Latest / The Body Pod / Women & Alcohol: The Real Health Impact with Dr. Kimberly Mallett (Part 2)

Transcript

Women & Alcohol: The Real Health Impact with Dr. Kimberly Mallett (Part 2) · The Body Pod

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, This is Haley and I'm Lara and welcome
0:03
Speaker 1: to the Body Pod.
0:11
Speaker 2: Welcome back to part two with doctor Kimberly Mallet. So, Kim,
0:19
Speaker 2: let's talk about alcohol and sleep.
0:21
Speaker 3: It is not helpful, but it's deceiving. So I think,
0:27
Speaker 3: I think it's misleading and people get a false sense
0:32
Speaker 3: that alcohol can be helpful to sleep, but it really isn't.
0:38
Speaker 3: And that's that again. It just lures us in and
0:42
Speaker 3: plays a mean trick on us, is what it's doing.
0:45
Speaker 1: Well, you said in the last episode that you had
0:49
Speaker 1: some research of your own. Did that have to do
0:52
Speaker 1: with sleep?
0:53
Speaker 3: So anecdotal research for me? Yes, okay, so for me,
0:58
Speaker 3: so I fit all I check all your boxes right.
1:01
Speaker 3: So I'm late forties. I'm going to hold on to
1:05
Speaker 3: that as long as I can. I'm late forties. But yeah,
1:11
Speaker 3: sleep is I think challenging for so many reasons as
1:15
Speaker 3: we age. But alcohol isn't helpful. And I think where
1:22
Speaker 3: people are going to be surprised is in a couple areas.
1:25
Speaker 3: One we know that if I think anyone who's ever
1:29
Speaker 3: gotten intoxicated recognizes you're not going to get a good
1:34
Speaker 3: night of sleep if you've been drunk. That No one
1:37
Speaker 3: wakes up feeling refreshed after a night of heavy drinking,
1:41
Speaker 3: so that's no surprise. But what sometimes people start to
1:47
Speaker 3: fall in the trap of is thinking, oh, you know,
1:51
Speaker 3: just a glass of wine or a drink helps kind
1:55
Speaker 3: of make me tired and relax me and prepares me
1:59
Speaker 3: for sleep. So alcohol does have that sedative effect and
2:04
Speaker 3: it will do that for you. But the problem is
2:08
Speaker 3: once you get to sleep, the quality of your sleep
2:12
Speaker 3: turns to craft. So, you know, just to basically lay
2:17
Speaker 3: it out there. So what it does, I'm going to
2:19
Speaker 3: try to kind of to simplify this so it's not
2:21
Speaker 3: too nerdy and science. Ye, but during the first half
2:29
Speaker 3: of the night when we have alcohol in so it's
2:33
Speaker 3: in our system. Now, what it does is it's going
2:38
Speaker 3: to increase our slow wave sleep and it's going to
2:47
Speaker 3: suppress our rem sleep. So when we're sleeping, we cycle
2:53
Speaker 3: through all of these stages of sleep throughout the night.
2:57
Speaker 3: So people will wake up and think, oh, you know,
2:59
Speaker 3: I had a dream. You didn't just have one dream,
3:02
Speaker 3: that's just the dream you had most recent to waking up.
3:05
Speaker 3: You dream all throughout the night. You have different periods
3:08
Speaker 3: of sleep, lighter and deeper waves, of sleep. So alcohol
3:13
Speaker 3: is disrupting that full night of sleep. So in that
3:16
Speaker 3: first half that's what happens.
3:18
Speaker 1: But then.
3:22
Speaker 3: You metabolize, remember your livers working while you're sleeping, and
3:25
Speaker 3: once the alcohol leaves the system, the sedative affects diminish.
3:31
Speaker 3: So how many of us have woken up.
3:36
Speaker 1: Like every night in the morning. And it's not just.
3:40
Speaker 3: Going to be alcohol that's responsible for this, but it
3:42
Speaker 3: definitely can play a role here, and especially for people
3:47
Speaker 3: who are sensitive to it. So if you're now you're
3:50
Speaker 3: waking up in the night, and this is when it
3:54
Speaker 3: becomes challenging, So you're having these these sleep disruptions and
3:59
Speaker 3: these become more frequent. I did last time we talked,
4:06
Speaker 3: I talked about alcohol's a toxin. Right now, it can
4:10
Speaker 3: also destroy some of the neurons and impair them permanent.
4:14
Speaker 3: This can after prolonged use of this is a pattern
4:17
Speaker 3: where a lot of drinking is happening at night over
4:20
Speaker 3: a sustained period of time, it can permanently damage some
4:25
Speaker 3: of these neurons responsible for our sleep cycles, change our
4:31
Speaker 3: entire architecture of sleep. And what can happen is when
4:35
Speaker 3: people then try to abstain and think Okay, I'm going
4:40
Speaker 3: to stop drinking. The sleep problems don't get better because
4:46
Speaker 3: well sometimes they're just not going to and then they
4:50
Speaker 3: go back. It's easy to fall back into the pattern
4:53
Speaker 3: of I just need to get to sleep some and
4:55
Speaker 3: have a drink to kind of knock me out and
4:57
Speaker 3: sedate me.
4:58
Speaker 1: This is what I do. But with melotonin. Yeah, well.
5:04
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm a melotonin junkie myself. So I have
5:08
Speaker 3: my own drugs to choice these days, and those would
5:10
Speaker 3: be like melotonin and estrogen.
