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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

YOUR DAI­LY HEALTH

Alcohol myths debunked

by

20120809

Myths about al­co­hol are as abun­dant as the sub­stance it­self, with wide­ly-tout­ed ru­mours on every­thing from ways to in­stant­ly sober up, crafti­ly beat a Breathal­yser test or mag­i­cal­ly cure a hang­over. It can be hard to sep­a­rate fact from fic­tion. While al­co­hol com­pa­nies of­ten churn out ads promis­ing re­bel­lion, ex­cite­ment and sex ap­peal with your next swig, ur­ban leg­ends cir­cu­late on the oth­er ex­treme, link­ing al­co­hol with every­thing from brain cell dam­age to beer bel­lies.

Here's a look at some com­mon al­co­hol myths.

Myth: Tak­ing an as­pirin be­foredrink­ing will pre­vent a hang­over

Fact: In re­al­i­ty, the op­po­site is true. Re­search shows that as­pirin ac­tu­al­ly in­creas­es the amount of al­co­hol that ends up in your sys­tem, which makes you get drunk quick­er-and stay drunk longer. In ad­di­tion, mix­ing as­pirin and booze can lead to gas­troin­testi­nal bleed­ing

Drink­ing af­ter tak­ing ac­eta­minophen, found in Tylenol, can be even worse and may even lead to liv­er dam­age-so it's best to heed the warn­ing la­bels on the bot­tles for over-the-counter med­ica­tions!

Myth: Suck­ing on cop­per coin­swill trick a breathal­yser

Fact: Peo­ple who wish to put them­selves and oth­ers in harm's way by dri­ving drunk should know that stuff­ing a hand­ful of coins in their mouths once they get pulled over will not help them evade re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The the­o­ry is that cop­per from a coin will ab­sorb ethanol. But even if that were the case, coins these days have very lit­tle cop­per-on­ly 2.5 per cent since 1982, ac­cord­ing to the US Mint. And even if you found a stash of old coins, or a mag­i­cal sub­stance that ab­sorbs al­co­hol, it still won't do the trick. Po­lice of­fi­cers ac­tu­al­ly wait 15 min­utes be­fore they have you take the Breathal­yser test, and they'll al­so check your mouth to make sure noth­ing could throw off the re­sults. And the test mea­sures air deep with­in your lungs-so even if any of these tricks ac­tu­al­ly had an ef­fect on the air in your mouth, they still wouldn't trick the Breathal­yser.

Myth: Drink­ing too much­will give you a beer bel­ly.

Fact: This much is true-drink­ing beer ex­ces­sive­ly can cer­tain­ly lead to weight gain. But the ex­tra pounds won't nec­es­sar­i­ly grav­i­tate to­wards your belt line, ac­cord­ing to a 2009 study pub­lished in the Eu­ro­pean Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal Nu­tri­tion. Al­though beer con­sump­tion did lead to in­creased waist cir­cum­fer­ence-which was close­ly re­lat­ed to over­all weight gain-in­clud­ing big­ger hips as well as a wider waist­line. And a 2003 study in­di­cat­ed that a big gut has a lot to do with ge­net­ics, which can dic­tate where those ex­tra pounds end up.

Myth: Adults of the same­height can drink the same amount

Fact: Women ac­tu­al­ly process al­co­hol much dif­fer­ent­ly than men-even when con­trol­ling for size. Men are gen­er­al­ly lean­er than women, but both gen­ders have rough­ly the same size liv­er. This means that women clear more al­co­hol per unit of lean body mass than men do, re­leas­ing it in­to the blood­stream quick­er. More al­co­hol in the blood means women get drunk faster, and it al­so leads to an­oth­er prob­lem. Women have way less of the en­zymes that break down al­co­hol in their blood, mak­ing it near­ly im­pos­si­ble to go shot for shot with even their small­est male drink­ing bud­dy with­out get­ting far more wast­ed.

(ya­hoohealth.com)


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