Glass Shapes & Their Impact

If you want to drink a bit less, then you might think it’s just as simple as limiting your intake. However, glass shapes can actually get in the way of these plans. These glasses can be surprisingly deceptive, causing you to drink more than you may think…

Glass Shapes: The Role They Play

Basic alcohol servings

To better understand how glass shapes can influence your drinking, it’s good to first know what a standard drink is. Each kind of alcoholic drink has a different standard serving size. This is because each drink has different levels of alcohol in them. For instance, a single 1.5-ounce shot of liquor can have up to 8 times the amount of alcohol as a 12-ounce can of beer!

However, many places which serve alcohol don’t match their glass sizes with serving sizes. One common example is that restaurant wine glasses tend to be 8-10-ounces, despite a standard wine serving only being 5-ounces. Plus, different brews can have different alcohol amounts. Craft beers can have nearly twice the amount of alcohol as normal beers, but are still usually served in the same kind of glasses.

Tricky glasses

Bars and other places like to serve some of their drinks in unconventional glass shapes. They may have very tall, wide, or even curvy glasses. As a result, it can be a lot harder for you to determine how much alcohol you’re drinking. These glasses can hold your alcohol in such a way which causes you to think you’re drinking less than you really are.

This means people tend to drink more when they have these fancy glasses. When someone is using a standard glass, they can usually tell how much they can drink before they hit their limit. Shaped glasses make this difficult, and so people end up underestimating the alcohol content and their intake, even if they’re trying to be responsible.

What you can do

​The best way to avoid those deceptive glass shapes is to just stick with what you know. Keep your drinks in glasses which match their standard serving size. If you know you’re at a place that likes to use those uncommon glasses, try to ask for a standard one. When that isn’t an option, just ask that they only fill it up to the regular serving amount. That way, you know exactly how much alcohol you’re drinking. ​

Alcohol Memory Loss: Potential Side Effects

Drinking too much can cause some pretty negative effects on the body. One area which can be hit hard by alcohol is a person’s memory. Alcohol memory loss is something you’ll want to be aware about if you drink. That way, you can see how it can have both a short- and long-term impact…

Alcohol Memory Loss: What’s The Connection?

Disrupting the brain

Alcohol memory loss occurs because of how drinking messes up normal brain activity. In particular, it’s because of the ethanol in alcohol. When you drink, certain parts of the brain will run a little slower. One of these parts happens to deal with our memory.

Basically, our brains transfer things we think are important from our short-term memory to our long-term memory. However, alcohol ends up disrupting this process. Furthermore, constant heavy drinking can damage the hippocampus, which is key to both our memory and our ability to learn things.

Short-term memory

Alcohol memory loss is most commonly seen in a person’s short-term memory. These issues usually occur after excessive or binge drinking. Most people who drink too much struggle to remember the details of what happened. This makes sense, considering how their brains can’t transfer than info to the long-term memory properly.

In particular, there’s two types of “blackouts” which can happen because of drinking. The first is a partial blackout, which can occur without too much drinking. This is when people to forget things that they normally would have no issue with. A complete blackout, meanwhile, is when you forget everything from when you were drinking.

Long-term memory

Our long-term memory can face impact through alcohol memory loss. Over time, those issues caused by drinking can become permanent. That means it becomes harder to commit things to memory, even when sober. Constant heavy drinking is also the number one cause of Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome.

This syndrome is the result of a vitamin B1 deficiency, which is most common in those who drink too much. Among its symptoms are constant feelings of confusion, amnesia, and issues with long-term memory. This kind of drinking can even end up causing a person’s brain to reduce in size!

Vaping Drinkers

These days, vapes seem to have replaced cigarettes as people’s preferred way of getting nicotine. However, this means that there’s a lot of vaping drinkers out there. While it may not appear good to mix these two things, there’s a reason why some people will…

Vaping Drinkers: Mixing Alcohol and Nicotine

Nicotine basics

It helps to understand what nicotine is in order to see why vaping drinkers are so common. Nicotine is a very addictive chemical, which can commonly be seen in tobacco products. For example, this includes cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, and hookahs. The CDC estimates that over 40 million Americans use some kind of nicotine-containing product!

Of course, that is due to how addictive nicotine is and the effect it has on the body. When nicotine enters the body, it sets of a chain reaction, releasing dopamine and helping a person feel calmer. Still, it and the methods used to get it can result in some serious health issues. Nicotine withdrawal in particular can cause irritability, anxiety, and issues with concentration.