5:12
Speaker 1: And all the all the black market drugs. I mean,
5:18
Speaker 1: that's it's so hard though, because women in this perimenopause phase,
5:23
Speaker 1: like sleep party goes down out the window, like it
5:28
Speaker 1: already just is really rough for a lot of women,
5:31
Speaker 1: and so you tackle on alcohol and it's like double
5:35
Speaker 1: whammy exactly, and it's so hard to function the next day.
5:38
Speaker 1: And then we know that from a body composition phase
5:42
Speaker 1: it doesn't help us either, and then we don't have
5:44
Speaker 1: energy to go to the gym. Like it just is
5:46
Speaker 1: this like roll on effect of all these other issues
5:51
Speaker 1: that kind of contribute to it. What do you think
5:53
Speaker 1: of like drinking in the day, It clearly it messes
5:57
Speaker 1: up the night's sleep. But if you were like, well,
5:59
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have three drinks this week, that's what that's
6:03
Speaker 1: going to be my negotiation.
6:06
Speaker 3: I think if you can, if you want to drink,
6:09
Speaker 3: and you can get it as far away from your
6:11
Speaker 3: bedtime as possible, that's better. That's so think about it
6:16
Speaker 3: from a harm reduction approach. If you don't want it
6:19
Speaker 3: to impact your sleep, metabolize it out before you go
6:21
Speaker 3: to sleep. You don't want to go right up against bedtime.
6:26
Speaker 1: So how long is that four hours?
6:29
Speaker 3: Well, it depends how much you drink. The rule of
6:35
Speaker 3: them is an hour per drink to process. So you know,
6:42
Speaker 3: if you want to have a glass or two of wine,
6:44
Speaker 3: just think about when you're going to bed and give yourself.
6:48
Speaker 3: So when I say timing is everything right? How long
6:52
Speaker 3: does it take you to drink a glass of wine?
6:54
Speaker 3: And so it gets you get kind of in the
6:57
Speaker 3: weeds about like when did I start? When that I finish?
7:00
Speaker 3: And when is how well is my liver functioning depending
7:05
Speaker 3: on my age? As we age, our liver is not
7:07
Speaker 3: as efficient.
7:09
Speaker 4: So do we need to add thirty extra minutes?
7:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, So if you want to cushion it, cushion it
7:15
Speaker 3: if you want to be conservative. Great, but you think about, well,
7:18
Speaker 3: maybe there's a reason happy hours a thing because it's
7:21
Speaker 3: earlier in the night. Yeah, And I think, really what
7:25
Speaker 3: it is is knowing your limits. So it's this idea
7:28
Speaker 3: of can you just have a glass of wine or
7:33
Speaker 3: one cocktail and be done, or you know, maybe you're out,
7:37
Speaker 3: maybe it's a weekend, you're at a party, have a
7:40
Speaker 3: couple of drinks, be done. There's always going to be
7:43
Speaker 3: an occasion where maybe it's it's not the norm, and
7:49
Speaker 3: that's okay, it's one episode isn't going to be a
7:52
Speaker 3: deal breaker. But it's more that consistent pattern that I
7:56
Speaker 3: think we need to be aware of of what we're doing,
7:58
Speaker 3: what's our habit, what's our daily pattern looking like? Interesting?
8:05
Speaker 2: So what exactly is a drinking problem? What's considered if
8:09
Speaker 2: you want to talk about habits.
8:11
Speaker 3: And what's aud what qualifies? So it's changed, and it's
8:18
Speaker 3: funny a lot of times, I think our nomenclature or
8:23
Speaker 3: vernacular is an alcoholic is kind of what we describe
8:27
Speaker 3: and that's what we use. But really there's no such
8:29
Speaker 3: thing in the diagnostic world. So it's really based more
8:35
Speaker 3: on a continuum and there are When we look at
8:40
Speaker 3: a diagnosis of an aud there are eleven different criteria
8:43
Speaker 3: and these are a mixture of different things of the
8:49
Speaker 3: impact alcohol is having on your life from a social perspective, interpersonal,
8:57
Speaker 3: your daily functioning responsibilities, and our physical dependency on it.
9:03
Speaker 3: So if you endorse after you know, going through a
9:09
Speaker 3: clinical interview an assessment, if you endorse two or more
9:14
Speaker 3: of these issues, and those could be things like, you know,
9:18
Speaker 3: this is causing a problem between me and you know,
9:23
Speaker 3: family member, loved one, spouse not not you're missing out,
9:31
Speaker 3: You're not able to maintain responsibilities, work, school, those types
9:36
Speaker 3: of things, if you I think the big ones that
9:42
Speaker 3: I really take note of is if you are struggling
9:46
Speaker 3: with limiting your alcohol intake. So for example, you are
9:53
Speaker 3: trying to have you're setting out to have a couple
9:56
Speaker 3: of drinks and you're at a party and you just
10:00
Speaker 3: right through it and you're to the point of intoxication,
10:04
Speaker 3: and every time you start drinking, you just really can't
10:07
Speaker 3: stop limiting or always kind of going beyond what limits
10:12
Speaker 3: you're setting for yourself. If you're craving, if you're noticing
10:18
Speaker 3: that you're having withdrawal symptoms, like you get the shakes
10:23
Speaker 3: if you need it, you're feeling really irritable if you
10:25
Speaker 3: don't have it. These are those types of physical dependency
10:30
Speaker 3: symptoms that come into play. So once we start seeing those,
10:35
Speaker 3: those are in that realm of severe and that's when
10:39
Speaker 3: we need to talk about more serious treatment and intervention.
