Let's Be Intelligent About Alcohol

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 770, 23 April 1954, Page 8

Let's Be Intelligent About Alcohol

THIS is the text of a talk on health broadcast __ recently from ‘the ZB, YA and YZ stations of the NZBS by DR

H. B.

TURBOTT

Deputy Director General of Health.

O back as far as you will in (5 alcohol has been used for good or ill. Greek and early Roman philosophers spoke against it, but the Romans later used it to excess. Indian tribes before Christ believed their God, Indra, could do valiant deeds only when under the influence of alcohol. England not so long ago was very intemperate. You could get drunk on gin for twopence. The Pilgrim Fathers did not make alcohol a religious issue. Some developed a taste for rum. In modern society, the world over, alcohol has a distinct place, It is being used with increasing freedom, and, because of this, it is being regarded by some as a cultural need. Alcohol has uses and abuses. In medicine it is less in vogue than formerly. It is still used to sterilise the skin. It is still used as an astringent and cooling lotion, and also to toughen the skinfor example, rubbing with alcohol to prevent bedsores. In the stomach alcohol can irritate and damage the lining, if too concentrated, and excess ends up in nausea and vomiting. Small amounts in plenty of fluid interfere in no way with the digestion or absorption of food. In fact, tiredness, worries or tenseness, are offset, a jaded appetite is restored, and a meal can be enjoyed, after small amounts of alcohol, where it would have been unattractive without this help. On the neryous system alcohol is a depres‘sant. At first there seems to be a livening up ‘and ‘stimulation. Remember the rar increasing ease of social conthe.clamour of the voices and the ing. crescendo of sound from converSation at ‘cocktail parties! This is the de-pressant-action on the brain, lessening our contea You seem to speak better an with more ease, shyness goes,

judgment between the trivial and the important and respect for the conventions is less-all this apparent stimulation and new freedom is illusory. In short, it’s just that our normal inhibitions aren’t working properly. Alcohol, in small doses, doesn’t upset the ability to do work of an automatic or reflex nature. It used to be given to sailors and soldiers, getting worn out in tight corners, to postpone exhaustion and to enable them to carry on a bit longer. Drugs like benzedrine have been used instead nowadays. But alcohol is a bad friend where a task calls for concentration and attention to detail. Judgment of speed and distance is interfered with if alcohol and car driving are mixed. In a controlled test, a large whisky containing 1 oz. of alcohol, increased the driver’s speed by 25 per cent and his errors by 40 per cent, Alcohol has food value, but is not a good food. You can only absorb about half an ounce an hour. Sugar, as glucose, is a better emergency food, and doctors no longer prescribe alcohol as a food. Taken steadily, beyond moderate quantities, alcohol interferes with food absorption, and gives the liver and kidneys extra unnecessary work to do, and irritates both. When you have a hangover from too free imbibing the night before, you are having a combined

protest from stomach, intestines and liver-a _ self-induced bilious attack. There are all sorts of stories about, as to the avoidance of these hangovers. All that these "avoiders" do is to delay the absorption of alcohol. For example, milk is probably the best at slowing absorption, and I guess that is the rationale of whisky and milk. An average healthy adult on a good diet can take alcohol in moderation and keep healthy. My authority for this is that of the statistical expert of John Hopkins Medical School, U.S.A. Moderate drinkers live as long as do total abstainers, but heavy drinkers shorten their life span. A Life Insurance investigation compared _ policy-holders who were moderate drinkers, insured at normal rates, with another group of policy-holders who went on the binge in bouts lasting two to three days, but only did this three times a year. Their relative mortality compared with the moderates was 331 per cent. We have to be intelligent about alcohol. It’s a poison with a narrow margin of beneficial use. If we take alcohol our safety depends on. moderation. What is moderation? An American authority defines it as two cocktails or highballs a day, taken before, during, or after the evening meal-more than this shortens your life. e