The dear Lord has given us a wonderful combination of ingredients, and critters to make a beverage we all enjoy, but just a small pitch out there to remember to drink in moderation. i am losing my second patient in the past 6 months to alcoholic cirrhosis. In both cases they are ladies under age 50 with kids i also take care of. it is gut wrenching, and miserable to watch. I consider all of you to be a friend one way or another, and I would hate to see any of you suffer like this. (and no, i dont consider it a risk of the hobby like skydiving, drag racing etc).
I have my liver enzymes checked every year, if that’s a good indicator and I think it is. They have gone up a little as I get older, but so do the charts. I guess it’s a natural part of aging.
that is usually the first clue to there being a problem. this last patient was fine a year ago and boom went south. she had been a previous alcoholic and had stopped for many years then when she started drinking again things progressed rapidly.
I can only imagine how hard it is to be a doctor. Particularly if you actually care about your patients. and it sounds like you do. Hang in there and remember that we need people like you. I promise to be moderate in my drinking and never take tylenol in temporal proximity of alcahol (I honestly just don’t take tylenol to be on the safe side anyway). My grandmother died from cirhosis after many years of destructive drinking habits. Although I suspect had she had a doctor like you she might have held on a bit longer as the doctor she had gave her high doses of tylenol for paid when she was in the hospital before they identified the liver damage.
man, that is NOT good. threads like these make me reconsider beer altogether. :-\
thanks for the kind words. someone told me once i shouldn’t care about my patient’s more than they care about themselves. that is easier said than done. the hard part is i am a simple family practice guy and i see the kids of these people too. often times they have been classmates of my kids. ugh. watched the intervention heroin highway the otherday and a girl was on it that my son dated briefly. hard to fathom.
don’t give up on beer. i learned in the navy that if you don’t control how much you drink, someone else will.
Lately I’ve taken to using smaller glasses and cut my consumption in half or less. Being in the industry all sorts of scary thoughts run through my head when I consider my liver and the barrage of beer it has to deal with. The brush with gout led me to abandon the fully stocked house bar concept. :o
My understanding is that cirrhosis isn’t inevitable and only occurs in a percentage of those that drink heavily. Women also appear to be more susceptible to the disease. We get quite a few patients with ascites. Ever see that emaciated guy with a gigantic swollen abdomen? That person probably has cirrhosis and end-stage liver disease. Could be hepatitis or other ailments but most likely caused by ETOH. Usually we get them before and after a paracentesis. Hopefully none of us have to experience this procedure… 
I’ve seen as much as 8 liters drained out of a patient.
I wouldn’t go that far man…just be moderate about it. There’s no reason to get all paranoid and be one of those anti-alcohol kooks. Man, I don’t get those people. It’s like one drink equals alcoholic to them; fakkin’ insane.
Moderation in all things
nah - don’t worry - I won’t go all Puritanical. Beer has been very, very good to me and that’s not even taking into account actually drinking a drop.
What I said was more rhetorically introspective, in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. Weithman’s point resonated well with me - just a friendly reminder to keep it in moderation.
We’re fakkin insane here in America. Certain tests I’ve taken had questions like “do you drink and how much”. Only found out later that if one answers more than 1-2 drinks a week they are considered to be alcoholic. Those tests wouldn’t past muster in Europe for sure. It’s our puritanical heritage and a holdover from the teetotaler movement. Bastards.
Oh my gad…that’s insane. Who comes up with this stuff? Fak do they know?
My grandfather died of liver cancer, and he never drank a drop of alcohol in his entire life. Granted, cancer is different than cirrhosis, but it does illustrate the point that sometimes life doesn’t make sense. My mom is a doctor too, so I have mucho respect for the small family practice guys. Moderation in all things is wise. I limit myself to 2 beers a night, no more, no less.
I actually worry less about the one or two self-made homebrews I might have in an evening than I do when judging some of the entries in the beer competitions.
I do wonder at times whether the fusels in uncontrolled (i.e., too high) temp fermenation beers and specialty, smoked, and wood-aged beers might be dangerous to my health. Really–doesn’t anyone else who is a BJCP judge ever wonder if, one day, you might be sampling or drinking a stranger’s beer that, knowingly or unknowingly, is chock full of potential carcinogens, which may or may not even be detectable by aroma, appearance, taste, mouthfeel, etc.?
makes me say hmmm ;D
That’s a very good reason to be concerned as a judge. There could be chemicals, fusels and who knows what else in a beginner’s beer or an “experienced” brewer’s beer that got “unexpectedly” bad scores during the last competition.
although these things might be present and of some concern. i doubt that the load is significant compared to the alcohol outright. i would be more concerned about someone doing something deliberate to a beer or doing something that would lead to food poisoning. (bad infected beer etc).FWIW, i have never had a patient who had a colon cancer or something similar from eating to much burnt beef from their grill.
Doesn’t happen. Remember, beer was what everyone drank, young and old, all day long, in the days when the water wasn’t safe to drink.
I agree that “infected beers” can be downright nasty, but they won’t kill ya.
I was thinking more along the lines of someone doing something malicious or really stupid (e.g., “Hey, I bet I could make a gruit out of {XXXXXXXX} flowers, leaves, and/or wood/bark”). Even appropriate substances, when taken to extremes have given me pause as to the maturity and intent of the individual entering the beer/mead. I’ve tasted a jalepeno pilsner–delicious and refreshing; and the pepper wasn’t too overpowering. But, I’ve also judged a mead made with chipolte and serrano peppers that was a weapon of mass destruction (liquid fire) and basically devitalized my tastebuds for the rest of the day. A sip was all it took. One could not drink an ounce or two, let alone a whole bottle of it. Afterwards the excuse was that the entrant had not sampled the mead prior to submitting it for competition but thought my comments on the judging form were hilarious. ???Really??? Had I travelled out of town and paid for a hotel room to judge this mead in the competition, at a minimum, I think I would have sent this clown a bill for wasting my time and getting cheap sociopathic thrills off of hurting random individuals who had the misfortune of having to judge his entry.
I was just reading & reacting to a post on another forum where someone said the following:
“I made up a batch of no rinse sanitizing solution (water and vinegar and bleach). When I was done sanitizing I filled up some bottles I was planning on using later. A couple of weeks later I see in the bottom of the bottles what looks like rust flakes. Anybody else seen iron condense in their water?”
Hmmmm…What about that concoction says “No-Rinse”!?
Please, Please, PLEASE…Don’t anyone try stupid crap like this!!!