10:45
Speaker 3: When it's when people are starting to say, hey, I'm
10:47
Speaker 3: worried about you. You're just starting to notice that your
10:53
Speaker 3: tolerance actually tolerance. I think that is a big one
10:56
Speaker 3: that people miss really just don't understand. They think, oh,
11:02
Speaker 3: tolerance means that you need more alcohol to get the
11:06
Speaker 3: same effect. So a lot of people take that to
11:09
Speaker 3: mean as, oh, I can handle my alcohol, well, I
11:12
Speaker 3: don't get slothy, you know, I can drink, and they
11:16
Speaker 3: see it as a positive thing. It's really a big
11:20
Speaker 3: warning sign because your body's adapting to try to manage
11:25
Speaker 3: the amount of alcohol and not you're not seeing the effects.
11:31
Speaker 3: So you're not seeing the balance issues, the slurring, the judgment.
11:36
Speaker 3: Your body's starting to compensate. But what that means is
11:41
Speaker 3: you're not actually interpreting how intoxicated you are, so your
11:46
Speaker 3: BAC is still the same. If you were to drink
11:51
Speaker 3: four drinks and feel really intoxicated, but you maintain that
11:55
Speaker 3: and then you were to drink four drinks and not
11:56
Speaker 3: feel that as much anymore. People make a lot of
11:59
Speaker 3: a they think that they can drive, but your BAC
12:04
Speaker 3: is still what it would have been before. You're just
12:08
Speaker 3: not feeling the effects of it.
12:10
Speaker 1: Can you back up and say, since we did this,
12:13
Speaker 1: this is the second episode, just clarify what AUD stands for.
12:19
Speaker 1: And BAC.
12:20
Speaker 3: Au D is alcohol use disorder, so that would be
12:24
Speaker 3: like the diagnosis of having an alcohol problem.
12:28
Speaker 2: So au D is the technical term, but we the
12:32
Speaker 2: public says alcoholism or an alcoholic okay.
12:38
Speaker 3: And BAC is blood alcohol concentration. So that's something I
12:43
Speaker 3: think most people associate with that point oh eight level
12:46
Speaker 3: to legally, once we cross that threshold, we shouldn't be driving.
12:51
Speaker 3: That's when we're impaired. But the BAC has a huge range.
12:56
Speaker 3: So when we start to notice difficulty with just judgment,
13:06
Speaker 3: when we start to notice we have physical symptoms, so
13:09
Speaker 3: our reaction time isn't as good. And this is why
13:12
Speaker 3: it's point oh eight because that's around the time where
13:15
Speaker 3: reaction time all of these these things our brain is
13:20
Speaker 3: just doing automatically can't do anymore because alcohol is a
13:25
Speaker 3: toxin and it's it's a central nervous system depressant, and
13:29
Speaker 3: it's doing all these things in our brain. So it's making.
13:33
Speaker 1: Point oh eight, like, what does that end up being
13:35
Speaker 1: like one drink? No, I know it's probably different weight
13:40
Speaker 1: how much somebody weighs.
13:42
Speaker 3: Yes, that's why it's so important to really to actually
13:45
Speaker 3: pay attention to these what Anti TRIPAA puts out or
13:50
Speaker 3: you can find them online. There be ac charts where
13:53
Speaker 3: you can enter your weight, your gender, the amount of alcohol,
13:57
Speaker 3: and the time taken to drink, and it will give
13:59
Speaker 3: you an of what your BAC would be because we
14:04
Speaker 3: can't how we feel is not an accurate estimate because
14:10
Speaker 3: of things like tolerance. And so even though you may
14:14
Speaker 3: feel like alcohol isn't you know that you're not really
14:19
Speaker 3: experiencing a lot of the impact of alcohol. Your BAC
14:24
Speaker 3: is still the same as what it was before tolerance increased,
14:30
Speaker 3: so it still impacts those subtle things like reaction times.
14:35
Speaker 3: You were still not safe to drive a car, and
14:37
Speaker 3: if you've got pulled over you and you blew in
14:40
Speaker 3: a breathalyzer, you would potentially be over that legal limit.
14:46
Speaker 1: Laura, I have a question for you. Yes, did you.
14:50
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure Kim's read plenty about this, but
14:54
Speaker 1: I just had the fertility just came to mind when
14:57
Speaker 1: you like it, does this play into fertility when you
15:02
Speaker 1: were in that world?
15:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I went through all the rounds of IVF
15:07
Speaker 2: and infertility. They don't want you to drink when you're
15:12
Speaker 2: going through IVF, and yeah, it affects it.
15:17
Speaker 1: You probably already knew that, Kim.
15:19
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not sure of all the reasons, but I
15:23
Speaker 3: know again it's it's never going to help anything, right,
15:28
Speaker 3: It's not something that's going to make our fertility. It's
15:33
Speaker 3: not going to improve our physiological state or any of
15:37
Speaker 3: these health benefits. It's just that's not what alcohol does.
15:42
Speaker 3: But doesn't it doesn't it do something for the male
15:45
Speaker 3: like for sperm.
15:46
Speaker 4: I actually don't for them that. I'm just assuming.
15:52
Speaker 2: Our body functions better when we don't have drugs and
15:57
Speaker 2: alcohol in our system. Right. So it's like, if we
16:00
Speaker 2: want our bodies to draw the way it needs to do,
16:06
Speaker 2: then and if you're really working towards a goal like that,
16:09
Speaker 2: and you're spending all of this time and money and
16:12
Speaker 2: supplements and medications, you don't want to do anything that
16:17
Speaker 2: is going to.
16:19
Speaker 4: Be contradictive to that.
