First, great thread Frank. These are topics all of us should be considering as we age.
Robert, most of your friend’s recommendations are pretty routine, but did he tell you why he recommended a snack at bedtime? Or a shower before bed? Are these intended just as relaxation aids? Eating before bedtime sounds like a bad idea to me.
I am pretty good with those recommendations. We don’t drink during the week, we share a bottle, meaning I have 3 glasses (she usually has 2) when we do drink, I try and mostly succeed in being done a couple of hours before bed, etc. Like you, I assume, it is just not possible to avoid checking the phone before sleep, clients being what they are. But I try very hard to turn the thing OFF at 10:00 and just read until I fall asleep.
Sun Tzu’s Art of War is brilliant because of its simplicity. As is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The funny thing about us so-called intelligent people, we tend to forget the basics and often think little rules don’t apply to us. As I noted, many of the points are intuitive. I think having them all in front of you, looking at them holistically, not in pieces, is important. The hot shower or bath is to relax. I know I’m beat when I climb out of our hot tub. The light snack is to prevent me from my usual, 3-4 AM wake-up to eat. My machine devours calories. And I still wake up ravenous.
Everything in moderation has worked for me for 70+ years of life , food ,exercise, and alcohol.I have tried to leave a less complicated life since retirement, so far so good.
While it may seem that using the above logic is an application of science; in this case it is not. This is more of an example of making an incorrect assumption about science and thinking you are using science. The problem with this logic is that it lacks a fundamental understanding of physiology and alcohol metabolism.
I apologize for being quick and I don’t mean to be snarky here. I am running around at work, but I can come back later to hopefully better explain if anyone has a question. better yet try to find the old thread that explains it better.
A couple people above referred to a previous thread in the past with an explanation that I am sure was more eloquent than mine. I am a simple bone doctor and not a pharmacologist or physiologist.
The reason that logic does not equate to real life is that alcohol is metabolized by something called zero order kinetics. This means that we can only metabolize a fixed amount of alcohol per unit time. It is not a relative difference in this is 7.4% more alcohol. It is a case of there being x amount of residual alcohol in your blood that has not yet been metabolized if your liver is working close to it’s threshold of ability. So over a few drinks the difference between 13% and 15% is actually pretty significant.
My first likely poor analogy: You liver is a sink. The water on the floor is your alcohol toxicity.
The drain in this sink that can only drain one gallon of water a minute. You are pouring in two ounces less than a gallon per minute. You can do that forever and not overflow. If you start pouring 4 extra ounces per minute into the sink it will overflow once it is filled, even though the incremental change is minimal as a relative percentage of the water you are pouring.
Another poor analogy that I can think of on the fly. For you cyclists out there: If you anaerobic threshold heart rate is 170 BPM and you need to go up to 180 beats for 5 minutes to make it up the hill and stay in the peloton. That’s only 6% more heart rate, so no big deal right? While this example is not completely analogous to first order pharmacology mechanism of ETOH consumption, it as an example that direct comparison of two quantities even though they may seem small in relative difference, can be quite large when based on physiologic processes not just mathematic ratios.
Great explanation from Todd, thanks! That description fits how I experience wines in the comfortable range for me, e.g. 12.5-13, I feel like I can drink a fair amount comfortably if I space it out over time.
All the people saying it’s a matter of simple linear arithmetic – come on. How much alcohol you take in is just addition, but the issue is how a human being metabolizes the stuff, which is a fantastically complex system full of nonlinearities. Your body tries to maintain homeostatis and is very sensitive to getting knocked off of it. It is a common observation that drug dose-response curves (note: curves) are not linear, e.g.
This drug, when given as dose x; has a magnitude of effect y. This magnitude of effect is directly proportional to the dose, such that doubling the dose doubles the effect. This is a linear dose-response relationship…There are only very few examples of this sort of relationship in medicine. In general, a linear increase in effect is only seen in situations where the effect is a risk of something happening, eg. the linear relationship between dose in cigarettes and the risk of cancer… In short, the normal dose-response curve is hyperbolic.
Someone above asked about cocktails. I very rarely drink hard liquor of any kind any more, when I do, I expect to get drunk, and am done after one or two.
Frank, I’ve been a migraineur for 30 years. Began in grade school. I took NSAIDs then with minimal effect, eventually started taking Imitrex back when it was only available as an injection. It’s awful and has plagued my life in many ways, but my chief triggers seem to remain sleep deprivation, anxiety, alcohol and stress. So basically my life.
