The Truth About ALCOHOL *WOW* BBC Documentary 2020

Summary

This informative BBC documentary delves into the impacts of alcohol consumption on the body's systems and overall health, exploring new scientific insights. Dr. Javed Abdomen, an A&E doctor, collaborates with leading researchers to investigate various facets of alcohol's effects, from common myths to serious health concerns like cancer and liver disease. Throughout the documentary, experiments and interviews reveal surprising truths about alcohol's influence on weight, sleep patterns, and societal drinking norms. The film also scrutinizes the changes in recommended alcohol intake guidelines, ultimately challenging viewers to reassess their drinking habits and consider their personal alcohol limits.

Highlights

• The documentary features Dr. Javed Abdomen examining new scientific findings about alcohol. 🔬
• Alcohol is shown to impact nearly every body system, from skin to blood vessels. 💉
• A revealing experiment shows many unknowingly exceed safe drinking limits. 🍻
• Despite potential benefits, the link between alcohol and cancer poses significant health risks. ⚠️
• Food can mitigate alcohol absorption, and darker drinks may worsen hangovers. 🍽️

Key Takeaways

• New government guidelines reveal there's no safe level of alcohol consumption. 🍺
• Alcohol is linked to increased cancer risks, causing many to rethink their drinking habits. 🧬
• Even moderate drinking can double the advised limit, unbeknownst to drinkers, leading to potential health risks. 📈
• Women 55+ might experience heart benefits from small amounts of alcohol, but risks remain for others. 💔
• Dark-colored drinks like red wine and brandy have higher congeners, potentially worsening hangovers. 🍷

Overview

In this eye-opening documentary, Dr. Javed Abdomen navigates the world of alcohol, merging science with real-life experiments to reveal its true impact on health. From exploring common myths to understanding deep physiological effects, this film leaves viewers questioning their own drinking habits.

Among the various experiments and insights, the documentary uncovers how alcohol not only affects basic motor skills and self-perception but also deeper concerns like liver health and cancer risk. With engaging experiments in a real pub, participants learn firsthand about alcohol's multifaceted impacts.

One of the most surprising findings is the new understanding of alcohol's link to cancer, and how current drinking habits may need reevaluation under modern guidelines. The film's engaging narrative not only provides scientific insights but also encourages viewers to introspect on personal choices related to alcohol consumption.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Government Guidelines The chapter discusses the new proposed guidelines for alcohol consumption released by the government in January. The guidelines state that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption. The recommended weekly limit for men was significantly reduced, aligning it with the existing recommendation for women. Critics of the new guidelines argue that the advice is overly cautious or restrictive.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Alcohol and Cancer Link The chapter titled 'Alcohol and Cancer Link' discusses the growing body of evidence that establishes a strong connection between alcohol consumption and cancer. This revelation has prompted many individuals, including the speaker, to reconsider their drinking habits. The chapter raises a rhetorical question about whether people ever truly believed alcohol was beneficial for their health. It highlights that new guidelines have led to a better understanding of alcohol's effects on the body, especially its role as a stimulant.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Dispelling Myths About Alcohol The chapter titled 'Dispelling Myths About Alcohol' involves Dr. Javed Abdomen, an A&E doctor, examining common myths about alcohol consumption. Throughout the discussion, several myths are addressed, such as whether beer makes you less drunk, if hangovers worsen with age, and whether women experience worse hangovers than men. Dr. Javed reveals that these commonly held beliefs are actually not true. The chapter aims to explore the latest scientific insights about alcohol.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Scientific Inquiry into Alcohol This chapter explores the impact of alcohol on the human body, leveraging insights from leading scientists. It delves into common inquiries about alcohol consumption, such as variations in intoxication levels among individuals, effective hangover remedies, and other widespread questions frequently asked in social settings like homes, pubs, and bars. The chapter aims to clarify both well-known and surprising effects of alcohol, with the presenter personally engaging in experiments to provide answers.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Measuring Alcohol Consumption The chapter 'Measuring Alcohol Consumption' explores various questions surrounding alcohol consumption, including the health benefits of red wine compared to white wine, and why recommended weekly limits for men have changed significantly. It also addresses concerns about the link between alcohol and cancer, with insights from England's chief medical officer. The aim is to share scientific understanding with the public to uncover the truth about alcohol.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Liver Impact and Liver Health The author, who is an orthopedic doctor frequently dealing with the adverse effects of excessive alcohol consumption, shares their personal perspective on drinking. Despite their professional experiences with chronic alcoholics and those who drink excessively, they confess to enjoying drinking in moderation themselves.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Recommended Alcohol Units This chapter discusses the new government recommendations on alcohol consumption, which suggest a limit of 14 units per week for both men and women—equivalent to about seven pints of beer. The narrator expresses uncertainty about whether they adhere to this limit and embarks on an experiment to monitor their weekly alcohol intake precisely using a special monitoring device.
• 05:00 - 07:00: Alcohol's Effect on the Brain and Body The chapter explores the impact of alcohol on both the brain and body. The narrator mentions wanting to understand the effects of drinking within recommended limits. To do this, they plan to use a bracelet that monitors their alcohol levels and keep a video diary of their drinking habits. On the first day, they visit their parents and note that they are not drinking while at home. The narrative captures their intention for responsible drinking and self-monitoring.
• 07:00 - 09:00: Body Water and Alcohol Tolerance The chapter discusses the effects of alcohol consumption, with a specific anecdote about drinking a can of lager while visiting a friend known as the UK's number one tea drinker. The narrative includes various social drinking scenarios, highlighting potential impacts on body water and tolerance levels.
