Contrary to popular conception Brahmins did not Drink, it is a fact that Brahmins , Sages, Rishis and Munis drank liquor.
Indian troops deployed in the drastic terrains of the cold desert in Leh may look forward to get a new item in their menu, as the defense researchers find that Soma (Rumex patientia), a common plant found in high altitudes, can be used as a vegetable. According to researchers at the Defence Institute of High Altitude Research (DIHAR), a division of the Defence Research and Development Organisation ( DRDO), Soma is fit to be used as a vegetable in cold desert areas where cultivation of common vegetables are not supported.
But there is a view , including from Mr.Cho.Ramaswamy that Soma and Sura bana were different and that the consumption of Soma Bana does not amount to Drinking Liquor as it is not an intoxicant and it is used in the Yagnas.
Soma bana is assumed to be a non intoxicant which was used in the performance of Yagnas and as such does not constitute drinking.
Sura bana consumption is of course accepted ad a Drink and blamed as such.
Facts seem to be other wise.
if Soma was to be drunk why should it be drunk when one does not perform Yagna?
It is stated in the Rig Veda that it leads to Immortality and it tastes as Nectar.
The Preceptor of the Devas.s, (Bruhaspati) son( Kusa, (was sent by Indra and the Devas to go and serve Asura Guru Sukracharia , get into the good books of Devayani, Sukra’s daughter so that Kusa learns the Sanjeevini Mantra with which Sukra was making the Asuras rise from the dead, against whom the Devas were losing heavily.
Kusa served Sukra as a Brahmachari for 1000 years in total.
After 500 years the Asuras, having learnt that he was the son of Bruhaspati, killed him and fed him to animals twice.
In both the instances Bruhaspati resurrected him.
Exasperated the Asuras killed Kusa,burnt him , dissolved his ashes in the Drink which they made Sukra drink.
When Sukra tried to resurrect Kusa, Sukra learnt from Kusa who was in Sukra’s stomach the story of his killing and how he was drunk by Sukra along with the Drink.
Immediately Sukra declared,
‘May all the Devas, Rishis and Brahmins learn this.
From this day any one who drinks will lose his identity as a Brahmin and will suffer both her and after Life.”
Thus came about the ban on Brahmins Drinking.
Sukra taught Kusa the Sanjeevini Mantra to enable him come out of his stomach.
There have been suggestions that drinking in moderation is not harmful but in fact good for health.
This information, A Study says is based on ‘plucked out information out of air’
The revised position is..
The best suggestion is ‘do not drink,in case you drink,quit’
Drinking and Health Effects
Story:
OFFICIAL alcohol guidelines that were “plucked out of the air” wrongly suggest we can drink almost daily with no ill effects, doctors have said.
They have been set too high and fail to take into account evidence that shows drinking only modest amounts raises the risk of cancer and other diseases, they say.
The issue is investigated in a three-part ‘You And Yours’ documentary into British government guidelines on alcohol, diet and exercise starting today on BBC Radio 4.
The current guidelines recommend that men should limit themselves to “three to four units” a day, which the National Health Service likens to “not much more than a pint of strong lager, beer or cider”.
Women should not regularly drink more than “two to three units” a day, equivalent to “no more than a standard 175ml glass of wine”.
Research published last year suggests consumption should be much lower – perhaps only a quarter of a pint of beer daily.
Dr Michael Mosley‘s research for the documentary found the guidelines were based on limited data on the harmful effects of low to moderate level drinking. They were formulated in 1987 by a Royal College of Physicians working party.
Fighting
In 2007, Richard Smith, one of the members of the group and a former editor of the ‘British Medical Journal‘, said it could not say what a safe limit was because of this lack of data.
“Those limits were really plucked out of the air,” he said. “They were not based on any firm evidence at all.”
Dr Mosley said the British government had “presented these guidelines as if they are about health, but they are not”.
“They are more about behaviour, trying to stop you going out and crashing the car or fighting,” he said.
A Harvard University study, published in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association‘ in 2011, found that women who drank only four small glasses of wine a week – about five units – increased their risk of developing breast cancer by 15pc compared with non-drinkers.
Another 2011 study estimated that alcohol caused 13,000 cancers a year, including 6,000 of the mouth and throat, 3,000 bowel cancer cases and 2,500 cases of breast cancer.
The saturated fat found mainly in meat and dairy products has been regularly vilified by health professionals and the media, but a new analysis of published studies finds no clear link between people’s intake of saturated fat and their risk of developing heart disease. In the new analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition January 13, 2010, which combined the results of 21 previous studies, researchers found no clear evidence that higher saturated fat intakes led to higher risks of heart disease or stroke.
Those who are regular readers of this website over the last few years are well aware of my long standing opinion that saturated fats and cholesterol are not the cause of heart disease and this most recent analysis of the scientific literature has validated this opinion.
The demonization of saturated fat began in 1953 with Dr. Ancel Keys’ publication of a paper comparing fat intake and heart disease mortality, and the misguided ousting of saturated fat has continued ever since.
The idea that saturated fat is bad for your heart became so ingrained in the medical and health community, anyone daring enough to question this dogma was automatically viewed as a quack, regardless of the evidence presented.
