Loose Women’s Judi Love recounted a harrowing experience that led her to limit her alcohol consumption. The 44 year old TV personality was in Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe when she encountered a particularly potent spicy margarita cocktail.
Reflecting on the ordeal, Judi humorously remarked she was unsure if she’d “survive the night” due to the intense reaction her body had to the drink. On The Dish with Waitrose podcast, Judi shared: “I went to the Edinburgh Fringe to host a show and my gosh, the Scot’s hands are heavy.”
She continued, joking about the aftermath of her spicy cocktail venture: “I had a spicy margarita out there and I thought, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to survive the night’. My kidneys, my livers, everything was talking to me like ‘hey babes, call your people, tell them you love them.'” She added: “I was just like, ‘I don’t know if it’s the age or what, but this body is not taking alcohol like how it used to’.”
The episode prompted Judi to re-evaluate her drinking habits.
Highlighting the science behind such responses, experts note that our body’s tolerance to alcohol diminishes with age. Dr Federica Amati from ZOE shared insights with The Telegraph, underlining the importance of adapting our alcohol consumption as we grow older: “Just because we are incredibly flexible in our 20s, does not mean that we can continue that kind of drinking in our 30s, 40s and 50s, and expect to have no consequence. We need to understand that we evolve and change with age.”, reports the Liverpool Echo.
She asserts that individuals are “metabolically flexible” in their late 20s, meaning the body can increase enzyme production to counteract alcohol’s effects.
Dr Amati also notes that our bodies are better at eliminating the toxic by-products of alcohol during our 20s. Harvard Medical School points out that as people age, they experience higher blood alcohol levels after consuming the same amount of booze due to factors like reduced total body water and slower alcohol elimination rates.
It states: “After drinking the same amount of alcohol, older people have higher blood alcohol concentrations than younger people because of such changes as a lower volume of total body water and slower rates of elimination of alcohol from the body.”