• 09:00 - 11:00: Caloric Content and Alcohol's Influence on Appetite The chapter titled 'Caloric Content and Alcohol's Influence on Appetite' discusses a personal account of alcohol consumption in social settings such as pubs, where the speaker enjoys drinking ciders and lager. However, they mention that they do not usually drink at home, designating some days as non-alcohol days. There's a reference to a busy work schedule that extends till late evening, influencing their decision to refrain from drinking alcohol on such days. Additionally, the chapter touches upon a social event—Rosie's birthday—where the speaker indulges in more alcohol than usual, highlighting the varying influences of social occasions on alcohol consumption.
• 11:00 - 13:00: Food Before Alcohol and its Effects In this chapter titled 'Food Before Alcohol and its Effects,' the narrator explains their alcohol consumption over a week, questioning if they stayed within the 14-unit weekly limit. They explore and analyze their drinking patterns, particularly focusing on a data review with Matthew Mitchell that highlights significant consumption on Wednesday, nearing 10 units, and implies potentially lower consumption on Friday.
• 13:00 - 16:00: The French Paradox and Red Wine The chapter discusses the French Paradox, a concept that examines the relationship between red wine consumption and health. Despite consuming diets high in saturated fats, French people have relatively low instances of heart disease, which some attribute to moderate red wine consumption. The transcript provides an example of drinking habits over a week, highlighting the surprising amount of alcohol consumed when tallied, potentially countering the health benefits associated with moderate wine drinking.
• 16:00 - 18:00: Effects of Alcohol on Sleep The chapter discusses the effects of alcohol consumption on sleep patterns. It features an individual's personal experience who underestimated their drinking habits, realizing they consume more than the recommended weekly alcohol limit. This personal reflection highlights a broader trend, emphasizing that approximately 13 million people in Britain exceed this new weekly guideline. The narrative aims to raise awareness of common underestimations regarding alcohol consumption and its potential impact on health, particularly sleep.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Exploring Hangover Remedies The chapter discusses the potential risks of drinking above the recommended weekly limits, which can increase the likelihood of developing alcohol-related liver disease. The narrator decides to investigate the impact of their drinking habits on their liver health by visiting the Royal Free Hospital in London. There, they meet with liver specialist Dr. Ghadir Mehta, who will conduct a liver scan to check for signs of damage.
• 21:00 - 26:00: Congeners and Hangover Severity This chapter discusses the severity of hangovers in relation to congeners. The narrator describes a liver scan procedure using ultrasound to measure liver stiffness. A healthy liver generally has a stiffness reading under 5. The narrator receives a reading of just over 10, which suggests early stages of liver disease.
• 26:00 - 28:00: Revised Alcohol Guidelines The chapter on 'Revised Alcohol Guidelines' explores how alcohol consumption can lead to liver inflammation, even in small amounts, potentially causing certain medical markers to rise. An individual with a slightly higher than normal score in a liver-related measurement questions the long-term health implications of their current level of drinking. The conversation suggests that while the person has not yet encountered serious health issues, they are concerned about the risks of maintaining their current drinking habits. Health professionals caution that there is no guarantee of staying healthy with such habits, emphasizing the importance of revisiting alcohol consumption guidelines.
• 28:00 - 29:00: Conclusion on Alcohol and Health This chapter discusses the relationship between alcohol consumption and liver disease, particularly cirrhosis. It highlights that while higher levels of alcohol consumption increase risk, even moderate drinkers can be affected due to genetic factors, diet, and weight. It concludes with the understanding that developing alcohol-related liver disease involves complex interactions beyond just the amount of alcohol consumed. The key takeaway is that excessive drinking heightens the risk but individual susceptibility can vary.

The Truth About ALCOHOL *WOW* BBC Documentary 2020 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 in January the government released its new proposed guidelines for alcohol and for the UK's 40 million drinkers it was all pretty sobering there is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol that's according to new guidelines on alcohol issued by the government for men the recommended weekly limit was slashed by 1/3 to the equivalent of roughly seven pints of beer bringing it in line with the amount recommended for women critics say the advice smacks of the
• 00:30 - 01:00 nanny state but most significant was the publicized link between alcohol and cancer the increasing evidence strongly linking alcohol with cancer it's made a lot of us reassess how much we drink myself included but if we're honest that we ever think alcohol was really that good for our health and for many of us the new guidelines have made us realise how little we understand alcohol and the way it reacts with our bodies alcohol is a stimulant
• 01:00 - 01:30 true or false yes for me yeah beer gets you less drunk yes yes hangovers get worse as you get older maybe definitely women get worse hangovers than men I will say so but they disguise it very well well actually none of these myths are true really my name is Javed abdomen a and I'm an A&E doctor in this program I want to discover the latest science about alcohol and with our own special public
• 01:30 - 02:00 we'll be able to show you exactly how alcohol affects your body from the familiar to the unexpected we've teamed up with some of the country's leading scientists and I'll be putting myself on the front line to tackle questions about alcohol that are asked by everyone in homes and pubs and bars up and down the country such as why do some people get drunk more quickly than others what is the best remedy for a hangover and why
• 02:00 - 02:30 is red wine supposedly better for us than white and most important of all why has the weekly recommended limit change so much for men and just how worried should we be about alcohol and cancer two questions I'll be putting two england's chief medical officer it's not for me to say you must it's for me to share the science with the public I want to find out the truth about alcohol
• 02:30 - 03:00 [Music] I am an a knee doctor so I definitely see the worst the sides of alcohol people who have drunk too much and people who are chronic alcoholics so you might think that I wouldn't drink but I love drinking just not too much but the
• 03:00 - 03:30 idea of drinking not too much has now fundamentally changed with the government's new recommended limits for both men and women it's now 14 units a week that's roughly equivalent to seven pints of beer and I have no idea whether I stick to the limit or not to discover if I drink within the weekly limits there's only one surefire way to find out so Matthew here is fitting me with a device is going to monitor how much I drink across the week by measuring precisely the amount of alcohol in my
