Eat, Drink & Be Healthy

How best to include alcohol in your healthy, fitness-focused holiday plans.

- Devlin Brown

It’s been a long year. You’ve worked hard in the office and the gym, and you’ve held things down at home. Now the time has finally come to kick your feet up and relax.

For most of us that means sleeping in, lounging around the pool or on the beach, getting a massage and, for many, having a few drinks to unwind.

THE BAD

But before you take that first sip of your well-deserved poolside cocktail, it’s worth understanding the implications of your actions. Putting aside for a moment the societal cost to families and the public at large due to alcohol abuse, and the carnage drinking wreaks on our roads, alcohol consumption has a physiological cost, too, particularly when drinking to excess.

According to the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the negative effects of alcohol abuse include brain damage, heart damage, liver damage, pancreatic disorders, an increased risk of certain cancers, and a weakened immune system that opens regular or binge drinkers up to disease. And the term ‘abuse’ can also include infrequent periods of binge drinking, not just alcoholism.