So alcohol kills bacteria and it is indiscriminate with respect to which bacteria , it kills . So when we ingest alcohol and it goes into our gut , it kills a lot of the healthy gut microbiota . At the same time , the metabolism of alcohol in the liver , which you now understand that pathway involving n ad acetyl acetyl aldehyde and acetate , that pathway is pro inflammatory .
So we have the gut liver brain axis . And what you find is that people who ingest alcohol at any amount are inducing a disruption in the so called gut microbiome . The trillions of little micro bacteria that take resident in your gut and that live inside you all the time and that help support your immune system .
Again , low sugar varieties of all these things . Those are terrific at reducing inflammatory markers and at improving the gut microbiome , one could imagine that either inoculating oneself from some of the effects of alcohol , although I'd prefer that people just not drink alcohol chronically frankly , or if somebody's trying to repair their gut microbiome because they ingested a lot of alcohol or because they had a lot of these inflammatory cytokines for many years or even a short period of time . Regular ingestion of 2 to 4 servings of these fermented foods can be um quite beneficial .
I wanna make it clear that has not been examined specifically in the context of alcohol use disorder . But because a huge component of the negative effects of alcohol use disorder are based in this gut liver , brain access and disruption of the gut microbiome in the in inflammatory cytokines . It stands to reason that things that are well established to improve inflammation status .
Again , people , they're ingesting somewhere between 12 and 24 drinks per week . For those of you that are interested in learning more about the gut liver brain axis and in particular alcohol use disorder , I'll provide a link in the show note captions and there's a wonderful review on this , that details that but on the positive side , it points to the possibility that at least some , again , at least some of the negative effects of alcohol consumption , whether or not you're somebody who's currently ingesting alcohol or who used to ingest alcohol and is trying to so called repair these systems of the brain and body , whether or not replenishing the gut microbiota is gonna be beneficial . And we know that there are ways to do that and we know that there's at least some promise for the ability for the system to repair itself .
