Can Alcohol Produce Beneficial Heat?

The other classification of foods is those that produce heat which of course fuel the body. To determine a food’s capacity for producing heat we must study its reaction when combined with oxygen. Heat producing foods are also known as respiratory foods and without them the body has no energy to function. Foods classified as fats, sugars, and starches are all studied to determine what processes they go through in order to convert them into the heat energy vitally needed by the human body. The law involved here is how the body consumes carbon atoms when they are combined with oxygen—the byproduct of which is heat which converts into action or force. Also, when hydrogen from foods combines with oxygen it produces water. So the test to make is to determine if alcohol fits into any of these scenarios and attaches with hydrocarbons.

And after all the experimentation to determine if alcohol is beneficial in producing heat, the findings are the same across the board. No one has been able to conclusively prove that alcohol benefits the body in the same manner as the other foods as a result of its oxidation. In fact, no one has even been able to determine if alcohol even goes under this process of combustion as one would find in the cases of fat, sugar, and starches. Without this combustion, there is no heat given to the body.

Can Alcohol Keep You Warm?

Alcohol for many years has been used as an agent to cool the body in treatment of fevers. Many agree across the developed nations of the world that alcohol has cooling effects on the human body. Yet, in spite of this, people think that when they are exposed to extreme cold that alcohol is an effective agent to deter the effects of cold on the body. Scientists have performed all different kinds of experiments with varying levels of cold temperatures and consistently come up with the same findings: alcohol does not raise body temperature and is not an effective deterrent against the effects of cold. This is not the case with food that produces heat. Alcohol produces no heat and therefore cannot be classified as a heat-producing food. In fact, they even did studies of people in northern regions and it was found that the true veterans of the cold abstained from alcohol so as to maintain body heat under harsh winter conditions common to them. And, there are many incidents where people consume too much alcohol and overexpose themselves to the cold because their altered state makes them think they are not cold.

Can Alcohol Make You Strong?

It just stands to reason that if alcohol makes no contribution to body heat and makes no contribution to the generation of tissue and the building of muscle then it cannot possibly make a person strong. And we are not just referring to muscles either. Even the power of the brain is maintained by proper nutrition along and rest—alcohol makes no contribution to these. Therefore, you cannot get stronger and you do not get smarter. We must always remind ourselves that alcohol is a toxin. The body will try to reject toxins. The body tries to prevent alcohol from becoming part of it. And, since the body cannot really absorb alcohol in a way that produces heat, it is passed from the body the same way it entered and does not combust with any oxygen to form heat energy.

In other words, just as stimulants may make it seem like you have more energy, they really only consume any remaining energy that you have and exhaust you. You end up needing more rest than you would need otherwise.

The notion that alcohol is an agent that generates energy in the body is a total myth. Although it will appear that the person influenced by alcohol has more energy, what will really be happening is any energy this person has available will be consumed and no new energy will get generated to replenish it. Drinks such as wine cause internal changes of matter in the body which in turn cause loss of strength and energy. The drinks are also not beneficial in the conversion of inward energy into work or any other activity where some kind of productive force is needed from the body. Another way to look at this is that alcohol causes the body to do more work trying to rid itself of the toxin instead of directing those efforts into the production of work on the external that produces some type of beneficial result. We get exhausted because of the alcohol with nothing to show for it.

So great is the impact that alcohol makes on the strength of an individual that it has been observed that even when a person drinks a very moderate amount of wine or beer, the same person’s ability to lift diminishes. To put this in perspective, if a person can lift a maximum of 80 pounds under normal conditions, alcohol only serves to reduce that maximum threshold to some number lower. The only thing alcohol does to a person is reduce that person’s ability to perform anything at his or her peak. This fact is not only true in lifting but is also true when it comes to a person’s mental alertness, perception, and senses. Yes, it usually relaxes the person but otherwise it hinders a person from doing his or her best in anything.

The point to remember is that there are natural stimuli that affect our organs in the manner required to put them into action. Alcohol is not one of these natural stimuli—it is only a toxin and a foreign substance introduced into the body. All alcohol does is interfere with an organ’s action in response to its natural stimulus.

The bottom line is that alcohol cannot be converted into an organic substance nor can it be absorbed and made part of organic material. Therefore it cannot be deemed as nutritional. What seems like new strength for the user of alcohol is not really strength at all. It is more like calling strength from reserves that were already there.

Also, these effects of alcohol in terms of exhausting the organs have a degenerative effect on them and actually begin to kill them off. And this degenerative process makes different organs in the body susceptible to disease.

Artificial stimulants to attempt to reverse the effects of exhaustion are not good for the body at all. It is like overloading a machine—like trying to pull a trailer in an automobile that is too heavy for it. Eventually, when you overload machines, they wear out and break down faster and so it is with the human body. Alcohol wears out and ages the body much faster than it would otherwise under normal conditions.

Plus, there is also the effect of the person’s buildup of resistance to alcohol. The more a person uses alcohol to get past the normal stresses of life, the more a resistance and a dependency is built up. Then, alcohol becomes a habit for the person and it will be very difficult to reverse.

Any Secondary Food Benefit?

The inability to find any evidence that alcohol contributes to digestive processes leads researchers to follow a different path and try to determine if alcohol might contribute as a secondary food. By secondary food, they are referring to the types of food that actually slow down the metamorphic processes on body tissue. This metamorphosis is characterized by a consistent discard of cells no longer considered beneficial for nutrition and creating conditions so that beneficial cells necessary for the sustenance of life can replace them.

A separate institution further clarified this in describing the critical nature of this secondary process and what happens if it fails. In other words, if the body cannot rid itself of excrement for some reason then excrement will build up on the bloodstream and tissues. This buildup becomes toxic to the body. As with any toxin in the body, the results will have an impact on the health and vital functioning of body systems. And the effects of toxins such as these in the body can have a rapid onset. Most of the effects are seen in the nervous system of a victim and the visible results can be dullness of the senses, irritability, delirium, confusion, coma, and death.

The previous description of toxins appears to be an attempt to find some benefit in alcohol. But making the assertion that alcohol is a food due to the hypothesis that it slows down the normal process of absorbing nutrition into the bloodstream and the discharging of excrement and waste is like saying that alcohol impedes a very healthy process. The human body needs these processes because they are the very essence of the cycle of life. These processes are essential to building muscles, eliminating waste, and having clear thoughts. To say that alcohol interferes with these does not benefit the opinions of those who claim it is a food either primary or secondary.

Not Vital to the Sustenance of Life

So to take the position that alcohol is in some way beneficial because it assists the normal process of discharging excrement and waste is probably on the extreme and outside of the realm of traditional scientific proof and the facts derived from scientific proof. Therefore, across the board, it cannot be scientifically proven that alcohol has any value in nutritional processes or the processes of elimination waste products—both critically essential to life. Alcohol cannot be classified as a food.