In a way, I thank my migraines for their chilling effect on how much I drink. But I go through periods where I fight through migraines for 7-10 days in a row before things let up. Don’t wish that on anyone.
Snack before bed = tryptophan rich food which promote sleep like milk or banana. This is why people used to do warm milk.
If you do high protein here it won’t help see below. Salmon, Chicken and Turkey are high in tryptophan but take a long time to digest.
Digestion takes several hours with proteins. 3 hours is pretty standard to get to a point where
your GI tract is actually resting after a meal with proteins. It can take as many as 8 to 10.
Hot baths promote a feeling of well being. Like meditation.
As Todd T says, alcohol is a zero order (fixed weight of alcohol per unit time) metabolic process. You can saturate this quickly leading to VERY long metabolic times.
This is why higher % alcohol wines can lead to markedly longer times to recover despite what you feel like are not excessive amounts.
Todd, this is actually a pretty good analogy and what I was referring to in another post: it’s the rate of consumption of alcohol and the total amount of consumed alcohol. You need to add a filter to your sink which filters the alcohol from the wine into the slow running alcohol sink.
I don’t have an issue with higher alcohol wines. I’m still enjoying exploring different styles of wine and don’t want to exclude a large portion of what’s available. If it’s a higher alcohol wine I drink less and drink it slower. Same effect. The other night I poured a second glass of Napa Cab after dinner while watching the debates. Part way through I noticed it was catching up with me so I stopped and poured it out rather than possibly feeling crappy the next day. A bit of a waste of wine but I’d rather follow what my body is telling me.
That’s what I’m getting at when I say I wonder why people make such a fuss about the alcohol content. Wine has alcohol. If we know how to drink 13.5% alcohol moderately it’s not a big change in drinking style to drink 14.5% or 15% alcohol moderately. Listen to your body.
It’s an interesting explanation. But it would need to be that the overflow point is right in between 13.5% and 15% or something, which would be quite a coincidence in the world of wine and the context of these stylistic discussions. Why isn’t it that the alcohol effect only starts to really multiply between 15% and 17%, or between 11% and 13%?
Another possibility is that there is some placebo effect and confirmation bias involved. Someone knows he was just drinking Kutch one night, and knows he was drinking Harlan the next night, and knowing the alcohol content and styles of wines, he perceives that he was far more impaired or felt much worse on night 2.
Add to that the fact that, in all of these discussions we’ve had, every one of the people who are insistent about the difference in impairment being large between 13.5% wine and 15% wine are people who greatly prefer the former to the latter, and often have strong positive feelings about the people and wineries and regions that produce the former, and strong negative feelings about everything associated with the latter.
I’ve been reluctant to suggest this, since I don’t wish to offend anyone with the observation, and I certainly don’t mean to call anyone a liar, but isn’t it at least possible that those strong feelings contribute to a perception that the former wines make you feel okay and the latter make you drunk and hung over? We all drink wines blind at times, knowing that our perceptions are going to be affected by knowing what’s on the label. Couldn’t that be the case here as well?
One last idea in this realm - do there tend to be different contexts in which someone with an AFWE palate is drinking high ABV wines? Is he usually having those only in larger events and tastings where he is drinking a lot more wine, whereas when he has half a bottle on a quiet Tuesday night, it’s always or usually a low ABV wine? Could that tend to make someone think that they feel okay drinking Burg, but feel drunk and lousy drinking Zin?
Excellent post, Chris. One more point: while elimination of alcohol may be a zero-order kinetic process (i.e., it’s a fixed rate, regardless of how much is in your system), absorption is not. Numerous factors may affect the rate of absorption into your bloodstream, such as what you’ve eaten, how hydrated you are, carbonation, etc.
Great info and lots of good points. So for my limited cranial capacity - the effect of alcohol on a particular individual may vary depending on the day and on the individual, and on the physical/emotional state of that individual at that particular time. Also, as a rule of thumb, particularly as the alcohol level of the wine increases, drinking more slowly is better than drinking more quickly.
Is that about right?
I’ve definitely noticed that certain things affect me differently today than they did 20 years ago. That won’t make me drink Champagne but I no longer eat things like ice cream, which I once loved, and don’t enjoy big slabs of beef, which I once could devour with ease. But I’ve never selected a wine based on the stated ABV since I have no idea how accurate those are and we only drink wine during and after dinner over the course of several hours.