• 03:30 - 04:00 sweat I want to know if I drink within the recommended limits so the bracelet is going to monitor the alcohol in my system and alongside this I'm going to keep a video diary of what types that drink I've had and when okay it's day 1 so today I'm at my parents house say hi to my mum who's just reading no drinking today while I'm at home it's Wednesday and I'm off to Devon to give a
• 04:00 - 04:30 rather informal lecture during which I have one can of lager but it doesn't end there they could have on my way to visit my friend in Honiton and she is the UK's number one tea drinker what did you butcher me tea new wine at lunch no okay it's Friday night I've just got home I've ended up having
• 04:30 - 05:00 two ciders and a pint of lager in the pub with my friends I don't tend to drink at home so no alcohol day okay it's some day I'm on my way to work I won't finish till 10:00 p.m. tonight today will be a non alcohol day the last night Rosie's birthday and she's in Lebanon say hi yeah I've had a bottle and a half
• 05:00 - 05:30 of wine to drink and you've just witnessed my week of alcohol so did I drink within the 14 unit weekly limit oh gosh that does feel good you okay well it's not looking promising Matthew Mitchell is showing me the results so looking at the data here and we look at Wednesday and that's probably close to 10 right 10 plus units possible or probably a lesser amount on Friday maybe
• 05:30 - 06:00 four to six units drank three drinks three great points in and out and then we think again a Monday definitely over 10 probably closer to 12 to 15 units so for the whole week how much is that we all know so when you tally that up we're talking about more than 25 to 28 units just in three days that you've drank the set come as a surprise it's surprising because if I sat down and had to tell someone what I thought I drank this week I'd say yes I had a big night on Monday
• 06:00 - 06:30 with the wine the other two nights I would have thrown away mentally I would have just said whatever I had a couple of drinks in a pub I recognize I have an unhealthy pattern but I never thought I drank more than the limit yeah in fact I'm one above the limit so that's shocking to me so across the week I actually put away twice the recommended limit of 14 units and I'm not alone it's estimated that 13 million of us Brits drink above the new weekly limit
• 06:30 - 07:00 according to their NHS drinking above the recommended weekly limits automatically puts you at greater risk of developing alcohol-related liver disease so I'm keen to find out what impact if any my drinking has had on my liver I've come to the Royal Free Hospital in London to meet liver specialist dr. Ghadir Mehta so let's see how that liver is right this is it Gotham is going to scan my liver to see if there are any signs of damage okay
• 07:00 - 07:30 nice relaxing day put a call Jarry the liver scan uses ultrasound to measure the stiffness of my liver here what we want is a not a stiff liver a low number what's a normal number most people who are normal will have a number under 5 okay mine's about four and a half just say alright so let's see what we get let's have a look a reading of higher than 7.5 would be consistent with the early stages of liver disease okay well that's giving us just over 10 valid
• 07:30 - 08:00 measurements which would be a way to look for and your score is is with the nor rain Jeff I've point three okay so that's still a bit high it's a little bit higher than light see for a young fit healthy individual what we do know is that alcohol just can cause inflammation of the liver as well and small amounts information can actually cause that the farmers can to go up a bit right that might well be what we're seeing here I mean I've got away with it so far but am I am i guaranteed to stay healthy with this level of drinking well gosh there's a question so look with regard to a liver I think it's fair to
• 08:00 - 08:30 say that most people who develop significant liver disease cirrhosis drink at higher levels you can be unlucky and we do see some people who drink in the 30 to 40 brackets who do develop liver disease okay why that is we still don't know but there are genes are involved [Music] the causes of alcohol-related liver disease are complex it's not just down to how much you drink your genes diet and weight are all factors as well the main message is that if we drink above
• 08:30 - 09:00 the recommended limits the greater the risk to your health now of course the best way of avoiding damage to your liver is to not drink at all but if you are good at drink suppose you should sit to the 14 unit limit to keep track of how much you're drinking across a week it's best to use units which are a simple measure of how much alcohol is in a drink a single shot of whiskey contains one unit a large glass of wine around three units a standard class two units and a pint of
• 09:00 - 09:30 beer about the same and if you do drink your full 14 unit weekly limit then it's recommended that you spread your drinking over three days or more in other words don't drink it all at once but besides keeping our liver busy how else does alcohol affect us we've taken over this pub in North East London to
• 09:30 - 10:00 turn it into a public venue to host some special experiments to demonstrate the science of alcohol and tonight we've invited the locals to take part remarkably alcohol fakes nearly every system of your body from your skin to your blood vessels from your gut to your heart but here in our public we're going to look at the effect of alcohol on your
• 10:00 - 10:30 brain to drinkers a lot of this will come as no surprise after a few pints alcohol affects our sense of balance and hand-eye coordination generally making us more clumsy but dr. Tony Moss from London Southbank University is showing me some of alcohols more subtle effects firstly how we begin to lose our self-control after we've had a few too many so this is the the bat act estimate the variation that worked on two bases
• 10:30 - 11:00 that we're also asking people to listen out for a buzzer and if they hear the buzzer to stop themselves and pressing the button it sounds like an easy thing to do but it's a deceptively difficult once you've got used to pressing the button and you're working as you can see so quickly actually sort of stops you stopping yourself yes alcohol has a particular effect on our ability to stop ourselves from doing things that we feel that we need to do when people have had a few drinks they'll find themselves pressing the button when they shouldn't because they can't override that response that they've learned what's the
• 11:00 - 11:30 cash prize this next test shows why after a fair few drinks although we may be able to do the job of walking home often we arrive to find that we fail to remember our keys in other words we can't multitask to demonstrate this our volunteer has been asked to do two jobs at the same time counting backwards in
• 11:30 - 12:00 sevens so she's actually always to see failings counts whilst at the same time rearranging the series of coloured rings on the wooden pegs we call this a divided attention because you basically trying to do two things at once which is hard at the best of times and one of the effects of alcohol is it limits the amount of mental energy that you've got to the atonement result you've got to do these things and you notice as she's going through the task
