice via triggering one of its main constituents, namely, pepsine, causing its solvent properties to be less effective. Therefore, alcohol in no way can be thought to be food or even as a food solvent. Definitely, it cannot be considered as the second one as it does not perform with gastric juice.

Dr. Dundas Thompson remarks, ‘It’s an amazing fact that alcohol when mixed with the digestive fluid, generates a white precipitate, in order that the solution is not able to digest vegetable or animal matter any more.’ Drs. Todd & Bowman say, “Using alcoholic stimulants slows down digestion by thickening the pepsine, a vital constituent of gastric juice, and thus hindering its action. If not for the fact that spirits and wine are quickly absorbed, the induction of these, in any amount into the stomach, would be an absolute obstruction to food digestion, as the pepsine would be condensed from the liquid as fast as it was created by the stomach.” Alcohol, in any amount, as an addition to the diet, is destructive due to its antiseptic properties, which opposes food digestion by absorbing water from food particles, in direct opposition to chemical process.”

Original Article Source: http://www.medicalneeds.com

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