The Art of Healthy Eating

Lesson Eighteen

Alcohol doesn’t just affect your liver. It’s toxic to your brain. Your pancreas. Your muscles. And yep, you guessed it, your gut.

Alcohol is at its most concentrated in the stomach. Especially when there’s no food there. So when you drink a lot, it can cause irritation and inflammation of your stomach lining. That’s why it’s important to be sensible with the amount you drink. And you should always make sure you have at least one alcohol-free day a week.

Thankfully, you need never have a Yakult-free day. In fact, we recommend you drink a whole bottle every morning.

Action
Follow these tips to help you drink sensibly.

• Offer to drive so that you can stick to non-alcoholic drinks all night.
• Start a night out with a couple of non-alcoholic drinks.
• Mix wine with soda or sparkling water.
• Don’t drink neat spirits – always add a mixer like orange juice or tonic water.
• Pace yourself and have one non-alcoholic drink after every alcoholic one.