Instead, trans fats became all the rage and have since saturated the market. But times are a-changing, and in many ways for the better. Medical scientists have finally begun to take a hard look at the link between saturated fats and heart disease – only to find that there is none.
Check with any Drinker,, he will tell you drinking makes bowel movements not easy.
As to Neurological conditions,intake of Alcohol is contra indicated with medicine.
In fact the main complaint against Drinking is that it attacks the Brain and the nervous system to make you tipsy.
As to Cancer, growth of Cancer affects the Liver and degenerates it, an Organ that regenerates itself.
Oncologists advise you to stop Alcohol for any type of Cancer.
“Good cholesterol. Beer and wine can both increase HDL cholesterol (the good kind). Going along with this, it can also help to prevent excess plaque build-up in your arteries. This can prevent hardening and clogging of said blood vessels (atherosclerosis), which relates back to point number one. We’ll drink to that. Just be wary of the empty calories that are in beer, especially darker brews. The lighter stuff won’t be so unkind to your midsection.
Arthritis. Alcohol can considerably lessen your chance of getting arthritis when you become old and wrinkly. However, booze is said to increase your risk of developing osteoporosis. So while a glass of wine might prevent your bones from getting persistently achy, it can make them more prone to snapping like twigs. It’s a fine line to walk, but you know what might help? White Russians. There’s milk and alcohol, together, and that means you can help your bones in two ways. It’s genius!
Fiber. Being derived from grains, beer is actually an alright source of fiber. In fact, 500 milliliters (a little less than two cups) of beer can provide over a quarter of your necessary daily intake of fiber. Of course, too much fiber may lead to toilet trouble. Well, maybe not trouble, but at the very least it can lead to a lot of wasted toilet paper. You don’t want to blow your beer budget on TP.
Certain cancers. Yup, even the threat of relapse and death from certain cancers can be reduced with a few swills of wine. Specifically, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and kidney cancer are said to be positively affected by-and maybe even prevented by-a little of the red. If it means you can avoid the difficulty and hardship of chemotherapy, why wouldn’t you down the occasional glass of Cabernet?
Neurological conditions. According to a few studies, partaking in a little alcohol once in a while may help keep Uncle Alzheimer and strokes at bay. The proteins in the myelin sheaths that help guard the neurological pathways in the nervous system respond positively to the alcohol. Of course, too much alcohol has been linked to the death of brain cells, so once again, moderation is the key here.
Life saving. Well, it may only be able to save you in one very particular way. Should you happen to ingest antifreeze for whatever reason, marathon-chugging vodka or whiskey could honestly save your life. The alcohol works by cancelling out the dangerous effects of ethylene glycol, the main component in antifreeze. Seriously!
As a final note, these do not apply to former alcoholics. If you used to throw back entire bottles of whiskey every night for years and have since sobered up, there’s no way falling off the wagon is going to help you more than staying steadfastly on it. Stay strong!
“Sexually deprived male fruit flies exhibit a pattern of behavior that seems ripped from the pages of a sad-sack Raymond Carver story: when female fruit flies reject their sexual advances, the males are driven to excessive alcohol consumption, drinking far more than comparable, sexually satisfied male flies.
Fruit Fly
Now a group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has discovered that a tiny molecule in the fly’s brain called neuropeptide F governs this behavior—as the levels of the molecule change in their brains, the flies’ behavior changes as well.
The new work may help shed light on the brain mechanisms that make social interaction rewarding for animals and those that underlie human addiction. A similar human molecule, called neuropeptide Y, may likewise connect social triggers to behaviors like excessive drinking and drug abuse. Adjusting the levels of neuropeptide Y in people may alter their addictive behavior—which is exactly what the UCSF team observed in the fruit flies.
“If neuropeptide Y turns out to be the transducer between the state of the psyche and the drive to abuse alcohol and drugs, one could develop therapies to inhibit neuropeptide Y receptors,” said Ulrike Heberlein, PhD, a Professor of Anatomy and Neurology at UCSF, who led the research.
Clinical trials are underway, she added, to test whether delivery of neuropeptide Y can alleviate anxiety and other mood disorders as well as obesity.
The experiments, described this week in the journal Science, started with male fruit flies placed in a container with either virgin female flies or female flies that had already mated. While virgin females readily mate and are receptive toward courting males, once they have mated, females flies lose their interest in sex for a time because of the influence of a substance known as sex peptide, which males inject along with sperm at the culmination of the encounter. This causes them to reject the advances of the male flies.
The rejected males then gave up trying to mate altogether. Even when placed in the same cage as virgin flies, they were not as keen to have sex. Their drinking behavior also changed.
When placed by themselves in a new container and presented with two straws, one containing plain food and the other containing food supplemented with 15 percent alcohol, the sexually rejected flies binged on the alcohol, drinking far more than their sexually satisfied cousins whose advances were never spurned. The difference was not only apparent in their behavior. It was completely predicted by the levels of neuropeptide F in their brains.
“It’s a switch that represents the level of reward in the brain and translates it into reward-seeking behavior,” said Galit Shohat-Ophir, PhD, the first author of the new study.
A former postdoctoral researcher at UCSF, Shohat-Ophir is now a research specialist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Janelia Farm Research Center in Ashburn, VA. Later this year, Heberlein will also move to Janelia Farm, where she will become scientific program director.
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