[00:00:00] Vesna: Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. Today, I'm going to share how high functioning women can rely less on alcohol without feeling like they're missing out. I noticed with my high functioning clients that they do tend to drink more than the average person
And so my suggestion is always for them, because I normally Are aware that they drink too much and that they wanna reduce it. And so my, advice is always, you know, we start to [00:01:00] rebalance the body and the biochemistry and instead of trying to cut it out altogether, we slowly wean it down and we find that when we do support the internal systems, that it is much easier for them to cut it out altogether or reduce it significantly.
So what is consuming too much alcohol? So. An alarming fact is that more than three drinks in one sitting is considered binge drinking, or three and beyond is considered binge drinking. So if you're having a glass of wine every night, that also ends up being too much alcohol by the end of the week.
And, the amount of alcohol varies. Some science says no alcohol is safe, some is like one or two glasses a week. So I'm not going to speak too, too much about what is the right dose, but knowing that You know, on a personal level, whether you drink too much and for some people, they do live in a little bit of denial about it only because they've become so accustomed to drinking that level, right?
So if you sit with someone who drinks, you know, one glass of wine a month and you're drinking one glass of wine a night, that's a huge difference, right? But if you're used to, if [00:02:00] you're If you're sitting with your partner drinking a glass of wine at night, every night, then it becomes normal, right? So I see, for my clients and for women who are juggling a lot of responsibilities, have a lot of pressure, have a lot to carry in terms of carrying the load, They will use alcohol more frequently as a way of kind of switching off or as a bit of a reward at the end of the day, or they sit with themselves at the end of the day with a glass of wine.
They do a lot more socializing and networking, which requires alcohol. And it just feels like comforting, soothing, and helps them to manage stress. So they find that something stressful happens. They're like, Oh, I need a drink. Right? So if you catch yourself saying that this episode is for you. Now, these.
Reliance, reliance on alcohol builds up over time and we create these little stories about how, you know, rewarding and soothing and fun and all of this stuff it is for us. But I'm going to just touch on the effects of alcohol. I feel like that is not enough to. Help you to cut down alcohol. We, we know with the anti [00:03:00] smoking campaigns that they're not effective with helping people stop smoking.
But I do want to share some things that maybe you don't know. So, alcohol, too much alcohol consumption will affect the guts, create leaky gut, will disrupt the microbiome. If you think about it, alcohol, you know, if we swab ourselves with an alcohol tissue, that helps to kill off any bacteria on our skin.
So you can imagine internally what alcohol does to our gut and to our microbiome. So over time, I see for these women, there's a lot of gut issues. There is leaky gut, there is a disrupted microbiome, they can get GERD, they can get gut pain, they can get an imbalance in their, in their flora, in their gut, SIBO, so many other things, right?
It also affects the liver, liver is detoxifying the alcohols, places a lot of burden on the liver. And the blood glucose levels as well. Hormones has huge impact, okay? I think a single glass of alcohol I heard increases oestrogen by a certain amount, which was quite alarming. But if you're in perimenopause, alcohol is also going to make [00:04:00] all of your symptoms worse because of the histamine component.
And I talked about that in a previous podcast. Brain health, right? Alcohol causes inflammation of the brain. So when we feel this in an excessive way, the hangover. Right, we can feel a very inflamed brain and we just can't function, but we can have mild doses of this if we drink regularly that we are not able to have focus and clarity, that inflammation throws off our brain performance as well.
So our productivity, how much you can get done in a day and also our stress tolerance. So what you'll find is that as you drink more regularly, you need the drink, right, to relax you. And so the alcohol actually makes you less equipped to deal with stress, even though it doesn't seem like that at the moment, right?
So you'll find someone who's not used to having alcohol for stress and somebody who is, that person who needs alcohol is Always more stressed, always more triggered, where they don't [00:05:00] have the emotional resources to deal with that stress. With somebody without alcohol consumption, they can deal with it, okay?
And it's just because of the association that we've made with it, but also that it reduces our stress tolerance. So just, just like cigarettes, you know, like people think, oh, it calms me down, but it actually does a reverse effect on our nervous system. And alcohol, over time, disrupts so much of our biochemistry and our hormones that we don't have the resilience through the chemistry that our body produces in order to handle the stress that comes our way.
So, I'm going to talk about some solutions, because I do this with my clients, they come to me and they're normally drinking too much. They're aware of it, but they can't really cut it down, right? they try to cut it down as much as they can, but it might be one or two glasses a night. And we find, uh, there's different approaches.
Now, I'm not talking about someone who is. It's definitely an alcoholic and where alcohol has overtaken their life and their work and their relationships. It's out of control. I'm not talking. I'm not speaking to that. What I am [00:06:00] speaking to is a high functioning woman who is a regular drinker and who wants to reduce drinking.
knows that it's having detrimental effect. And I also think as a leader, you don't want to be showing up an event, always having a drink in your hand or always drinking too much or perhaps saying the wrong things, right? I just think from a leadership perspective, it doesn't look good either.
so what I see with my clients, what we do is the changes that we make to diet and lifestyle helps to reduce the craving for alcohol. And then with the intention behind it to reduce alcohol, they find that by the end they're able to cut out alcohol altogether. Without it feeling hard. Okay, and so I want to talk about what we do.
