Can Alcohol Make Perimenopause Symptoms Worse?
The short answer is, yep. The long answer is a bit more complicated and worth reading more on!
Drinking too much alcohol can have an impact on your hormone balance, which you may already be struggling with if you’re in perimenopause. Many women point to poorer sleep, more significant mood swings, and a higher occurrence of hot flashes being linked to increased alcohol intake. In general, reducing your alcohol consumption should be part of your hormonal health regimen, but that doesn’t mean you have to cut out spirited drinks altogether!
In fact, certain types of alcohol might actually help with some of your symptoms. Our resident nutritionist, Abby, is here to give you the full answer so you can learn how alcoholic beverages can fit into your healthy aging plan.
I’m not sure about you, but for me there’s nothing better than a glass of wine at the end of a long day. Most of us have heard that a glass of red wine is even considered healthy (thanks to the Mediterranean diet) but have you ever stopped to wonder why?
The first benefit that springs to my mind is that it helps you feel more relaxed. This is possibly one of the reasons why alcohol has been linked to certain health benefits, as chronically high levels of stress can leave you feeling worn out and predisposes you to a number of diseases.
The anti-inflammatory benefits of alcohol
Feeling relaxed isn’t the only benefit though. Alcoholic drinks like wine and beer seem to have an additional boost due to their polyphenol content.
Polyphenols are specialized plant micronutrients that act as powerful antioxidants to help manage inflammation in the body. Since inflammation is often at the root of most diseases, keeping these levels in check is an important step to remaining disease-free.
Plus as we age, hormonal fluctuations can lead the body into a pro-inflammatory state and managing inflammation can help reduce symptoms like joint pain and leaky gut.
How alcohol can help hormonal symptoms
In addition to its link to inflammation, polyphenols found in beer may also help to reduce symptoms like hot flushes through other mechanisms. Generally, beer is made with some sort of grain like barley as well as hops, yeast, and water, and it’s the barley and the hops that are rich in these beneficial polyphenolic compounds. So in this case, it’s not the alcohol providing the benefit, but rather the ingredients that make up the drink. This means that alcohol-free beer can also do the trick!
Why drinking in moderation matters
With its anti-inflammatory and anti-symptom properties, it’s easy to think more is better, but this is not true. We need to be careful about drinking too much because alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen, meaning that there is convincing evidence that it is linked to cancer.
On top of that, alcoholic beverages are all quite high in calories. Each gram of alcohol contains 7 calories. For comparison, one gram of carbohydrates and one gram of protein each contain about 4 calories, while fat contains about 9 calories per gram. If you’re drinking the recommended amount of alcohol — about 14g — that’s almost 100 calories in alcohol content alone. Drinks like beer and wine will contain more calories because of the carbohydrate sources used to create the drink (hops and grain for beer and grapes for wine). Calories aren’t inherently bad — we need them for energy! — but alcohol is often a source of “extra calories” that we don’t think about. Just another reason why moderation is important.
Moderation is also key because it can be easy to over-consume alcohol. As mentioned, alcohol has a relaxing effect, and that’s because it’s a depressant. It works to slow the central nervous system and increase the production of GABA (a neurotransmitter) which produces a calming, drowsy effect. That can feel good when we drink in moderate amounts, but of course, has negative consequences when we overindulge.
Alcoholic drinks, like red wine, are also over-consumed because they have what is called a ‘health halo’. This means that while it may have health benefits (for red wine that would be heart health), but those benefits are usually overstated. In this case, the heart health benefits of red wine generally only apply when used in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle like those found in the Mediterranean diet.
How to consume alcohol in a healthy way
With this in mind, I find it quite helpful to know what the recommendations are with regards to how much we should be drinking. (Hint: there are other ways that we can squeeze additional polyphenols into your diet! More on that in another post.) But if you do drink, let’s talk about what moderate drinking looks like.
Most health organizations, including the CDC, recommend that women drink no more than 1 drink per day, and men have no more than 2 drinks per day.
I love that meme going around where someone is drinking a massive glass of wine and the captions says, ‘My doctor said I should drink no more than one glass of wine a day...’ Although this is how much we think we need at the end of a long day, you’re better off sticking to the actual recommendations from a health perspective.
So how much is one drink of alcohol?
When drinking any alcoholic beverage, the main thing we want to watch is the actual alcohol content. To do this, we use a measurement known as a standard drink. In America, a standard drink equals 14 grams of alcohol.
When we look at popular drinks, this is equivalent to a 12 fl oz beer, a 5fl oz glass of wine or 1.5 fl oz of spirits (like a shot of vodka, gin, or whiskey). This being said, spirits won’t have the same benefits as beer and wine because they don’t contain polyphenols.
To help see this more clearly, next time you pour yourself a glass of wine try using a measuring jug (or measuring cup) to see how much 5 fl oz really is. You may be surprised that it isn’t that much and have been inadvertently pouring ‘double’ glasses of wine, thinking it was a single serving.
One of the reasons why we tend to pour too much is because of a phenomenon called portion distortion, where we eat and drink more because we are served more. And often we are served more because the glasses that we are drinking out of are getting bigger.
To illustrate this point, researchers from the University of Cambridge conducted a literature search to assess how wine glass size has changed over the years. They found that in the 1700s, the average wine glass could hold 66 mL, which is a mere 2 fl oz. Fast forward a few hundred years and by 2000 an average wine glass holds 417mL (or 14 fl oz) and by 2017 the average wine glass could hold up to 449mL, a whopping 15 fl oz.
So what’s the verdict?
When it comes to alcohol, it can help us feel more relaxed and there are some beneficial substances in beer and wine that can help control hormonal symptoms through their anti-inflammatory impacts. But if we drink too much, the risks outweigh the benefits.
My advice is that if you do enjoy a glass of wine or a beer occasionally, make sure you stick to the recommended portions to reap all of the potential benefits. If drinking isn’t your thing, or if you’re keen to reduce your alcohol consumption we have you covered with delicious mocktail recipes on your MBody app now!
