The Japanese Guide to Healthy Drinking: Advice from a Sake-loving Doctor on How Alcohol Can Be Good for You

Description

'People in Japan take their drink seriously. But alcohol is seriously bad for you. This book will tell you how to hold your drink - without dying from the consequences' HENRY GEE, Senior Editor, Nature, and author of The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution 'Drinking can be one of life's great pleasures, but it can also be very harmful and dangerous. Here is a sensible, science-driven, and thought-provoking look at both the pluses and minuses of alcohol as well as tips on how to hopefully enjoy your favourite tipple in a safer way. Kanpai!' BRIAN ASHCRAFT, author of The Japanese Sake Bible and Japanese Whisky 'A refreshingly honest look at booze and how to get the best out of it. I can definitely drink to that.' HELEN McGINN, author of The Knackered Mother's Wine Club ALCOHOL CAN BE GOOD FOR YOU! In this uniquely Japanese mix of quirky fun and hard science, alcohol is revealed not as a poison, but as the best of all medicines . . . up to a point. If we drink healthily, drinkers need never give up what we love. Kaori Haishi is a journalist and the director of the Japan Sake Association; Dr Shinichi Asabe is a liver specialist who likes a drink. Kaori Haishi interviewed a line-up of twenty-five booze-loving physicians, including Japan's leading expert on throwing up, a sleep specialist on how nightcaps can cause depression and a professor on how drinking too much beer can prevent the secretion of testosterone. Now, with Dr Asabe's expert medical help, she has written this book. Universally relevant information about the effects of wines, beers and spirits on the human body is delivered with clarity and precision, backed up by plentiful footnotes citing the latest academic research. The unfailingly amusing Haishi has particularly empathetic advice for women, including the merits of sake as a miracle skin-care product. The book explores all sorts of issues, such as: Bitter Medicine - how beer can help to prevent dementia. Shakes on a Plane - is in-flight drinking dangerous? Mellow Yellow - checking the colour of your pee. Snack Attacks - secrets for avoiding weight gain. And that perennial mystery . . . how do the French get away with it?

Kaori Haishi (Author) Kaori Haishi is an essayist and sake journalist, and chairwoman of the Japan Sake Association. She was born in Nerima in Tokyo in 1966, and graduated from the Department of German Language and Literature, Nihon University College of Humanities and Sciences. She then worked as a radio reporter and a journalist for a weekly women's magazine. She visits sake breweries and shochu and Awamori makers all over Japan to write articles for various media. She also gives talks, seminars, and recipe suggestions for pairing sake and food. She set up the Japan Sake Association in 2015, training sake experts to international standards, and running sake events at various locations in Japan. Dr Shinichi Asabe (Author) Shinichi Asabe is a former associate professor at the Department of Gastroenterology, Internal Medicine, Jichi Medical University Saitama Medical Center. After he graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tokyo in 1990, he worked at the University of Tokyo Hospital, and Department of Gastroenterology at Toranomon Hospital. He is mainly involved in viral hepatitis studies at the National Cancer Center Japan, and after work at the Jichi Medical University Hospital, he studied the immunology of hepatitis at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, US. Back in Japan in 2010, he started to work at the Department of Gastroenterology, Internal Medicine, Jichi Medical University Saitama Medical Center. Currently he is based at AbbVie GK. He specialises in hepatology and virology, and loves wine, sake and beer.

People in Japan take their drink seriously. But alcohol is seriously bad for you. This book will tell you how to hold your drink - without dying from the consequences. -- HENRY GEE, Senior Editor, Nature, and author of The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution Drinking can be of life's great pleasures, but it can also be very harmful and dangerous. Here is a sensible, science-driven, and thought-provoking look at both the pluses and minuses of alcohol as well as tips on how to hopefully enjoy your favourite tipple in a safer way. Kanpai! -- BRIAN ASHCRAFT, author of The Japanese Sake Bible and Japanese Whisky Mastering a way of drinking recommended by medical doctors brings a sense of confidence . . . What you think you know might be turned upside down. * Sunday Mainichi * A refreshingly honest look at booze and how to get the best out of it. I can definitely drink to that. -- HELEN McGINN, author of The Knackered Mother's Wine Club