16:23
Speaker 3: Exactly. Yeah, So I think that's a key piece. So
16:27
Speaker 3: with alcohol use disorder, I mean, there are a lot
16:29
Speaker 3: of variety of things that can come into play, but
16:34
Speaker 3: it's the key here is is once it hits that
16:40
Speaker 3: severe point where physical dependency comes in, the way we
16:44
Speaker 3: deal with it is very different. And that means you
16:47
Speaker 3: are now in a world of where you pass the
16:52
Speaker 3: point of where you can drink moderately or light again.
16:57
Speaker 3: You can't just go back to being a social drinker.
17:01
Speaker 3: There's just this flip that or the switch that's flipped
17:04
Speaker 3: in our brain, and that's where that limiting comes in.
17:08
Speaker 3: And it's just this internal struggle that happens. So even
17:13
Speaker 3: people that may not have been physically dependent but felt
17:21
Speaker 3: like they really kind of struggled with their relationship with
17:24
Speaker 3: alcohol that I've worked with have kind of made a
17:28
Speaker 3: decision at some point to say, I think I'm going
17:31
Speaker 3: to choose just not to drink because it's easier for
17:35
Speaker 3: me to do that. I don't like having to constantly
17:38
Speaker 3: struggle with myself. And I think we can all relate
17:42
Speaker 3: to that. Some people think about sugar, or think about
17:46
Speaker 3: something that dietary that that we like if we some
17:54
Speaker 3: people can just have a little bit of chocolate every day.
17:56
Speaker 3: I know you do that, Hailey, and you're good.
17:59
Speaker 1: Associated you stop.
18:01
Speaker 3: Some people, if they have a little bit, it makes
18:03
Speaker 3: them want more, and then there's this constant struggle and
18:06
Speaker 3: they seem to not crave it as much if they
18:08
Speaker 3: don't have it at all. So it's really about knowing
18:13
Speaker 3: your body. And I think that's a good analogy. If
18:16
Speaker 3: we've talked a lot about alcohol, how should we treat it? Well?
18:20
Speaker 3: I kind of think about it maybe as like cake.
18:24
Speaker 3: How often do you eat cake? Do you eat cake
18:27
Speaker 3: every day? Probably?
18:29
Speaker 2: Not?
18:29
Speaker 4: You know?
18:29
Speaker 3: And if you do, do you eat the whole cake
18:31
Speaker 3: or just have a little piece of cake? And can
18:34
Speaker 3: we equate that to our relationship with alcohol.
18:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good analogy.
18:40
Speaker 2: You said in part one that you've a lot of
18:44
Speaker 2: your work has also been around ways to prevent someone
18:49
Speaker 2: from having aud What have you found has worked the best,
18:55
Speaker 2: Especially with these kids that are going off to college
18:58
Speaker 2: or that are in college, it has been the most effective.
19:04
Speaker 3: So I can talk about some of our intervention work
19:08
Speaker 3: and just so I do a lot of ideological work
19:11
Speaker 3: where I identify risk factors for coming into college and
19:15
Speaker 3: being a heavier drinker experiencing more consequences. And we've also
19:21
Speaker 3: done a lot of work with parent developed and tested
19:24
Speaker 3: and randomized clinical trials, parent based interventions and how parents
19:29
Speaker 3: can make a difference in their kids' life. So just
19:33
Speaker 3: some general risk factors, So we want to be very
19:36
Speaker 3: aware of risk factors and some that we can manage behaviorally.
19:41
Speaker 3: There are certain ones we can and certain ones we can't.
19:43
Speaker 3: So for example, family history would be a risk factor. Well,
19:47
Speaker 3: we can't really change that, right, but we can be
19:50
Speaker 3: aware of it. And once we know if we have
19:53
Speaker 3: that risk factor, when we talk to it to young
19:58
Speaker 3: adults or teens or parents are talking with them, it's
20:01
Speaker 3: important to kind of point these risk factors out and
20:04
Speaker 3: that it's important that how to make decisions about alcohol.
20:08
Speaker 3: The second is age of onset. So we know that
20:12
Speaker 3: the younger you are when you start drinking, the more
20:16
Speaker 3: at risk you are for developing risky drinking patterns potentially
20:21
Speaker 3: and then going into adulthood with those. So the longer
20:24
Speaker 3: we can delay that the better. The average drinking age
20:29
Speaker 3: or modal drinking age is about sixteen in the States
20:34
Speaker 3: and in other countries. You have no idea. How much
20:38
Speaker 3: I hear about what about Europe they let those kids drink.
20:41
Speaker 3: And I'll talk about that in a second. Because we've
20:44
Speaker 3: done trials and I've published work on this very topic.
20:52
Speaker 3: The one thing that parents can do, the most important
20:56
Speaker 3: thing parents can do to lower their kids' risk of
20:59
Speaker 3: going into college and being a heavy drinker. So to
21:02
Speaker 3: protect the most protective thing is to not be permissive.
21:07
Speaker 3: Do not give your kids alcohol, even tastes. Like what
21:13
Speaker 3: we're finding is that permissiveness to drink. And this was
21:18
Speaker 3: actually surprising to us. This is this is a little
21:21
Speaker 3: bit counterintuitive, but when you allow your kids to drink,
21:27
Speaker 3: even in small doses, they may be really responsible when
21:32
Speaker 3: they're with you, but that's not going to necessarily translate
21:37
Speaker 3: to when they're in a college environment. And that environment
21:40
Speaker 3: is so so different than being at home with your parents.
