Arginine is a semi-essential amino acid – meaning that often not enough of it is formed during the growth phase and must be supplied with food.
Arginine is a very special protein building block. It contains a lot of nitrogen. This reacts with the walls of our veins and makes the blood vessels slacken. This lowers blood pressure. Alcohol has a similar effect. However, it does not contain nitrogen itself, but squeezes nitrogen from the inner walls of the blood vessels.
The effect is the same: the vessels slacken and blood pressure drops. In the long run, alcohol unfortunately destroys the natural arginine in the body. Alcohol changes it chemically and it becomes unusable for the body. As a result, the blood vessels no longer receive nitrogen from the natural arginine.
More in the book “Bye bye, booze!“