• 12:00 - 12:30 of one of the strategies that she's using is to sort of stop one of the tasks yeah so this you can start doing the other one by well yeah absolutely and finally this test is aimed at measuring the volunteers tolerance of pain in this case having your hand in a bucket of freezing cold ice shown here as purple and black on a thermal-imaging camera
• 12:30 - 13:00 sober people tend to give up by around the two-minute mark but Stewart here has had his hand in the bucket for an impressive four minutes he can do this because the alcohol is numbing his pain [Music] and that's not all when we drink we
• 13:00 - 13:30 often get the sensation of feeling warmer that's because alcohol increases the flow of warm blood to the skin but the overall effect is that your body actually loses more heat so although alcohol may make you feel as though you're wearing a bear coat helping you keep warm as you walk home at night in reality it has the opposite effect [Music]
• 13:30 - 14:00 but perhaps one of the most hotly debated topics in the pub is why some people get tipsy very quickly whilst others seem to be able to drink a lot apparently without feeling much effect so why is this hats at Mary's University in Twickenham I'm meeting five locals who have very different experiences with alcohol so who wants to put their hand up for
• 14:00 - 14:30 saying that they can drink the most in this group looks like you got volunteer yeah pretty certainly at the heavyweight end of the spectrum I think yeah yeah our volunteers span the full range from alcohol heavyweight Ian to Stacey and Andrea who feel the effects of alcohol quickly I found the lightweight yeah yeah a couple of glasses and I get a bit giggly and as for our two students Ian and Jacob maybe summer in the middle yeah can holder hold a cup Aaron for you
• 14:30 - 15:00 produce about two pints and start feeling it brilliant well thanks for coming so to put it crudely why do some people get drunk quicker than others okay and if you just like to come and stand on this platform for me with your heels touching the back with the help of sports scientist dr. Paul huff and alcohol researcher professor Celia Morgan we're going to get to the bottom of this conundrum and it won't involve
• 15:00 - 15:30 our volunteers touching a single drop what we're essentially trying to do here Javed is work out the total amount of water in someone's body now why that's important with alcohol is that it's not just a volume of alcohol that you drink that's important it's its concentration in your blood so what we call the blood alcohol concentration so how drunk you feel is all down to the concentration of alcohol in your blood and one of the main factors that
• 15:30 - 16:00 determines this is the amount of water in your body if two people have different amounts of water in their body take the same amount of alcohol the person with more water in their body gets less drunk exactly it's almost you can think of the water in your body diluting the effects of the alcohol and so that's why some people get more drunk than others that's exactly right yes so let's see if the diluting effect of body water can explain our volunteers different experiences with drink take a seat in the bod pod to work out
• 16:00 - 16:30 precisely how much water is in our volunteers bodies involves measuring two things firstly Paul is using the bod pod machine to measure our volunteers body volume next Paul is passing a small electrical current through our volunteers bodies to analyse how much of their bodies is fat and how much is muscle there's much more water in muscle than fat and so the more muscle our
• 16:30 - 17:00 volunteers have the more diluting water their bodies contain so what are the results in first and second place are the two ends with 66 liters and 51 liters of water in their body in third place is Jacob with 46 liters and in fourth and fifth place are our
• 17:00 - 17:30 alcohol lightweights Andrea with 34 liters and Stacie with 31 liters Celia has calculated what this means in terms of how our volunteers handle their drink made out on each table our pints of beer that our volunteers might drink on an evening out and their position on the track represents how drunk the volunteer would feel after drinking them from
• 17:30 - 18:00 sober to tipsy - more and more drunk in if you drank one pipe your blood-alcohol level would rise to that first table say see yours would rise all the way to here and this shows why alcohol lightweight Stacey gets drunk so much faster than heavy weight Ian so your size and your body shape really makes a difference [Music] alcohol dehydrates us so it's always a
• 18:00 - 18:30 good idea to drink plenty of water on your night out to ensure your body waters kept at its normal healthy level but beyond this if you're really keen to handle your drink better then whether you're a man or a woman the only option is to become more muscular leave the pub and go visit the gym on drinks labels you'll always find the strength of alcohol or alcohol by volume and often
• 18:30 - 19:00 the number of units - but what's rare is to see the number of calories and it's not surprising because the numbers are pretty horrifying [Music] a single shot of spirits contains 59 calories roughly the same as a bourbon biscuit a large glass of wine contains a hundred and eighty calories the same as a tea cake and a typical pint of beer has 215 calories the same as a jam donut and
• 19:00 - 19:30 whilst it's true that our bodies process the calories from alcohol differently to the calories from fat or sugar they're all potentially fattening but if you worried about your waistline it isn't just alcohol calories that you should be wary of could alcohol actually make us eat more we've returned to the public to do a special demonstration with experimental psychologist dr. Sam cotton
• 19:30 - 20:00 from the University of Sheffield her research suggests that alcohol might be able to trick us into eating more without us even noticing and taking part drinking beer in the name of science our two sports teams from Queen Mary University of London we're gonna do an experiment today so it may involve drinking some beer I think you might be okay with that yeah excellent okay let's have the
• 20:00 - 20:30 hockey players here and the football is through the back in the snug so that the students behave as normal we've told them that the purpose of the experiment is to test how alcohol affects their memory you've got the next five minutes to remember as many as you can we haven't mentioned anything about food time's up and the other thing the students don't know here come the pint skies is that whilst one table is being served with normal alcoholic beer the other will be
• 20:30 - 21:00 given non-alcoholic beer we're hoping they won't notice the difference so hurry beers the calories and alcohol are often referred to as empty calories because unlike most food they don't fill us up in fact according to Sam's research alcohol has the opposite effect