21:48
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter if you're the best communicator, if you
21:51
Speaker 3: monitor your kid's behavior, if you model good behavior, and
21:59
Speaker 3: we want you to do all those things, right, those
22:01
Speaker 3: are all good. If you do all those and you
22:06
Speaker 3: are permissive and say, oh, you know, yeah, you can
22:08
Speaker 3: have a glass of wine because it's a holiday or
22:11
Speaker 3: a wedding or you can have a taste of this
22:13
Speaker 3: or that that basically makes everything up. It counters all
22:20
Speaker 3: the good stuff you're doing.
22:21
Speaker 1: I would not have thought of that. I thought I
22:25
Speaker 1: would have thought it was the opposite, where it's like,
22:28
Speaker 1: it's not so taboo. But that's funny that you say that,
22:31
Speaker 1: because I just had a conversation with one of our
22:33
Speaker 1: friends last weekend and she was like, well, you know,
22:38
Speaker 1: like the all the sixteen year olds, all these parents
22:42
Speaker 1: you know, will just rent a party bus for prom
22:45
Speaker 1: and they're just like, well, at least they're safe and
22:47
Speaker 1: they're going to be doing it anyways. No, don't do
22:50
Speaker 1: it parents, Okay.
22:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, well the research would say do not do that.
22:55
Speaker 3: There's never And people will say, well, what about Europe
22:58
Speaker 3: and this and that, Well, and you're their kids start
23:01
Speaker 3: initiating around fourteen and they have much higher rates of
23:06
Speaker 3: alcohol use disorder in Europe. Yeah, so no, And this
23:16
Speaker 3: research is consistent because we have colleagues all over the
23:19
Speaker 3: world that you know, in the Netherlands, we have talked
23:23
Speaker 3: about this with permissiveness. All the data are consistent here
23:27
Speaker 3: across studies, in our own studies, other studies coming out
23:31
Speaker 3: of other labs, other parts of the world. Permissiveness is
23:34
Speaker 3: not protective, this idea of well, at least we know
23:37
Speaker 3: where they are, they're drinking at home or they're not
23:39
Speaker 3: going to drive. It's not protective.
23:43
Speaker 4: It's interesting.
23:43
Speaker 3: It's putting the kids at higher risk.
23:46
Speaker 1: Lara, like, now you can I know you have all
23:50
Speaker 1: this information for raising kids that we know.
23:53
Speaker 2: I was actually talking to my sister about this the
23:55
Speaker 2: other day, like, how do you have your kids have
23:58
Speaker 2: a healthy relationship with alcohol where it's not taboo. It's
24:02
Speaker 2: not you know, because kids want to do what they
24:04
Speaker 2: don't want to do or what they're told not to do. Right,
24:07
Speaker 2: So that's I'm happy to know this.
24:12
Speaker 1: Wow, is it the same with a sex like parents
24:16
Speaker 1: that have again same friend That was like, oh, and
24:20
Speaker 1: there's just like a condom drawer at like you know,
24:24
Speaker 1: one of the friend's house. This was new to me.
24:27
Speaker 1: I never experienced any of these things.
24:29
Speaker 3: But I don't know that I don't know about this translation.
24:33
Speaker 3: And I do want to give a caveat here where
24:36
Speaker 3: if you're a kid, so I think there's a way
24:39
Speaker 3: in which you handle the permissiveness issue. So if your teens,
24:42
Speaker 3: to say, your high school teen is living at home
24:46
Speaker 3: and goes out, you get a call from said teen
24:50
Speaker 3: saying I can't drive. You know, I'm stuck at this place.
24:56
Speaker 3: I need a ride. Of course, you go make sure
25:00
Speaker 3: or your kid is safe. It's not saying, you know,
25:02
Speaker 3: be militant and i'll I can talk about some other research.
25:06
Speaker 3: Because there's this line right about being rigid authoritarian type
25:12
Speaker 3: of parent, where that's I said, you know, don't do
25:15
Speaker 3: this because I said so, rather than authoritative, which who says,
25:20
Speaker 3: you know, don't do this, but here's why. And having
25:24
Speaker 3: conversations with your kid about your rationale and your reasoning
25:27
Speaker 3: because you care about them. There's a very big difference
25:31
Speaker 3: between how that pans out with alcohol use, because I
25:36
Speaker 3: said so puts kids more at risk the authoritative who
25:40
Speaker 3: says I'm not going to allow you to drink because
25:45
Speaker 3: you know your brain's still developing until you're in your twenties.
25:48
Speaker 3: Alcohol hurts that it's not safe. It increases your risk
25:52
Speaker 3: of having problems with alcohol. Alcohol is really not a
25:54
Speaker 3: safe substance. And I care about you and I love you,
25:57
Speaker 3: and so I'm doing this because it's in your best interest.
26:01
Speaker 3: So that's a very different communication style. I was raised
26:05
Speaker 3: in number one household. Yeah, but that authoritative or that
26:12
Speaker 3: number two style is much more protective and it gets
26:17
Speaker 3: the message across because you want your kids to understand
26:19
Speaker 3: how to make good decisions about alcohol for themselves, So
26:22
Speaker 3: helping them with the decision making process and understanding the
26:28
Speaker 3: risk around alcohol is so important so they can make
26:30
Speaker 3: the decisions for themselves. But that being said, you make
26:34
Speaker 3: sure your kids safe. You go pick them up from
26:36
Speaker 3: the party. You don't say no, I said, don't drink,
26:39
Speaker 3: so you're on your own. You know, you don't want
26:40
Speaker 3: to be militant. But then the next day the conversation
26:44
Speaker 3: gets revisited of you know, I know we talked about
26:50
Speaker 3: not drinking and and I'm glad you called me and
26:52
Speaker 3: I appreciate that, but we need to have another conversation
26:55
Speaker 3: about you drinking because you're underage, and that really goes up.