So one of the things is really about balancing blood glucose levels. There is a strong association with sugar cravings, imbalance in blood glucose levels, insulin resistance and alcohol cravings and alcohol consumption. Okay, so when we provide regular meals, okay, when I work with clients and we do regular meals, [00:07:00] Removing sugars.
Sugars would definitely trigger an alcohol craving and need for alcohol. So you'll find that by the end of the day, if you haven't eaten well during the day, if you've missed some meals, or you've gone too late, eating lunch, and then come the afternoon, actually the sugar levels start to drop but your association with that is to have a glass of wine or some kind of alcohol, okay?
So sugar is very much linked. to addiction and alcohol addiction. So removing the obvious sugars, you know, the junk food, but also looking at processed foods. So if you go out to eat, you're definitely going to get some more sugars and processed foods there. any kind of takeaway or Uber Eats or anything that you have in the cupboard that's in a packaged, box or container that is More than likely process that is also going to trigger more cravings for you.
Okay, so what we're looking at with cravings and addictions We're looking at changes to our biochemistry, which I'm going to talk more about So if you have regular meals your breakfast lunch and dinner Regular, you're not going too late between meals. [00:08:00] You're having even a snack in between those meals.
You're balancing your macros So your protein, your carbohydrates, and your healthy fats, if you make sure that in each meal you can include all three of those, that will help to again keep your glucose levels and stress hormones stable throughout the day, so you're not having those spikes of glucose or cortisol that require more alcohol to soothe you, okay?
Nutrient dense food. You know, deficiencies are definitely going to be a trigger. As we drink more alcohol, we're going to create more deficiencies. Because of the impact of alcohol on the gut, you're going to find that, there will be more deficiencies as it reduces gut absorption of nutrients. And like I said, avoiding processed foods.
Something as simple as that routine. For my clients has been enough along with some other work. We do some mindset stuff and obviously the intentions always there We're supporting the gut. We support the liver. We support the hormones and they find that by the end.
[00:09:00]They don't have the craving for it it was very easy for them to stop. Okay that they weren't Needing it in stressful situations anymore either So the other part that I want to talk about is the habitual side and the addiction side So when we're looking at addictions, we're looking at You know, one part of it is brain chemistry. So dopamine, serotonin, Endorphins, What we find with alcohol and drugs like cocaine, there is a spike in dopamine. Now we have a normal spike in dopamine every day. It's our reward neurotransmitter. That's why we are addicted to our devices. I don't even know what that rates during the day, but a normal dopamine spike from daily pleasure, like food or sex, is about one 50 to 200 a day. Right. So these are numbers. I'm not gonna mean anything to you, but they will mean, as I keep going, alcohol and cocaine are on the, around the same level. You're looking at 200 to 400 spikes of dopamine per day.
[00:10:00] So that means if your normal daily pleasure is 150 to 200 and then you start drinking alcohol, and then that bumps up your dopamine requires to 400 a day, the brain becomes kind of, it's called dopamine resistant.
It kind of becomes resistant to dopamine. So it needs. more dopamine for you to just feel normal daily pleasure. And then if you go something like meth, which I'm only going to use as an example, is 400 to 1, 000 dopamine hits a day. means that normal daily pleasure for them, they need so much more dopamine.
Just to feel like a happy human being, okay? Just like a normal human being, right? And so that means that dopamine resistance, the more alcohol we consume, The more dopamine requirements we have, and when we don't have it, we don't feel happy, we don't feel like we can cope, we don't feel good, we feel miserable, we feel bored, we feel lonely, whatever it is, right? Insert that emotion there.
[00:11:00] And that is because it's a withdrawal of dopamine compared to what you're used to on a daily level. And I hope that makes sense. So what we want to do is we want to reduce that dopamine resistance. And we want to bring your 150 200. It's no longer at 400 or, Okay.
We want to bring it back down to normal. And so one of the ways that we do that is by reducing consumption. And for some people, what's going to be important is to cut it out altogether. And when you cut it out altogether, the brain resets over time, it could take six weeks to reset that brain chemistry.
So your normal. Dopamine spike actually gives you normal daily pleasure and that you can handle stress and that you can go out and have all your conversations and all your social gatherings without any alcohol. That is a normal baseline level. sometimes for those people, avoidance is easier than cutting back.
I know this is hard for some, and that means that you may need to reshuffle your social calendar, your networking and it would be worth it to have that time to do that.
[00:12:00] So, with all that said, start making small dietary changes. with the intention to drink less and see how you feel about alcohol and how much you need it and how much the cravings are reduced and then allow your brain chemistry to reset over time so it's no longer a craving for you.
It's no longer a crutch for you because long term it will have its effects and The one thing I noticed about alcohol is that if we don't do anything to curb it, it's going to increase over time, okay? People become more and more accustomed to alcohol, so they drink more and more occasions, more alcohol at every occasion, and so it just gets higher and higher and higher, okay?
So, I hope this was helpful, so let me know in the comments below, do you feel like you could definitely have less alcohol in your life, that you're starting to see that it is creeping up, and can you implement some of the solutions that I've just mentioned? Let me know in the comments below.
