There's a lot to be excited for this May, we have Memorial Day Weekend coming up, national wine day, summer around the corner and generally things are looking up with more and more people vaccinated or immune to covid!
Let’s face it though, excitement and celebration go hand in hand with alcohol consumption. We'd like to point out right off the bat that COAST is all for a balanced lifestyle and alcohol is definitely part of ours, but there are things to know when it comes to drinking and what you can do to be able to enjoy alcohol in a smarter way.
Sobering facts about alcohol and your health:
- Alcohol creates a toxin called acetaldehyde. This toxin causes significant damage to cells throughout your body.
- According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), this toxin is a Class 1 carcinogen.
- Acetaldehyde toxicity is also one of the primary causes of acute hangover symptoms.
- Even if you're someone who doesn't get hangovers, the damage from drinking alcohol will still affect you.
- Your body has no natural storage for alcohol, resources are drawn from the rest of your body to rid this toxin. For example, your metabolism will slow down as well as your ability to recover from a workout.
-Another thing with alcohol is that it’s the first fuel to be burned as energy in your system, which can lead to other calories in your system (think carbs) to get stored as fat.
- This cellular damage and depletion results in long-term effects on your health and performance. For example, alcohol can negatively affect your sleep, skin, hydration and productivity.
How to mitigate the damaging effects of alcohol:
All this being said, we do think alcohol can have a place in your healthy lifestyle. As cliché as it might sound, life is about balance! We are not here to lecture or make anyone feel bad, we want to celebrate a more optimistic summer ahead. We created COAST to bridge the gap between being healthy and being social and have therefore put together action steps to help you enjoy a few with less guilt!
- The first and most obvious action you can take is to think about the volume you intake. Are you going for a full dinner followed by a night out? Try swapping your standard pre dinner cocktail for a club soda. Do the same throughout the night and especially, make sure your last drink for the night is WATER and not that last round of shots. Think about it, that last shot will probably not do much more than giving you a really shitty tomorrow morning.
- Eat and sleep well, if you don’t, consider if this is the best night for you to consume alcohol. If you start drinking when you’re starved and sleep deprived, you will be intoxicated easier and smart decisions fly out the window. This can lead to unnecessary over consumption.
- Electrolytes and hydration are of course keys for smarter drinking and you need to boost, pre, post and while consuming alcohol. Our best hydration hack is to start your day with lukewarm water, squeeze a fresh lemon and add Himalayan sea salt to the mix. This will help your body absorb water for optimal hydration and keep you hydrated for longer periods of time. While drinking alcohol, of course keep alternating your drinks with WATER.
- Drink COAST while you drink alcohol and have another COAST post drinking for an added boost. COAST is a carefully combined shot with ingredients like L-Cysteine (a powerful glutathione precursor to boost your main detox pathways), NAD+, B-Complex, Amino Acids, Electrolytes and more, to help you literally drink healthier.
Enjoy that drink, in moderation of course, and happy summer from the COAST team! Shop now >>>