26:59
Speaker 3: I think what we found is this idea of not
27:03
Speaker 3: being permissive until they're twenty one. But I work in
27:08
Speaker 3: a world of a huge college town. We see all
27:13
Speaker 3: sorts of things happen. I mean, football is a huge deal, tailgating,
27:18
Speaker 3: and you see a variety of things happening, like kids
27:26
Speaker 3: drinking with their parents that are underage and just all
27:30
Speaker 3: sorts of behaviors that parents I think are always well
27:35
Speaker 3: intentioned and want to do what's best for their kids,
27:39
Speaker 3: but they just don't have the data to make to
27:42
Speaker 3: understand that long term impact. And so we actually did
27:46
Speaker 3: a study where we did a zoom call. It was
27:49
Speaker 3: an intervention with the parents where we talked about this
27:53
Speaker 3: very idea of permissiveness, talk to them about their family
27:57
Speaker 3: rules and what impact this had on their risk for
28:04
Speaker 3: their kids as their kids were about to start their
28:06
Speaker 3: freshman year up in state before they brought them in.
28:11
Speaker 3: And what we found was this short intervention quickly it
28:17
Speaker 3: reinforced parents who were not permissive, which is good. And
28:21
Speaker 3: then it actually was in a short ten of like
28:26
Speaker 3: fifteen minute conversation switched parents' perception of this and their
28:32
Speaker 3: intentions about permissiveness very quickly. And now we've looked at
28:37
Speaker 3: how it translates to what happens when the kids are
28:41
Speaker 3: in college, and so we looked at it in the
28:44
Speaker 3: short term their first and second year, and we saw
28:48
Speaker 3: positive benefits of this intervention. So we have now submitted
28:52
Speaker 3: a continuation of this study that's under review to start
28:57
Speaker 3: looking at aud issues as these students are graduating and
29:03
Speaker 3: going into adulthood, so we're looking at can parents actually
29:06
Speaker 3: be protective and preventing AUD from developing or these high
29:11
Speaker 3: risk behaviors from potentially leading into AUD.
29:17
Speaker 4: When is that research going to come out in a
29:19
Speaker 4: few years.
29:20
Speaker 1: I'm so interesting.
29:21
Speaker 3: Well, the preliminary, the data on the parents we're already
29:26
Speaker 3: analyzing and writing up. But the continuation to actually track
29:30
Speaker 3: these students long term to see the long term effects
29:35
Speaker 3: of this parent intervention that we'll know more about the
29:41
Speaker 3: next year six months to a year. But we're tracking
29:44
Speaker 3: them just because we want to keep them in the
29:47
Speaker 3: sample so we hopefully get the funding and then can
29:49
Speaker 3: follow them to look at these bigger, more chronic issues
29:54
Speaker 3: and can we prevent those from developing by using parents.
29:58
Speaker 4: What is the most interesting or surprising.
30:04
Speaker 2: Fact or data that you have found in your thirty
30:09
Speaker 2: years of research dealing with alcohol doesn't have to be
30:12
Speaker 2: with college kids like anything, so you can think of.
30:19
Speaker 3: I mean, just to name one of them, is this
30:21
Speaker 3: idea of permissiveness that if parents are permissive, it basically
30:27
Speaker 3: takes over and it just wipes out the beneficial effects
30:31
Speaker 3: of all the other good parenting behaviors that we encourage
30:35
Speaker 3: and are so important. I'd say a couple things we're surprising,
30:42
Speaker 3: and some are pretty simple. But in my college student work,
30:45
Speaker 3: I look primarily at consequences that people report experiencing. And
30:52
Speaker 3: one study I did, I ask them how negative was this?
30:56
Speaker 3: Because as researchers and clinicians, we alway just call these
31:01
Speaker 3: negative consequences, and what I'm referring to our things like vomiting,
31:06
Speaker 3: blacking out, hangovers, having regretted sexual experiences, you know. And
31:13
Speaker 3: so I asked this question because what I noticed in
31:18
Speaker 3: previous work that was also surprising is when you ask
31:23
Speaker 3: people who experience these things how much would you have
31:27
Speaker 3: to drink to have it happen again? They would they
31:32
Speaker 3: would say more than what they drank the last time
31:37
Speaker 3: it happened. So they weren't curbing their behavior, They weren't
31:42
Speaker 3: learning from their mistake, so to speak, right, They weren't saying, oh,
31:46
Speaker 3: that happened, I don't want that to happen again. And
31:48
Speaker 3: we make this assumption that these negative consequences are aversive, right,
31:53
Speaker 3: and that people, when they experience them are going to think, oh, okay,
31:57
Speaker 3: I'm going to be careful next time, or drink less.
32:01
Speaker 3: Well they're not. They'd actually and heavier drinkers just blew
32:05
Speaker 3: through it like they just they kept drinking more. So
32:10
Speaker 3: I asked a simple question, and when people would report
32:13
Speaker 3: consequence that, I'd ask how positive or negative was this experience?
32:18
Speaker 3: And you'd be shocked that a lot of people rate
32:22
Speaker 3: these consequences as neutral and sometimes even positive. And we're
32:26
Speaker 3: talking about blackouts. Blackouts are another like tolerance is kind
32:32
Speaker 3: of misunderstood, so are blackouts. Blackouts is when we drink.
32:37
Speaker 3: Usually they happen at around a bac ofo point three
32:42
Speaker 3: or so, depending on your tolerance level. If you have
32:44
Speaker 3: a higher tolerance, they're going to take longer to kick in.