As for the OP, when tasting through a number of wines in a day - I didn’t quite understand but do people not spit if they know they’ll be tasting more than one or two wines? That’s not a complete solution because after going through three or four dozen, even spitting doesn’t mean you won’t feel the effect of alcohol, but who would taste a lineup of wines without spitting?
This however, was a bit surprising:
No more than 2 glasses per night
Last glass 3 hours before bed
Wine with food
no coffee past noon
no working out 2-3 hours before bed
snack before bed recommended
hot shower or bath before bed
no iPhones or laptops in bed - something about the emitted light stimulates the brain
read before bed
Robert -
Who works out before going to bed?
Snack before bed seems counterintuitive. Especially a protein type snack. And you have to floss and brush your teeth anyway, so what’s the point?
And who would ever take a phone or laptop to bed? That would be so offensive it would be grounds for divorce if you were married, or commitment to an institution if you were single. I think it’s incredibly rude when people pull them out at dinner where it would certainly affect my metabolism of alcohol, but bed??
Over the years, I have been told by winemakers that the ABV percentage on wine labels can be a bit ‘flexible’ in its reporting, as there are taxes associated with certain ABV points.
There is some ‘variable fidelity’ built into that label data, which adds some extra noise to the precision of our discussion.
Also, we shouldn’t lose our grip on the fact that the OP notices the negative effect of higher ABV wines with his first glass. That’s a real twister to the chat!
Even with zero order kinetics, we are looking at a difference of only 0.1cc of alcohol 13% vs 15% and a 5 ounce glass) into a (randomly chose weight) 150 pound man.
Late to this thread, but it seems that two things are apparent: Frank is getting old and he was probably drunk when he posted.
I am very clearly joking…FMIII is a friend and we are almost the same age, so I get where he is coming from with respect to how our bodies start reacting differently as we age. But, regardless of tangents/details/studies/theories about alc%/hydration/sleep, the important part for me is that it’s up to Frank how he enjoys this hobby.
He is not afraid to change and more importantly evolve, even if it deviates from styles or tastes. He owns his passion and can enjoy it however he pleases. Fortunately, he articulates and shares it with us, and this community is better for it, regardless of the path he chooses.
Vive la difference!
BTW…I am really enjoying a Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast Stout at only 7.5%!
Chris, I appreciate your thoughts but I think you are not getting my point. It is quite possible I did not explain it well. For instance someone’s threshold is at a glass of 11% alcohol per hour. They drink one glass per hour. Drinking a 15% would get you twice the overage of a 13%. If your threshold is is a 12% glass per hour the difference btw 13% and 15% would be threefold. There does not need to be a convenient amount btw 13.5 and 15%. There just needs to be more etoh than your metabolic threshold In your bloodstream to manifest the increase in BAL. this is the crux of the reason for feeling the difference in ABV in wine’s after a couple glasses.
To complicate things, alcohol dehydrogenase is an inductive enzyme, meaning more “training” can increase your “performance”, so different people will have different ability to metabolize ETOH. Separately, people can have wildly different tolerance to BAL. In training when in the ER we had patients in the “500 club” meaning a BAL of over .500. The highest I saw was a man with a BAL of .650 and the guy was talking to me. That level would kill most of the people on this board. So that in addition to the quantitative difference in overflow (the leftover ETOH in your bloodstream. Aka BAL) your BAL will be tolerated differently person to person. Add in difference in rate of absorption based on the alcohol level, the presence of bubbles or more specifically CO2 in the bubbles, presence or absence of food and what kind, you have a more complex situation.
I bet in my 30s when I was pre kids and drinking more regularly and quantitatively now, that my threshold was in the glass of 15% per hour range-easily, or at a minimum I tolerated a higher BAL better.I could drink several glasses of higher ABV wines over an evening, not really get buzzed, and be shockingly resilient the next day. I’m hitting 50 next month and I bet my threshold is in the glass of 11-12% range per hour. I am surprised regularly as I drink at night that I can feel the difference btw 12 and 15 easily at two glasses (having no idea of the wine’s etoh content when I open the Bottle)
Not sure if that makes sense, but that’s my best attempt at trying to explain the physiology involved.
Again, OP said the difference was apparent with one glass. Hard to understand how his liver’s ability to metabolize alcohol would be saturated if he just filled his glass with a mere 7.2% less of a 15% wine?
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but water in between and spitting will dfinitely help.