How does alcohol affect the MB?
Everyone knows that alcohol affects the liver, but did you know that it also affects your microbiome?
When you eat or drink anything, it is absorbed across the intestinal wall and goes straight to the liver. That absorption part, and the alcohol swishing around in the intestines part, is what we’re going to talk about today.
As alcohol is absorbed across the intestinal wall, it does physical damage to the cells – causing erosion of the surface of the cells and loss of surface area for absorption of nutrients. This can lead to deficiencies of Vitamins A, B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B6 (pyridoxine), C, D, E and K as well as folate, calcium, magnesium, phosphate, iron, zinc and selenium. And because heavy users of alcohol can get up to half their calories from alcohol, they have less to absorb, anyway.
It turns out that alcohol has a direct effect on the bacteria in the intestine, too. Alcohol is toxic to good bacteria, killing them and leading to lower production of good bacterial products like short chain fatty acids. (SCFAs)
SCFAs are the currency of the microbiome - they feed the cells that line the intestine, soothe inflammation, regulate insulin and cholesterol production, and many other things.
When the microbiome suffers, and bad bacteria outweigh good bacteria, we call it dysbiosis. Dysbiosis has been associated with diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, autism, inflammatory bowel disease and liver cirrhosis.
When you drink alcohol, you stress and ultimately kill off good bacteria and encourage growth of bad bacteria. When this happens, you get less SCFA production and the integrity of the gut mucosa is impaired. You get a loosening of the “tight junctions” between cells of the intestinal lining, which allows bad bacteria and their products to leak into the tissues of the intestinal wall, causing inflammation.
How do we combat this? The easy answer is to stop, or moderate alcohol. If you find that difficult to do, you can at least support the good bacteria by feeding them lots of fiber via fiber supplements and lots of plants.
I don’t just mean Brussels sprouts – those are good – all broccoli and cabbage family plants are really good for you, but peanut butter is also a plant. So is coffee (and 4 cups of coffee daily protects against liver, esophageal and pancreatic cancer, all associated with alcohol consumption.) Dark chocolate is a plant. Granola has plants (oats, nuts, coconut, etc). A good rule of thumb is to get 5 plants in each meal. The serving size is not important. A couple of spoonfuls of salsa in your scrambled eggs will usually get you 5 plants, especially when you count your coffee, tea or juice.
You can also take a probiotic supplement so that there are more good guys to work on the fiber you send down.
So the message is – eat lots of plants to support the good guys and protect them by moderating or eliminating alcohol.