32:47
Speaker 3: But it's when you've had so much alcohol that your
32:51
Speaker 3: brain has to now make a decision keep you alive
32:55
Speaker 3: by breathing or make memories. Oh my gosh, and it
33:00
Speaker 3: shuts down your ability to make memories. You're still completely functional,
33:04
Speaker 3: like you're still walking, breathing, doing stuff. It's not passing out,
33:09
Speaker 3: it's just you're not creating. You're not able to remember
33:13
Speaker 3: what happened the night before. These are that's a big deal.
33:19
Speaker 3: But they don't see it as so much a negative.
33:24
Speaker 3: Some people do, but some people don't. And again, people
33:27
Speaker 3: who don't see negative consequences are negative researchers. Negative consequences
33:32
Speaker 3: as negative or a versive are less likely to want
33:37
Speaker 3: to avoid them. Right, So then they drink more and
33:41
Speaker 3: this cycle starts going.
33:44
Speaker 1: Okay, that was totally news to me. It's incredible how
33:49
Speaker 1: the body will take over despite what we try to
33:54
Speaker 1: be like, we can trick it, and you can't do
33:59
Speaker 1: it will just keep well doing its best to keep
34:04
Speaker 1: you alive.
34:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there that's alcohol poisoning is a very real thing.
34:08
Speaker 3: So even at lower levels like point three, but between
34:13
Speaker 3: point three and too point four you can kill you
34:17
Speaker 3: you will, you can. That's alcohol poisoning where it shuts
34:22
Speaker 3: down your ability to Your brain can't function, it can't
34:26
Speaker 3: keep you alive, it can't breathe, your respiratory SYSM.
34:29
Speaker 2: So it can be a lower amount than what you
34:32
Speaker 2: really think, is what I'm getting from that comment. Also,
34:38
Speaker 2: it depends on the person so well. For someone who
34:42
Speaker 2: is an over drinker and consistently over and over again.
34:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, but their tolerance is going to go up so
34:53
Speaker 3: their body gets better. So tolerance is really your body
34:57
Speaker 3: trying to protect itself, right, it's trying trying to continue
35:01
Speaker 3: to function and keep you safe and alive even though
35:07
Speaker 3: you're drinking. So it's trying to adapt to the amount
35:10
Speaker 3: of alcohol. So if you're a heavy drinker and you're
35:14
Speaker 3: maintaining that, over time, your body's going to try to
35:17
Speaker 3: get better at managing the side effects than those depressant effects.
35:24
Speaker 1: So general adaptation syndrome that happens with everything. Yeah, this
35:29
Speaker 1: is no different.
35:30
Speaker 3: But you can reset tolerance. So if you stop drinking
35:34
Speaker 3: even we get it at lower levels too. You know,
35:37
Speaker 3: if you think about just having a glass or two
35:40
Speaker 3: of wine, you may not notice it hits you as
35:44
Speaker 3: much if you're drinking consistently. But say you do dry
35:48
Speaker 3: January and then you have a glass of wine in February,
35:52
Speaker 3: you may think, oh, who, that just hit me a
35:54
Speaker 3: little bit more than it used to. That's because you
35:57
Speaker 3: don't have tolerance anymore. Your tolerance went back down to baseline.
36:02
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious about what is going to happen
36:06
Speaker 1: if this like pendulum swings the other way, and like
36:11
Speaker 1: if we find a new way to like a pill
36:16
Speaker 1: or you know something. I know those things are already
36:18
Speaker 1: out there, but it seems like we're as humans it's
36:23
Speaker 1: hard to really give up something that we really like, y,
36:26
Speaker 1: so we just find another way that could be.
36:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know this idea of well how can
36:34
Speaker 3: we what can we do to reduce our alcohol use?
36:38
Speaker 3: And when I start working with someone who uses alcohol
36:43
Speaker 3: to cope or has it in their life for it's
36:48
Speaker 3: there for a reason, So you don't just take it away,
36:51
Speaker 3: you know, just say okay, just stop drinking. That's why
36:54
Speaker 3: people just don't stop drinking because they don't have anything
36:57
Speaker 3: healthy to replace it. So what can take the place
37:01
Speaker 3: of alcohol that's healthy and in our life in general,
37:05
Speaker 3: we want to think about exercise, you know, social support, therapy,
37:12
Speaker 3: finding other ways to manage stress if alcohols become the
37:16
Speaker 3: go to. So if you're feeling stress, maybe going for
37:20
Speaker 3: a walk or starting to practice different mindfulness skills, starting
37:25
Speaker 3: to do things that take the place and manage your
37:28
Speaker 3: stress in a healthy way so that you don't feel
37:31
Speaker 3: like you need it as much.
37:34
Speaker 2: And those would be tips for someone who is listening
37:37
Speaker 2: and thinking, you know what, I think I am drinking
37:40
Speaker 2: too much and I would like to take it away,
37:45
Speaker 2: like not drink anymore in my life.
37:49
Speaker 3: Or just reduce it, you know, drink for more social
37:54
Speaker 3: or celebratory reasons not drink because I've had a hard day.
37:59
Speaker 1: I think that that's that wrapping it up. That is
38:03
Speaker 1: something that I try and you're you're going to be
38:06
Speaker 1: in in the course too. But the negotiating with yourself
38:11
Speaker 1: that we talked about in the behavior change module about
38:15
Speaker 1: you know, maybe pulling back and being like, okay, well
38:18
Speaker 1: maybe I won't drink have one drink every night, but
38:21
Speaker 1: instead of like it's also hard too because you want everyone,
38:26
Speaker 1: like every woman to have a place and and not
38:29
Speaker 1: feel kind of ostracized as she's like, well I'm not
38:34
Speaker 1: going to you know, give up alcohol completely and and
38:39
Speaker 1: that's okay. That's an individual decision that you have to
38:41
Speaker 1: out like wigh the risk versus the reward. Maybe the
38:45
Speaker 1: timing if you want to help, you know, with sleep.