Why use vapes?

In the past, most people would usually smoke while they drank. So why are there so many vaping drinkers now? After all, it’s not like cigarettes have gone away. Mainly, it comes down to a few different factors. Most notably, people can use their vapes indoors, where as they can’t do that with cigarettes. That means they can always get a fix, even when drinking. 

Furthermore, vapes are much more smaller, making them more convenient to carry around. They also come in a wide variety of flavors, and emit vapor rather than smoke. That means you don’t end with the nasty smell of cigarettes, nor the second-hand smoke which can also put others at risk. 

Use with alcohol

Vaping drinkers usually want to fulfill their nicotine cravings while drinking as they can become stronger than usual while intoxicated. This is because both alcohol and nicotine release dopamine. Due to this, a person may want to “double up” or drink more to get more impact.

Still, it’s not a good idea to mix the two. Both of the health issues each option brings becomes more pressing when combined. While alcohol is a depressant, nicotine causes the heart rate to increase and blood pressure to rise. This will place some serious strain on your body.

Opioid History

The current opioid crisis has left many wondering how exactly something like this happened. In order to better understand the crisis as it stands today, it helps to make sense of opioid history. Seeing how the drugs have changed can show us how they got to this point…

Opioid History: Track A Crisis

Opium trades

Opioid history really begins with natural opioids. Perhaps the best-known of these is opium. Ancient civilizations like the Egyptians used opium for pain treatment, as did many in early Europe. Even those like Hippocrates saw opium as a miracle pain killer.

Eventually, the demand for opium would get so high than nations would begin trading in it heavily. The British especially saw opium trading into China as a way to make a profit, despite the Chinese ban on the drug. These opium disputes would be the cause of not one, but two wars between the countries.

Rise of synthetics

While opium remained popular for some time, eventually the next step of opioid history would take place. Morphine, invented in 1804 from opium, really started the modern medical drug industry. Many people saw morphine as a “cure all” drug which could get rid of anything bothering them.

Over time, this would lead to the development of synthetic opioids. Drug companies marketed these new pills as life changers with no real downside. However, while people may not have realized it yet, they would soon. The reality was these drugs were very addictive, and could lead to a whole host of health issues. 

Modern problems

Seeing the effects these drugs had lead many countries to heavily regulated them. The U.S. was the same, making non-medical usage illegal in 1914. For a long time, people in the U.S. opposed any opioids unless they were a last-resort by a doctor. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that the original restrictions were relaxed. 

This then goes into the current phase of opioid history. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, many drug companies pushed for opioids again, claiming their new ones weren’t addictive. This lead to a rush of prescriptions, and in turn, a huge increase in addiction which is still seen today. 

Healthy Liver: Drinking Habits

While plenty of people like to drink, too much can take a toll on the body. One area in particular that both drinking and pill abuse can hurt is the liver. A healthy liver is important for your all-around health. Therefore, it’s important to know how you can avoid health issues…

Healthy Liver: Avoid Health Issues

The liver’s role

In order to understand why it’s important to have a healthy liver, it helps to know what it does. The liver is a pretty big organ; in fact, the only one’s that bigger is the skin! At any given time, the liver can be holding around one pint of blood, or 13% of the total in your body.

That’s because the liver’s main job is to filter our blood. Any blood coming in from the digestive track has to pass through this organ first, before being sent out to the rest of the body. While it does this, the liver also makes bile, which is an important component of the digestive process.

Liver and alcohol

Alcohol is one of most common reasons as to why some people don’t have healthy livers. As we drink, the stomach absorbs the alcohol and places it into the bloodstream. As this blood passes through the liver, the organ has to then filter out the alcohol (about 90%) and break it down. Usually, it takes one hour to process one alcoholic drink.

Still, there’s only so much alcohol the liver can process. The rest remains in our blood, which is how we get intoxicated. Constantly drinking too much and straining the liver can eventually damage it. This might start with something like scarring, before developing into liver disease or even cancer. 

Liver and pills

Prescription pills can harm a healthy liver in a similar manner. Certain ingredients in pills can cause damage to the liver in too high amounts. These can be both over-the-counter pills (such as Tylenol), or prescription ones such a opioids.

As with alcohol, one has to be careful about how many pills they take in a time span. If not, then they could cause damage without even being aware of it. As an extra safety measure, you should also avoid any alcoholic drinks when taking pills.