Surely you have seen in the media more than once headlines such as: "Scientists have shown that a glass of wine a day prolongs life". This is not worth believing for a number of reasons.
First, scientists don't "prove" anything. They test hypotheses under certain conditions and draw conclusions that are correct with a certain probability.
For example, a specific study could test how alcohol is related to the death of white European men. Even if as a result it turned out that a glass of wine a day is associated with a longer life expectancy, it is not a fact that this relationship is causal.
Perhaps some third factor is "to blame" for everything, for example income level: wealthy European men can afford a glass of wine a day, as well as quality food and good medicine. Or cause and effect are confused: it is not alcohol that improves health, but those who are relatively healthy can drink a little. Finally, in such a study, nothing is known about women, people of other races and nationalities, and there are still many unexplained factors. Therefore, there is no way to extend the findings of one study to all people.
The second point is that even if you look at all the studies, it turns out that there is no connection between small doses of alcohol and better health. There is a scientific method like meta-analysis: Scientists collect all the appropriate research on a specific topic, summarize it, and draw conclusions. In meta-analysis, the errors of individual scientific papers are smoothed out, their conclusions are more or less applicable to the life of each one of us. So based on meta-analyzes, there is no difference in the health of people who drink little and those who don't drink at all.
Therefore, alcohol in small doses, no more than 10 grams of ethanol per day (about a glass of wine, beer, or a glass of vodka) is unlikely to improve your well-being in any way, but it will not worsen much either.
Wait, but alcohol and a healthy lifestyle are incompatible!
I'll tell you more: modern life is generally not very compatible with a healthy lifestyle. If you live in a city and drive a car, you no longer lead a healthy lifestyle.
In a car, for example, there are so many carcinogens in the air: vodka never dreamed of! Running on a busy highway is more deadly than those 20 grams of pure alcohol. And if you smoke too, it doesn't matter what you drink.
This does not mean that you can drink as much as you want, since all is lost anyway.
"Beer" alcoholism is worse than "vodka" There is no "beer", "vodka", "pynonoir" and other types of alcoholism. There is only one type of this: dependence on ethanol.
For this dependence, it does not matter at all in what form alcohol will enter the body. Another thing is that, over time, the alcoholic's need for ethanol increases. There comes a point where a person can no longer drink as much beer or wine to achieve "condition", because the size of the stomach is limited. So most alcoholics eventually switch to vodka, it is ideal for them in terms of price / quality / effect.
Let's say switching to vodka is an indicator that the addiction has gone far enough. Few people start with spirits immediately; usually "light alcohol" is used initially, such as beer and wine. But just as there are no "light drugs", there is no "light alcohol" either - any drink can be addictive - and it's not far from vodka.
If you drink, don't mix drinks!
Again, the body doesn't care which drink you got the ethanol from. The severity of the poisoning (and subsequent hangover) depends only on the amount of pure alcohol you drink. Mix, don't mix; if you overdo it, it will be bad in the morning anyway.
Of course, there are nuances: some drinks contain "aggravating" substances, the same methanol. Most often it is found in products, especially homemade, the raw material of which served as fruits-berries, rich in pectin: pears, apples, cherries, to a lesser extent, grapes. Now, if you mix vodka and calvados, in the morning you will feel the effects of both ethanol and methanol. More or less the same after the cognac with beer: the hangover will simply be more "brightly colored", with "notes" of toxic substances typical of both drinks. So if there is a possibility, it is better not to mix. Just in case.
In the cold, you can warm up by drinking 100 grams.
You can not. On the contrary, you can freeze even more, to death.
Alcohol causes the vessels of the skin to expand through which heat is released. If you entered the room from the cold and drank a little, it can help you warm up faster - the blood vessels will expand, but the heat will stay with you, because it is also hot around. But if you drink alcohol on the street, the heat through the dilated vessels will quickly leave your body and you will freeze even more.
Due to this "special effect" of alcohol, drunkards freeze to death in the street even at + 20⁰C: the temperature of the air and the ground is lower than body temperature, the body emits too much heat too quickly and becomes too cold, to death.
Alcohol is a good sleeping pill
Alcohol actually dampens brain activity, which can make you feel drowsy and fall asleep quickly. But most likely that dream is brief and unproductive.
The effect of alcohol is similar to that of some sleeping pills. You fall asleep quickly, but the sleep phases are interrupted and you may wake up in the middle of the night and not fall asleep again until the morning.
The "alcoholic" sleep is not physiological, incomplete, it does not bring normal rest. So it is not recommended to use alcoholic beverages as sleeping pills and, in general, it is advisable not to drink immediately before going to bed.