• 21:00 - 21:30 it actually makes us eat more already let's see how much they eat so let's see if this is the case with our students both teams have been served with two pints of beer and then offered bowls of snacks the question is will the students that have drunk the alcoholic beer eaten more than those that have had the non-alcoholic beer after 15 minutes we clear away the leftovers
• 21:30 - 22:00 aiya Sam these are the peanuts from the football thank you and Sam tops up what's been eaten it's time to fess up to our students you guys actually had a non-alcoholic beer could you tell so it tasted different not happy about that I'm sorry you got the dead end of the deal here oh well okay and you guys actually had proper beer but actually the real part of the
• 22:00 - 22:30 experiment was about food intake and consistent with the results that we obtained in the laboratory the guys that consumed alcohol consumed much more food compared to you guys so on average collectively you consumed 11% more calories compared to the no alcohol group so you guys were given the same amount of crisps and peanuts for the same amount of time and the red balls are the people who had alcohol and the green balls are the ones that didn't
• 22:30 - 23:00 overall if we add together the energy from the alcoholic beverages you guys consumed 872 calories whilst you guys consumed 576 and that represents a 34% increase in total energy intake each so it seems that alcohol does actually make us eat more the students who drank the two pints of real beer each consumed on
• 23:00 - 23:30 average a total of 300 extra calories the same as four and a half bourbon biscuits and all of this without them noticing a thing the precise mechanism about how alcohol affects appetite is still being researched by scientists at the end of the day it's important for you to know not only does alcohol have a lot of calories it also has the power to make you eat more but is the
• 23:30 - 24:00 relationship between alcohol and food always a bad one could food before booze ever be a good thing lining of stomachs the idea that if you have a big meal before you drink you'll be able to handle your booze better lots of us do it before a big night out but how exactly does it work it's bonfire night and with the help of my friend Natalie I'm going to put this to the test
• 24:00 - 24:30 although not ideal from a scientific perspective natalie is a woman and I'm a man we're roughly the same size and weight and so reasonably matched the plan is that we're both going to drink a single large glass of wine Natalie is going to drink on an empty stomach I'm going to line my stomach with food but first it's time to eat a rather high-tech hors d'oeuvre so
• 24:30 - 25:00 before I line my stomach with this lovely meal I'm gonna swallow this pill count so you can see the inside of my stomach here goes this has to be the best dinner party trick ever there it is it's in my stomach Wow Sonne now you can see my stomach's empty it's time to eat the idea behind lining your stomach is to do with the fact that alcohol is mostly absorbed not whilst in the
• 25:00 - 25:30 stomach but once it reaches the small intestine if your stomach is full of food then the alcohol is held up and takes longer to get into your system can see some green broccoli there time for the vino yes nine stomach verses empty stomach let's see what difference the food makes throughout the evening we're going to breathalyze ourselves to see how we
• 25:30 - 26:00 compare and it's time for our first reading yours ready okay 44 for that 23 yeah so already there's a big difference but will my readings catch up with Natalie's over the next few hours 15 the
• 26:00 - 26:30 lining is working but of course there's a second character in the story and that's the liver for most people the liver gets rid of about one unit or the equivalent of one single shot of spirits every hour and it's the same rate however much you drink the enzyme in the liver that does the job of processing
• 26:30 - 27:00 the alcohol is actually present in small amounts in the lining of the stomach so when your stomach is full and the alcohol is kept there for longer this lining can do some of the work that's normally just left to the liver men tend to have more of this enzyme active in their stomach than women meaning that lining your stomach has an even bigger effect if you're a man [Music]
• 27:00 - 27:30 so the results are in and Natalie's alcohol level did this and my alcohol level did this so lining your stomach works scientific studies have shown that eating food before you drink crucially means that your blood alcohol level peaks at a lower value meaning that you feel the effects less so lining your stomach is a good idea however you plan
• 27:30 - 28:00 to drink we've heard about the risk to our health of alcohol in general but red wine in particular has had more than its fair share of headlines claiming that it's good for us so what's behind its healthy reputation it's good for the blood is it possibly maybe this is quite good geared so for me thinning your blood out long your life is that wrong this popular notion that red wine is good for us has its origins in what's become known as the
• 28:00 - 28:30 French paradox it's the fact that even though the French have a diet rich in saturated fat their incidence of coronary heart disease is relatively low in the early 1990s - wine loving scientists proposed a solution might all the red wine that the French drink somehow cancel out the unhealthy aspects of their diet or is that just wishful thinking to get to the bottom of this
• 28:30 - 29:00 I've met up with researcher dr. Wendy Hall and she's taking me to her labs that said Thomas's Hospital in London if you'd like to come through Joe Vitt okay this is our vascular lab cool I would like to introduce you to Ben you or vascular specialist hello nice to meet you - well I brought the red wine that you asked for Wendy and Ben you are going to look at how my blood vessels dilate or expand before and after a single large glass of wine because according to research if red wine is
• 29:00 - 29:30 good for a heart then one of the reasons might just be because it's good for our blood vessels making them dilate better and having positive effects like reducing blood pressure okay now guess Wendy now it's time for the wine yes yeah let's go ahead the particular compounds in red wine thought to be good for our blood vessels
• 29:30 - 30:00 are called polyphenols natural chemicals from grape pips and skin that give red wine its color and taste first after drinking the wine I wait an hour to give it time to take effect and then venu repeats the measurement on my blood vessels so has the single large glass of red wine made my blood vessels dilate more cool we have results what did they show they show that after you drag the
• 30:00 - 30:30 wine there was a large increase in the diameter of your artery in your arm so this would suggest that if you've got a large phaser dilation like that they might decrease blood pressure and have beneficial effects your cardiovascular system that's a good thing yes fully dilated okay so red wine in particular is potentially good for our heart because of the effects from its polyphenols but which wines contained
• 30:30 - 31:00 the most all right to find out we're testing six classic wines from around the world five red and just to be sure one white okay that's ready now mm-hmm the darker the liquid turns when we add Wendy's special reagent the more polyphenols the wine contains its deafening on dark yeah and to get a precise measurement when Dee runs the
