Alcoholic drinks have a shit ton of calories, but I personally know many skinny people who drink an insane amount of beer & liquor. Even if they didn’t eat anything, the calories from the drinking alone should be enough for them to put on weight. How come they don’t? Does the body lose it’s ability to take in the energy properly if it’s mostly coming from alcohol?
In: 1535
In addition to the sheer volume and everybody fat points –
Malnutrition is common in chronic alcoholics, although its severity may depend on the social characteristics of the patient group under study and their severity of alcohol dependence. General malnutrition is often reflected in body weight loss, mainly of adipose and muscle tissue. This loss of nutritional reserves is partly due to inadequate protein intake in the face of continued alcohol ingestion. However, there is also evidence that ethanol is relatively ineffective as a source of calories, in spite of its high theoretical calorific value. An increased metabolic rate and tissue oxygen consumption following alcohol ingestion, without parallel increases in phosphate bond energy production or anabolic processes demonstrate the poor value of ethanol as an alternative calorie source to carbohydrate, fat or protein. This situation of nutritional imbalance is often compounded in chronic alcoholics by the effects that ethanol has on gastrointestinal function. These include increased mucosal permeability which may lead to ‘leakage’ of nutrients from the blood to the gut lumen, increased gut motility with increased transit times, and impaired salt and water absorption.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4052163/
Edit – sorry I actually didn’t read the sub this was coming from. Explained like youre 5 years into med school
Latest Answers