What happens to your gut when you drink alcohol? Plenty – and here’s why Dr. Frank Lipman, a leader in functional medicine (and Hearty Chief Medical Officer), believes that you need to keep your alcohol intake to an absolute minimum for optimal gut health:

1. Toxins damage the gut, preventing optimal function of gut bacteria.
2. Alcohol tanks your beneficial bacteria.
3. Alcohol consumption increases the number of bad bacteria in the gut.
4. Overdoing it on alcohol overwhelms the gastrointestinal tract.
5. It can also trigger ‘leaky gut’, or microscopic ‘holes’ in the gut lining that allow toxins to slip into the bloodstream and trigger inflammation throughout the body.

For more, check out his blog “5 Thoughts on How Alcohol Bangs Up Your Gut Microbiome”.