• 31:00 - 31:30 samples through a spectrophotometer machine and ranks the wines according to how much polyphenols they contain so the wine as expected with the lowest poly phenyl content was the white wine okay so a standard glass 175 mils contains about 60 milligrams of total polyphenols okay how much did our number one have the wine from Umbreon Italy's and from the segrin Tino grape the final
• 31:30 - 32:00 results showed that it had a total poly phenyl content of 737 milligrams wow that's huge so it's about ten times the amount of polyphenols in this wine Wow its wine so there's some adage in the old saying that a glass the red wine is good for your heart at least one compared to a white well certainly if you're going to choose to have a glass of wine with your meal and there may be some added benefits to choosing a red wine and compared to the white wine as a rule of thumb the darker the wine the
• 32:00 - 32:30 more polyphenols it contains and this is what our test showed a little-known Italian grape scored the highest in second place a popular Cabernet Sauvignon and in last place the Sauvignon Blanc but the bad news is that although it may be a good idea to choose wines that are high in polyphenols on its own this isn't justification for drinking more because polyphenols are
• 32:30 - 33:00 also found in lots of other drinks and foods it's what we can see here and we've got a few examples of foods that contain the same amount of total polyphenols as a standard glass of wine 175 mils okay so for example we only need to eat 24 grams of walnuts to consume the same amount of polyphenols this isn't very much at all actually yeah not much dark chocolate either no it's 70 percent cocoa solids dark chocolate an apple and a half contains
• 33:00 - 33:30 as many polyphenols as in glass of red wine you're giving me too many excuses not to have red wine here and what about this tea so few min 60 mils of tea will contain the same amount of total puffiness as wine and we all drink probably most of us drink more than that every day you do [Music] so in principle you can get all the potential health benefits of polyphenols without consuming alcohol so would you recommend that we all start drinking red
• 33:30 - 34:00 wine know what it tells us is that red wine is a good example of a polyphenol rich food but if you eat a diet that's varied in fruit and vegetables and nuts and whole grain cereals you'll be consuming a large variety of polyphenols and this will be protective against heart disease and stroke [Music] but polyphenols aside there is evidence of alcohol itself may have a protective
• 34:00 - 34:30 effect against heart disease however that's only for drinking small amounts and that protective effect is only marginal for most of us but the exception is for women aged over 55 for whom drinking two glasses of wine a week or roughly five units has actually proven an overall significant effect still to come we're on the quest to find the ultimate hangover remedy I just leave my bed and why have the weekly recommended limits change so much but
• 34:30 - 35:00 first is a nightcap good for your sleep [Music] alcohol has a long history of being used as a sleep aid I always smile when I remember back to when I was a local student and nightcaps were prescribed on the drug charts at night so if you looked at the pharmacy cupboard you could see a bottle of Bailey's a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of gin and if Ethel needed a gin at 10:00 p.m. we had
• 35:00 - 35:30 prescribed it according to one survey over 5 million Brits use alcohol to help them get to sleep with men tending to opt for whiskey and women a glass of wine but is an alcoholic nightcap really such a good idea to find out I've come to the University of Surrey sleep Research Center here they research the science of the perfect night's sleep and
• 35:30 - 36:00 what I want to know is whether the alcoholic nightcap is friend or foe dokyun java dosa hello how are you doing sleep expert professor Dirk Yan dick has agreed to host me at the Sleep Center this evening it's not a comfortable cozy bedroom Lucy looks like a safe he's going to measure my sleep patterns to see what effect alcohol has okay I've brought something to help me not bad for
• 36:00 - 36:30 a for a whiskey okay we'll put it there then great Dirk yawns colleague Giuseppe has the job of getting me ready for bed and down for me thank you he's fitting me with this colorful set of electrodes that will measure my brainwaves as I sleep feel like I'm having my head plaited or something research has shown that alcohol has a big effect on sleep particularly as we get older as our sleep generally becomes lighter and more
• 36:30 - 37:00 fragile you may have been able to drink and sleep well when you were young but by the time you hit 40 or 50 the disruptive of effect of alcohol increases quite a bit right and that disruptive effect of alcohol is is much stronger in older people than in young people ah we are done lovely yes I think you're good for the night great so
• 37:00 - 37:30 I'm gonna go home now thank you very much and you're gonna do some work for us yes I'm sleep thank you very much disappeared night but despite what Dirk Yan says I'm still holding out hope that five million of us aren't wrong it's time for my double whiskey let's see if this works
• 37:30 - 38:00 [Music]
• 38:00 - 38:30 edge every times you get up now good morning morning good how are you doing I'm good thank you okay well let's let's have a look at what the data show okay and then we can tell the squiggly lines show my brainwaves and from these Dirk Yan has been able to work out my sleep patterns for the night red blocks for when we do most of our dreaming yellow and green for light sleep and blue for deep sleep
• 38:30 - 39:00 and where it's blank that's where I was awake so how well did I actually sleep so if we start from the beginning Janna when you are awake and the lights go off you know it takes you approximately 10 15 minutes to fall asleep right so that's that's not bad considering that this is the first time new environment obviously here we we see now a lot of deep sleep yeah but as the night progresses you can see that this deep
• 39:00 - 39:30 sleep disappears hmm and and what we are left with in the second part of the night you know quite a period of wakefulness you can see this wake AG and I don't remember them but I must have I must have been so when we look at it overall not a brilliant night of sleep and my poor night's sleep is consistent with what's been shown before in scientific studies that have compared sleep with alcohol versus sleep without
• 39:30 - 40:00 and scientists think that there is a connection between the extra deep sleep that alcohol seems to cause when we first nod off and our light asleep later on although alcohol gets you off to sleep faster and have a deeper sleep in the first half of the night in the second half of the night there's a rebound effect you have fragmented lighter sleep so it seems that booze doesn't really help you snooze but if
• 40:00 - 40:30 you've had a lot to drink then a bad night's sleep is likely to be the least of your problems search the internet for hangover cures and there are literally hundreds of suggestions from the familiar such as vitamin C coffee water two other things such as Marmite sauerkraut and even charcoal tablets but despite the huge public interest has actually been very little research into hangover remedies which is why perhaps everyone has their own favorite when you get home at the
