2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
Life hacker asked Elena Berezovskaya, a gynecologist and author of books on women's health and pregnancy, to confirm or dispel the myth about the terrible effects of alcohol.
We often meet the statement that women should not drink alcohol at all, because the supply of eggs is formed once and for a lifetime, and alcoholic drinks destroy these eggs. Even a glass of champagne at prom will have dire consequences.
We believe that drinking is harmful, but we do not like categorical statements, so we decided to find out whether this is a myth or not.
Eggs are indeed given once and for life. They appear in the girl's body even before birth, and then their supply is only consumed.
Sex cells (oocytes) are located in follicles - vesicles that form the ovaries. About once a month, an egg matures and leaves the follicle. This process is called ovulation and determines the menstrual cycle.
Alcohol really negatively affects ovulation and fertility, that is, the ability to conceive a child. Observational data show that due to the frequent use of alcohol, the menstrual cycle is disrupted. Alcohol affects hormone levels, leads to irregular ovulation, and its frequent use during pregnancy is especially dangerous, because it can provoke fetal malformations.
But we found no evidence that alcohol destroys eggs and leads to fetal malformations many years after drinking it. Therefore, we turned to a specialist with questions.
Elena Petrovna, the supply of eggs is formed in utero and for life, but they mature in the follicles. Can alcohol penetrate the follicles? Is it true that any dose of alcohol in some way damages the eggs?
- Approximately 20% of alcohol is rapidly absorbed through the upper gastrointestinal tract, and the remaining 80% through the intestines. Indeed, unchanged alcohol can easily penetrate into tissues and body fluids through blood vessels. Therefore, we can assume that alcohol can penetrate into the tissues of the ovary, including the follicle.
However, no one has ever measured the level of alcohol in the ovaries, in particular in the follicular fluid. Modern medicine has no data on what dose of alcohol penetrates the eggs and whether this leads to their damage.
If you think about the health of future children, then when can you still drink a glass of wine, and when in no case can you?
- It can be argued that taking alcohol in any form, even in small doses, is undesirable when planning a pregnancy.
But, as statistics show for countries where wine and weak alcoholic beverages are a long tradition of national cuisines and people's nutrition, the birth rate of children with congenital alcohol syndrome is not higher than in countries where alcohol is consumed in smaller quantities.
We do not yet have data on how much alcohol is safe, given the type of alcoholic beverage. Although we know that parental alcoholism is dangerous for future offspring.
How much are the eggs generally protected from the influence of harmful factors: smoking, stress, unhealthy diet?
- Nature has endowed a woman with millions of eggs, taking into account the fact that thousands will be lost every month during her lifetime. Of the three listed factors, the most dangerous is smoking, since about 100 substances contained in cigarettes enter the body. Many of them are toxic.
Stress and unhealthy diet (especially starvation) have no direct effect on eggs, but can lead to disruption of the maturation of germ cells, inhibit or turn off the reproduction program inherent in the human brain.
If you want to learn more about women's health and get accessible answers to your questions, we recommend reading the books by Elena Berezovskaya.
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