the gut and alcohol – what’s really going on in there?

Ever wondered if alcohol affects your gut health? Is red wine really good for you? In fact, can alcohol ever be healthy? And does Dry January really work to ‘reset’ your gut? Us too, and turns out we’re not alone …

We (aka one half of The Gut Stuff twin founders Lisa MacFarlane) recently caught up with Spencer Matthews. Entrepreneur, TV personality (Made in Chelsea anyone?) and founder of CleanCo – an award-winning ‘clean’ alcohol free spirit. After his own journey with alcohol, he decided to make a change … in his own words, “Going Clean was the best decision I’ve ever made. I’ve never looked back, I haven’t needed to.”

Unsurprisingly, after such a dramatic transformation with his own health after making the change, he had a lot of questions. And Jordan Hayworth, aka Mr Gut to his 100s of 1000s of social followers, was the perfect person to answer them … oh and did we mention he’s a gut health scientist? (no biggy ey!?) 

Ready for Jordan to answer all of Spencer and Lisa’s alcohol’s ‘poos’ & qs? Let’s digest …

What’s actually happening inside our gut when we drink alcohol? 

Firstly, let’s talk about how we digest alcohol, cause it’s pretty interesting. There are very few substances that our stomach can directly absorb, which is why you shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach. About 20% of the alcohol that we drink is absorbed directly through the stomach and then the rest of it is absorbed through your small intestine and then it gets transported to your liver where it’s metabolised. 

“Heavy drinkers … tend to have a high level of the ‘bad guys’ … and lower levels of beneficial bacteria”

There’s not a lot of evidence on what alcohol does to your gut in healthy or moderate drinkers; most of the research on the gut microbiome is in heavy drinkers or those with alcohol related liver disease. What we can see in these cases is that they have a really disrupted gut microbiome or what we call dysbiosis. They tend to have a high level of what we call the ‘bad guys’ when we’re thinking of gut bugs, and lower levels of beneficial bacteria that help regulate the gut lining and reduce inflammation. So this might also be why we see in chronic alcohol users, they have ‘leaky gut’ because they don’t have these bacteria that look after the gut lining.

‘Why oh why’ does alcohol cause such bad hangovers?

The hangover is a combination of different sorts of physical and physiological things. So you get the dehydration, obviously from the alcohol, because it’s a diuretic, acetaldehyde (a toxic compound from alcohol metabolism) causes some of the nausea and gastrointestinal side effects, and you obviously (usually!) have a lack of sleep as well. 

Alcohol causes inflammatory processes in the body. You get these reactive oxygen species from the metabolism of alcohol, which signal the release of cytokines from your immune system; they’re like inflammatory signalling molecules. 

Red wine – is it ‘gut’ news?

Red wine, that is some good news. When we look at the research, it’s really interesting … researchers gave participants a large glass of red wine, one had alcohol and the other was non-alcoholic, every day for three weeks. They showed that actually both of them increased the levels of good bacteria in the gut. It also reduced levels of inflammation, blood pressure and cholesterol. 

“The benefits were not from the alcohol … probably from the polyphenols.”

So the benefits were not from the alcohol because obviously both alcoholic and non-alcoholic wine led to the improvements, it’s probably from the polyphenols in the red wine. So, polyphenols are like antioxidants, and they’re found in the red grapes, especially the skins.

The other thing is when you look at meta-analysis, so where scientists look at all of the studies and pile them together, it actually shows a correlation between red wine drinkers and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease… but you don’t get that with other types of alcohol, in fact, you get the opposite. 

When is long enough to have a break from alcohol for your gut microbiome to ‘reset’?

“A month is a good amount of time.”

We all advocate for dry January, and I think probably a month is a good amount of time. It’s just whether after that month you go straight back to bingeing, or whether you’re a bit more responsible with it, as it perhaps changes your relationship with alcohol e.g. you’ve found alternatives and new habits.

So alcohol seems to cause a leaky gut, which is basically your cells and your gut lining are really close together, when it becomes damaged, then the space between the cells increases, and things from within your gut can escape into your body, like food particles, toxins from bacteria and bacteria themselves. 

So, how many drinks would it take to make your gut leaky? There was a study where they looked at a single binge, so four to five drinks in about two hours. They showed that did cause a leaky gut, but it recovered about 24 hours afterwards, so it was temporary. 

They’ve also shown in chronic alcohol users, when they stop the microbiome does recover, but it takes time, approximately 2-3 weeks for the gut lining to start to heal, however it varies in each individual and can take much longer.

What about probiotics to help?

So the research so far is only in mice – researchers get the mice drunk and then they give them probiotics, and there’s actually some evidence to show it might help, for example some species like LGG help to prevent a leaky gut. Some probiotics seem to actually produce the enzymes that break down alcohol, so then they’re turning that toxic acetaldehyde into non-toxic acetate. So, potentially, but again, these studies have only been done in mice. 

Gut a feeling you want to know more? Tune into the full episode on The Gut Stuff Chattin’ Sh*t podcast here. 

In collaboration with CleanCo