• 40:30 - 41:00 end of the night drink loads of water so what is the best remedy for a hangover well we're going to try and answer this question once and for all I'm meeting hangover expert dr. Richard Stevens he's selected two hangover remedies for us to test that apparently have more science to back them up than most one over-the-counter supplement that can be taken before drinking the other for the morning after Richard this
• 41:00 - 41:30 I recognize good old fryer that's right what is this looks like it's got a hangover today so this is borage so barrages a herb and I found these flowers come seeds here's we've got some seeds here and we can extract oil from the seeds sometimes known as star flower oil right and that's what we've got in these capsules here you know there are a lot of people out there selling hangover remedies yeah okay mostly junk my opinion however there is some research
• 41:30 - 42:00 behind taking one of these capsules as a hangover remedy just on just one capsule that's a standard dose why does this work okay for the nation's favourite hangover probably a good ol fryer so there is some evidence that one of the biological underlyings of a hangover is a drop in glucose right so if you have one of these the next morning when you've got a hangover that's got a lot of sugars in it yes that will restore those sugars so tonight we're going to get some volunteers we're going to be dosing them
• 42:00 - 42:30 up with alcohol to a set blood-alcohol level and then we're going to see what their hangovers like in the morning and whether these have made any difference I know which group I'd like to be in ah happy I'd be with you to test these two hangover remedies is going to require some serious drinking and I thought where better to organize a piss-up than in a brewery this is our cows brewery in
• 42:30 - 43:00 Swindon and we've invited the workforce to take part in Richards experiment team green with first splitting up the volunteers from the workforce into three separate groups blue team you are our breakfast group you'll be having the fry up in the morning good yellows you are our control
• 43:00 - 43:30 group I'm afraid you're not getting anything yeah and greens you've guessed it you are gonna be the borage group so you were gonna get some porridge before you start drinking great let's go whereas the fry up is designed to replenish low glucose levels and is eaten after we have felt the effects of alcohol borage is taken before drinking as a preventative measure and relies on the fact that it's rich in a particular fatty acid that's an anti-inflammatory
• 43:30 - 44:00 okay drink away enjoy according to research around 1 in 5 of us have hangover immunity we don't get hangovers at all and scientists aren't sure why okay time to breathalyzers but the average man drinking nine and a half units or shots of spirits or the average
• 44:00 - 44:30 woman drinking six units or six shots will probably achieve a blood-alcohol level high enough to give them a hangover the next morning it's time for some taxis home rich at the end of the night and I think we've achieved sort of
• 44:30 - 45:00 some good high alcohol levels there have we we have so we were aiming to dose our volunteers 2.10% blood alcohol so we gave them specific amounts of alcohol based on their body weight and if they're a man or a woman to achieve that and we are just a little bit as we go along we give them a drink we breathalyzed yeah I think we pretty much got there for everybody and got them pretty much where he wants them to be so it's set to have some hangovers in the morning we should see some hangovers in the morning it's 7:30 a.m.
• 45:00 - 45:30 our fry-up group have managed to make it to the breakfast table but as richard predicted they're feeling a bit worse for wear I've got this headache so I just need my bed according to scientists unless you're one of the lucky few the dreaded hangover affects men and women old and young the same so has borage with its alleged preventative qualities worked any magic good morning how are you
• 45:30 - 46:00 a little bit of a headache yeah a little bit you know just not quite right knock knock Alex warning how are you not bad thanks what group were you in last night I was on borage there's no magic way of measuring someone's hangover this questionnaire is the best that scientists have come up with headache you thank you and after the fry up group have had their breakfast they fill in the hangover questionnaire as well I'm catching up with our expert Richard
• 46:00 - 46:30 Stevens to find out the results so what does a demonstration show okay so if we look at the control group all six of them had a hangover right okay we look at the fry up group five of the six had a hangover one so they didn't in the borage group three had a hangover and three didn't okay so in the experiment none of the volunteers in the control
• 46:30 - 47:00 group escaped the hangover in the fry up group after eating their breakfast just one reported not having a hangover and in the borage group three volunteers felt they had no hangover a clear winner then truly a clear winner well I'm a scientist oh I'm skeptical but we were replicating a previous study which showed similar so that's positive and we know that borage is an anti-inflammatory and we know that one of the ways that hangover affects us is by an information
• 47:00 - 47:30 response so okay barrage may have an effect on that mechanism but you know probably no different to if you felt bad in the morning and pot and ibuprofen let's say the same effect so I don't think is any earth-shattering effects here but it's been an interesting demonstration so if borage works in the way that Richard thinks it does then it's probably still no better than the ibuprofen you might be taking anyway the next day and it's certainly not a
• 47:30 - 48:00 hundred percent effective so what is it then come on what should we do for our hangovers maybe you don't know hangover don't drink too much but apart from the obvious not drinking is there anything else we can do to avoid a hangover you should never drink
• 48:00 - 48:30 that vixen drink definitely contrary to popular belief there's no evidence that mixing your drinks leads to a worse hangover but there is scientific backing for the idea that some drinks might give worse hangovers than others and it all boils down to how drinks are made back at the brewery head brewer Alex Arkel is showing me one of the key parts of the
• 48:30 - 49:00 production process for the nation's favorite drink beer look at that and here we've got fermenting beer and you can see the use of that white foam is pure least and to be clear you cannot make alcohol without yeast yes exactly you need use spirits you need to have a fermentation at some point to produce this alcohol and then a couple of products down the line you might have your whiskey or your vodka incredible but we're making a base drink here which is which is beer and that's the best of the lot