38:49
Speaker 1: I think it's it's kind of great at that it
38:51
Speaker 1: that it there's a lot of talk about circadian rhythm,
38:55
Speaker 1: and when we talk about circadian rhythm and eating around
38:59
Speaker 1: that window naturally, if we put alcohol in there, then
39:04
Speaker 1: two to three hours before we go to bed, we're
39:07
Speaker 1: done eating, we're done drinking, and it just sets us up.
39:10
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know it's kind of interesting how
39:14
Speaker 1: it naturally from the beginning of time the rhythm that
39:19
Speaker 1: we normally had, and now we're like swinging right back
39:22
Speaker 1: to the very basics.
39:23
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, but again, it's not that if someone chooses
39:32
Speaker 3: to drink or has a glass of wine every day,
39:35
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean that there's something wrong or a problem.
39:39
Speaker 3: But it's really about a whole big picture. If someone
39:43
Speaker 3: feels like, Okay, you know, I'm thinking about this a
39:48
Speaker 3: little bit too much, or I'm planning things around my drinking,
39:52
Speaker 3: just you kind of get a sense of when it
39:58
Speaker 3: stops being optional or when it becomes too much of
40:02
Speaker 3: a habit and you want to check in on it.
40:04
Speaker 3: But some people just really like the taste of it, and.
40:11
Speaker 2: I get that.
40:12
Speaker 1: I like it too.
40:13
Speaker 3: I like a glass of wine. So what I often
40:15
Speaker 3: recommend is focus on quality rather than quantity. And this
40:20
Speaker 3: is where mindful eating comes in. If you're going to
40:22
Speaker 3: have a glass of wine, get a good one, enjoy it.
40:25
Speaker 3: If you're going to have a cocktail, get a nice
40:27
Speaker 3: cocktail and really enjoy the taste. Try to slow down
40:32
Speaker 3: your drinking so a drink lasts longer. Sometimes people are
40:35
Speaker 3: really fast drinkers. If you can find a beverage that,
40:42
Speaker 3: like red wine, isn't cold, you're not trying to drink
40:45
Speaker 3: it before the fizz runs out. If you can find
40:47
Speaker 3: something that you can sip and savor, it makes it
40:51
Speaker 3: last a little bit longer and maybe you're going to
40:52
Speaker 3: have one drink instead of two. So just those types
40:56
Speaker 3: of negotiating skills can be helpful as a method of production,
41:01
Speaker 3: because we know the less we drink, the better it
41:03
Speaker 3: is for us.
41:05
Speaker 1: All I can hear is my mom growing up saying,
41:08
Speaker 1: you know, Haley, moderation in all things.
41:12
Speaker 4: Which is true. Yeah, mindful eating my little drinking mom.
41:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I.
41:17
Speaker 4: Actually appreciate that you're this expert in this space and.
41:23
Speaker 2: You enjoy a glass of wine because it makes it
41:27
Speaker 2: not this shameful thing when you talk about it.
41:31
Speaker 4: You know, like you can have a great relationship with it.
41:34
Speaker 4: It doesn't have to be this negative, horrible thing. It's
41:38
Speaker 4: just being thoughtful about it.
41:43
Speaker 3: It is intentional, so it's being intentional, exactly intentional, and
41:49
Speaker 3: you decide when you have a glass of wine. The
41:51
Speaker 3: glass of wine doesn't decide when you have it, so
41:54
Speaker 3: that it's knowing that relationship. And don't get me wrong,
41:58
Speaker 3: I mean, the forties was a t where I'm like, huh,
42:00
Speaker 3: I'm going to join some wine clubs because the quality
42:04
Speaker 3: over quantity was so important. I'm going to have a
42:08
Speaker 3: glass of wine. I'd rather have a really good one
42:12
Speaker 3: and have fewer. And that's just kind of a choice
42:18
Speaker 3: that I am in.
42:19
Speaker 2: Kim.
42:19
Speaker 4: I love that.
42:21
Speaker 1: Don't you want Kim to be your Yes?
42:23
Speaker 4: I'm like, what should we talk about?
42:25
Speaker 1: She's been mine unofficially, She's talked me off the ledge
42:29
Speaker 1: multiple times since I started my business, Hailey, Okay, let's
42:32
Speaker 1: let's break it down. And I'm like quitting.
42:38
Speaker 3: I'm glad you didn't. I'm glad you stuck with it, Hailey,
42:42
Speaker 3: and I think so many other women are too.
42:45
Speaker 2: Boy.
42:45
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for your time, Kim. I'm
42:48
Speaker 1: so thrilled to know you personally and just for what
42:53
Speaker 1: you give back, you know, to everyone really, But I
42:59
Speaker 1: love the feet email data too that you're just researching,
43:03
Speaker 1: but they're also helping on the therapy site as well. Like,
43:05
Speaker 1: you're just a well rounded, amazing person, and I'm super
43:10
Speaker 1: grateful that I know you. So thank you for joining us,
43:14
Speaker 1: thank you for having me, thanks for listening.
43:18
Speaker 2: If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a
43:21
Speaker 2: five star review and sharing the body Pod with your friends.
43:26
Speaker 1: Until next time,