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Alcohol in colds: poison or medicine?
Last reviewed: 08.07.2025
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A joke about alcohol when you have a cold: "How do you protect your husband from harmful microbes? Try vodka! 50 grams before meals will protect him from all known microbes. And 100 grams - from all unknown ones."
And now jokes aside: C2H5OH is a slow-acting poison that destroys human health. According to the outstanding psychiatrist and neurologist Vladimir Bekhterev, "alcohol is a poison for every living being - plants and animals... Even small doses of alcohol have, as research has shown, a harmful effect on human mental abilities." And not only mental ones.
The benefits and harms of alcohol during a cold: "both are determined by the dose"
Getting into the blood, liver, cerebrospinal fluid and brain, alcohol leads to disruption of many body functions and the development of atrophic processes in almost all organs.
Even people who drink strong drinks in "moderate quantities" and only "occasionally" experience irreversible destructive processes in the cerebral cortex, the production of insulin by the pancreas decreases, the synthesis of structural and enzymatic proteins slows down, and tissue regeneration processes are suppressed at the cellular level. And this is far from a complete "track record" of the negative consequences of ethyl alcohol, in which we did not list the psychological and social problems of excessive drinking and outright alcoholism...
But, according to the saying of the famous Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus, “everything is poison, and everything is medicine, and the dose determines both.”
Americans eager for all sorts of experiments - from the research center of Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania - in 1993 conducted an experiment to determine the benefits and harms of alcohol during a cold and its effect on the level of resistance of the human body to acute respiratory infections and acute respiratory viral infections. As a result of the experiment, conducted on two groups of volunteers, a total of 390 people, it turned out that a regular portion of whiskey (2 ounces or 57 ml) or a pint of beer (473 ml) did not help those who were already sick. But healthy "guinea pigs" were not affected by the virus.
The researchers did not comment on why the "therapeutic dose" of alcohol had a positive effect. But really, why?
Treating a Cold with Alcohol, or What's the Secret of "Drink Therapy"
Probably, the whole point is that alcohol is a disinfectant, and a shot of vodka neutralizes microbes and viruses that have entered the mucous membrane of the throat. In this case, a couple of sips of strong alcohol is a preventative measure against a possible disease. But this in no way means that treating a cold with alcohol is really possible.
No, it's impossible! Doctors say that as a result of alcohol's effect on the already inflamed mucous membrane of the throat, its swelling will increase, and this, on the contrary, will increase the inflammation. In addition, alcohol acts as a diuretic and dehydrates the body, and overdried mucous membranes are much more susceptible to infection. At elevated temperatures, alcohol is strictly contraindicated, since in the presence of an infection in the body, most organs suffer from toxins produced by microbes that enter our blood.
But why can a glass of vodka prevent a possible cold? We emphasize: not cure, but rather prevent the onset of the disease.
Maybe some other biochemical mechanism of the human body is at work? For example, the ability of alcohol to change the acid-base balance of the blood towards acidity…
In a normal state, the acidity (pH) of human blood plasma is 7.37-7.43 pH. During illness, physical overload and exposure to many other unfavorable factors, the blood acidity level shifts towards acidification. In particular, as a reaction to inflammation of any etiology, including colds. This happens because the body's production of interferon, which can neutralize viruses, accelerates only in an acidic environment.
In addition, an increase in blood pH promotes greater permeability of small capillaries and cell membranes, which stimulates the absorption of oxygen by the body and activates metabolism. That is, the body begins to vigorously fight the disease. And when this fight is over, the blood acidity returns to normal.
So it turns out that by acidifying the blood, a glass of vodka, when there is a clear threat of coming down with a cold, can really be useful for preventing this disease.
Alcohol for colds: drinks for prevention
Let's remember the alchemist Paracelsus mentioned above and immediately refuse "horse doses". With a slight chill after hypothermia, having felt the first signs of a cold, it is quite enough to drink a cup of hot tea before going to bed, adding 50-75 ml of dry red wine and a teaspoon of honey.
Instead of tea and wine, you can use hot vermouth with the same honey. As an alcohol for colds, men will obviously prefer vodka. For them, here is a recipe: add red ground pepper (on the tip of a knife) to 100 ml of vodka, stir, warm up and drink - immediately going to bed under the blanket.
Grog with honey is very easy to prepare: add 50 ml of cognac, 1-2 teaspoons of honey and a slice of lemon to half a glass of strong black tea. And in Britain, in such situations, they drink hot punch (cold punch is consumed at parties). To prepare it, you will need: 200 ml of strong black tea, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 50-100 ml of cognac (or rum), 200 ml of red table wine, the juice of one orange and one lemon. Mix everything and heat until it boils.
German "flaming wine" - mulled wine - is considered the most effective alcohol for colds and a warming agent in cold weather. The simplest recipe is as follows: a bottle of dry (or semi-dry) red wine, 300 ml of water, half a glass of sugar, 2 tablespoons of honey and spices - cinnamon, cloves, lemon peel, star anise, ginger, nutmeg (a little bit of everything). The mixture is heated in an enamel bowl to +70-80°C and left to brew for 15-20 minutes under a lid.
The Ministry of Health of Ukraine warns: alcohol consumption is harmful to your health.
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