The Nature of Alcohol in Chinese Medicine

I have had a number of memorable cocktails in my life. I cherish the memory of sipping a vodka gimlet while sitting on a deck overlooking Crater Lake. I can still taste the perfect margarita I had in Tucson, and treasure the afternoon spent in the Willamette Valley tasting pinot noirs at a small vineyard tucked in the countryside. While these moments may seem to be about the alcohol, they are really about celebrating fine moments.

As with most things, we are mixed in our feelings about alcohol. We want to label it good or bad. A little is good, right? Since there’s resveratrol in red wine, does that make it okay? Should I cut drinking out altogether? The ups and downs of food fads make it hard to know whether alcohol is an angel or a demon.

In Chinese medicine, alcohol has also been stereotyped as leaving your body damp and hot. Damp, in the inability to metabolize food and fluids well, so your body gets boggy and retains pockets of water or moisture. (Excess fat, edema, and even athlete’s foot are considered to be damp conditions.) Alcohol is also considered hot, in that the energetic end result of drinking it is that it warms you up, which can leave you restless, irritable, dried out, and…hot.  And while the damp heat rap is true to an extent, the nature of alcohol in Chinese medicine is a little more nuanced that that.

Let’s start with beer. Beer is actually energetically cool. It’s flavor is considered to be bitter and sweet, and while beer has the potential to be very dampening, the more bitter it is, the less dampening it actually becomes. Regardless of how light or dark your beer is, too much overwhelms your Chinese Spleen and Kidney, messing up your digestion and water metabolism, and leaves you with dampness issues. It just may take a little longer if what you’re drinking is really dark beer. Over time, that dampness has the potential to turn into heat in your body, regardless of beer’s cooling nature.

There’s good news for beer drinkers, though. Bitter dark beers are a actually considered to be slightly nourishing to your body–but should not be considered as nutritional as say…um, a meal. And, because beer is considered cool, it’s an ideal choice in the summer and in warm climates.

Wine is considered to energetically warm, with red wine being warmer than white. I can confirm this, as after I’ve had a glass of red wine, my ears turn red and hot. Wine, like all alcoholic drinks stimulate the movement of Qi, but the light nature of wine is helpful in stimulating digestion of a heavy or rich meal.

Red wine is known to have resveratrol, a powerful antioxidant. However to reap the benefits found in wine, you would have to drink a lot, so many people simply resort supplements to get enough resveratrol to impact their health. In Chinese herbal medicine, some herbs and formulas are prepared with wine to add wine’s warming, sweet, sour, and/or bitter properties to the mix.

Spirits, such as gin, vodka, scotch, and tequila are a different story from beer and wine. They are very good at moving stagnation and very dispersing. (Think of stagnation as your energetic engine seizing up…spirits definitely get things moving.) That said, spirits are hot and damp, and too much can quickly be toxic to your body. In Chinese medicine, over consumption of spirits stress your Liver and create a great deal of heat.

All alcoholic drinks are moving and dispersing in general. They loosen you up, give you a sense of well-being, and help you let go of the beast of a day you just had. However, like everything in Chinese medicine–and life in general–a little is okay, but too much is overwhelming.