• 49:00 - 49:30 [Music] into the lab but it turns out that the yeast cells produce other things besides just alcohol so when they're splitting when the mother and daughter here yeah part of that process that's going on there is excreting can Gena's can jeana's are byproducts of the fermentation process in which yeast converts the sugar into alcohol we've meant it as a slightly warmer temperature that means that use actually not only ferments and obviously creates as alcohol but it also gives it a fruity
• 49:30 - 50:00 flavor as well so on the plus side can jeana's are one of the things that give our booze its taste it's not a flat flavor that there's a lovely lovely aroma now but the downside is that according to some research drinks with Morken genus in them may make your hangovers worse and beer is by no means the worst culprit
• 50:00 - 50:30 I've come to the labs of Kent scientific services and with the help of chemist John Griffin we're going to put 10 of the UK's most popular drinks to the test we're going to analyze each drink for six typical can genus this is acetaldehyde oh I can imagine that will give you and then at the end here we've got our email alcohols well that smells like a really off cheese yeah yeah yes it's very
• 50:30 - 51:00 distinctive okay research suggests that although the main cause of a hangover is the alcohol drinks that contain higher amounts of congenial may produce more severe hangovers so which drinks have the most congenial results John okay show me what we have yeah it's at the top end we have the red orange ones where we had the highest level total congeners pair unit of alcohol so pair of 10 milliliters of pure alcohol mine
• 51:00 - 51:30 actually came out top yes 53 yes I mean we've almost got twice as much congeners in the red wine than we have in the Amber's we've got white wine and whiskey as far as a lager the Samson decider this surprises me certainly because I I always think about white wine being sort of less toxic than whiskey so in our tests brandy and red wine came out worst with the highest amount of congenita unit of alcohol and in the mid
• 51:30 - 52:00 range were white wine whiskey and lager and the loin ones our CI the rums gins and vodkas vodkas and gins have been open Gina's in there at all I knew there was a reason I drank vodka well you know if you're drinking white spirits there are no containers it probably doesn't mean to say you won't get a hangover I still got alcohol but there are no páginas in this to contribute to it that's incredible would it be fair to say then as a rule of thumb the darker the drink the more congenial yeah I think the whiskey in
• 52:00 - 52:30 the white wine with the sight anomalies in that but on the whole I think the darker the drink however of the continuous presence so drink a lighter colored spirit like that seems to me what it suggests yes the potential effect from ken Gina's in making your hangover worse is small compared to the alcohol itself that said if you're going to drink and you're particularly susceptible to getting hangovers then it may be a good idea to opt for lighter colored lower can Gina
• 52:30 - 53:00 drinks so far we found out lots about the science of drinking but I want to investigate the new evidence foul calls health risks I think it's fair to say that the new alcohol guidelines mark a big change in the traditional thinking which is drinking in moderation is completely safe now the message is that even drinking small amounts of alcohol isn't without risk so I'm on my way to
• 53:00 - 53:30 meet the chief medical officer of England who along with her counterparts in Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland has proposed the new guidelines the last time the alcohol guidelines were revised was in 1995 so I'm keen to find out from Professor Dane Sally Davies why have the recommended limits change so much professor Dame studies the recommendations have come down quite a lot for men from 21 units to 14 in the
• 53:30 - 54:00 week what's the reasoning behind that well this is the first review that's really in-depth for over 20 years in this country and what it shows is how cancer is related to alcohol everyone knows about cirrhosis stroke high blood pressure but actually now we have to add to it the council risk and by the time you balance all of those out if you want a low risk guideline and for men it is
• 54:00 - 54:30 14 units in the week spread out over a few days it is quite a broad range of cancers that can be attributable to alcohol yes so therefore you could say alcohol is a carcinogen it is alcohol can damage cells and it's breakdown products damage cells that can lead to cancer alcohol modulates hormone levels so for instance it changes Eastridge in levels and that's probably why it raises the risk of breast cancer so take women every thousand women 110 of us will get
• 54:30 - 55:00 breast cancer if you drink up to this guideline which is a low-risk guideline then an extra 20 women will get breast cancer out of a thousand double that and an extra 50 women out of a thousand will get breast cancer so it's very important that people know about the harms of alcohol and take their decision how they want to handle it okay and there is one small subgroup of the population that could
• 55:00 - 55:30 have some benefit from drinking is that right yes it's women 55 and older my age group if you drink as a woman up to five units in the week as you go up to about five you protect your heart if you drink above that you begin to lose that protective effect on your heart by the time you get to 14 units in the week you've lost the cardio protection and the old wives tale was that that was the case for all of us men well and first of all the data isn't as robust as we all believed now we've
• 55:30 - 56:00 looked at it the second thing is that it is a marginal impact on men they'd have to drink less than half a glass on only a few days of wine and I don't think people usually do that and the other homes come in that if you balance out a low risk guideline sorry it's 14 units spread over a few days in the week for both men and women we used to be enjoying you a glass of wine in the next five years I will I'm quite open about the fact I like a glass of wine I think
• 56:00 - 56:30 for a lot of us that explicit link between how much you drink and the risk of developing certain kinds of cancer is actually quite shocking but if you stick to the new recommended guidelines your actual risk of dying from any disease attributable to alcohol is really quite low just 1% but if you drink greater than the guidelines your risk is greater it's as simple as that and the good news is that there is some evidence that the extra risks of alcohol related cancers can gradually go down again if you
• 56:30 - 57:00 decide to stop drinking altogether I've reached the end of a fascinating journey to uncover the many truths about alcohol that's shocking to me along the way we've learned that alcohol isn't actually good for your sleep deep sleep disappears and we've revealed its hidden appetizing effects you consumed 11% more calories compared to the no alcohol
• 57:00 - 57:30 group and that lining your stomach is always a good idea however much you plan to drink twenty-one in light of the health risks some of us might decide to give up booze altogether and certainly all forty million of Britain's drinkers should probably pause for thought before reaching for another glass but personally I don't think the British love affair with alcohol is going to end any day soon
• 57:30 - 58:00 you you you