A Disease Controlled by Diet
Is alcoholism a disease? There’s much confusion. Pull up a barstool beside any alcoholic drinker and ask whether he thinks he has a disease. He will tell you no, even though he may be quick to admit he’s “an alcoholic.” But ask any recovering alcoholic in A.A. He’ll tell you he has a disease and he’ll tell you he has this disease whether or not he’s drinking.
Each of them is partly right. Alcoholic drinking starts a disease process. This process progresses when you’re drinking. It stops when you stop drinking. And when you stop drinking, you can heal much of the damage from the disease if you change your diet.
Alcoholism fits the definition of disease. Like other diseases, alcoholism impairs your health by damaging your cells. Like other diseases, it interrupts your body’s vital functions, causing specific symptoms. And like other diseases such as cancer, if it’s allowed to continue long enough, it’ll kill you. But as a disease, it has an ironic twist. The agent causing the disease acts like a medicine that cures the symptoms. Alcoholic drinkers actually feel healthier when they’re drinking. Pain and sickness seem to disappear. Unfortunately, the sense of health is artificial. When you drink, you relieve yourself of the symptoms only. Meanwhile, inside your body, a disease process rages.
Drinking wears out your body and actually speeds up the aging process. Your cells live their lives in the fast lane of high blood-sugar and toxic invaders, grabbing a few thrills, but choking on the poisons. You get physically sick more often. Or you feel some slight sickness which lingers and is hard to pinpoint.
When cells don’t get sufficient nutrients, or if the cells are harmed too often by toxins in the blood, they stop performing important functions. After a while, whole groups of cells begin giving out, and organs begin to fail. Especially susceptible are the brain, heart, liver, pancreas, intestines, kidneys, and stomach.
Metabolism Revisited
The disease itself depends on a problem in metabolism. The problem seems innocent enough. Your liver is simply slow on one step of normal alcohol metabolism: the breakdown of acetaldehyde. The build-up of acetaldehyde also boosts the brain’s production of isoquinoline, a strong sedative similar to morphine or heroin that calms us deeply and kills pain. This added sedative effect greatly increases alcohol’s addictive power. It drives us to drink. Thus the damage continues, the disease progresses, and the metabolic problem gets worse.
Metabolism and Diet
Metabolism is intimately connected to diet. Your body metabolizes food for one main purpose: to get vital nutrients to all the cells. To serve this purpose, your body can metabolize many different foods and can learn how to gain nutrients from almost any kind of food you give it. Metabolism also helps to rid the body of any unwanted toxins. Yet your personal metabolism works differently from anyone else’s. Studies show that each individual has a unique biochemical make-up and that individuals differ greatly from one another in the way they metabolize various kinds of food. To give you an idea how much possible variation there is, researchers have currently identified over 3,000 metabolic substances (called “metabolites”), and over 1,100 enzymes. Each individual has her own unique proportions of all 4,100 of these biochemicals. Also, the mixture of biochemicals varies for each kind of food you ingest. For instance, the biochemicals your body produces to metabolize carrots differ somewhat from those it uses for potatoes. Furthermore, your body’s biochemicals vary from day to day, and vary depending on what you last ate and even how long ago you ate it.
One more thing: Your body uses quite different biochemicals to metabolize the different classes of foods—meats, grains, vegetables, beans, fruits, etc. As you might have guessed, you need a whole different biochemical preparedness to handle alcohol, sweets, drugs, chemical additives, and toxins. In fact, too many excesses from this group can cause your metabolism to break down, and begin to make mistakes. For instance, too much sugar too often can cause hypoglycemia. The pancreas begins overreacting (producing too much insulin) when each new burst of sugar hits the bloodstream.
But your body adjusts to whatever diet you give it. The most frequent foods in your diet come to be expected. Biochemical pathways get established the more they are used. Thus, if your body doesn’t get an expected food, you actually begin to crave it.
Your body becomes addicted to the foods you give it the most. Your metabolism so completely adjusts to your regular diet that any change from this diet becomes increasingly difficult. Ask anyone who has attempted a major shift in diet. For instance, if you eat meat regularly, your metabolism will take a long time to adjust to a vegetarian diet. Although the same nutrients are available, your body doesn’t have the biochemical preparedness. The ability is there. Your body can metabolize vegetarian meals. But to gain the same efficiency with a new diet can take from one to seven years.
The important thing to remember is this: Metabolism depends on diet. You can change your metabolism if you change your diet. It will take a long time to change your metabolism significantly, but you can feel incredible improvements after just a few months. fruits and lots of veggies.