Before you run out and stock up with your favourite alcoholic beverage, read this!

With all the craziness in the World at the moment with the virus COVID-19 leading to not only business closures but also shortages of basic items like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, canned foods, dried pasta and rice. It has left millions of people without a job, confined to their homes with very little to do.

So what do you do when you are stuck at home with Netflix as your only companion? You grab yourself a beer or two, a bottle of wine and try and chill the hell out, and tune out from doom and gloom narrative delivered hourly by the mainstream media. Before you run out and start stockpiling your favourite alcoholic beverage, you may want to read on if you want to keep your only defence against this nasty COVID-19 Virus in check. That one defence line, is your body’s own immune system.

Let’s take a look at how alcohol can wreak havoc on a healthy immune system. In addition to pneumonia, alcohol consumption has been linked to pulmonary diseases, including tuberculosis, respiratory syncytial virus, and ARDS!

It appears that alcohol disrupts ciliary function in the upper airways, impairs the function of immune cells (i.e., alveolar macrophages and neutrophils), and weakens the barrier function of the epithelia in the lower airways. In many cases, the alcohol-provoked lung damage goes undetected until a second insult, such as a respiratory infection!

In a clinical case study by Trevejo-Nunez and colleagues reports on systemic and organ-specific immune pathologies often seen in chronic drinkers. In such patients, alcohol impairs mucosal immunity in the gut and lower respiratory system. This impairment can lead to sepsis and pneumonia and also increases the incidence and extent of postoperative complications, including delay in wound closure. HIV/AIDS is a disease in which mucosal immunity already is under attack. Their is substantial evidence that alcohol further disrupts the immune system, significantly increasing the likelihood of HIV transmission and progression.

How much is too much?

According to science, alcohol consumption does not have to be chronic to have negative health consequences. In fact, research has shown that acute binge drinking can damage your immune system. There is evidence in a number of physiological systems that binge alcohol intake complicates recovery from physical trauma. Research shows that alcohol impairs recovery from three types of physical trauma—burn, hemorrhagic shock, and traumatic brain injury—by affecting immune homeostasis. The same study highlights how the combined effect of alcohol and injury causes greater disruption to immune function than either challenge alone.

Ultimately the best defence we all have at the moment is our health, which means a strong natural defence, our immune system.
Rushing to your local bottle shop with a face mask and rubber gloves to grab a boot load of immune suppressing alcohol is just sheer madness.

Do yourself a favour, and the Human Race a favour boost your bodies natural immunity by making healthy choices. Lets be honest, if you come down with Coronavirus all for the sake of bad choices, who’s to know how many other people you may pass the virus on to, it could be your Mum, Dad, Grandparent, who as we all know are the most vulnerable.

Stay safe and healthy during this somewhat trying time.

– Steve Jones

Author
The Aesthetic Bible
Design a Human Masterpiece

Reference: Alcohol and the Immune System
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4590612/