Alcohol can impact various parts of the body, including the brain, heart, liver, and pancreas, as well as essential body systems like the immune and digestive systems. Alcohol use can increase the risk of cardiovascular problems, cognitive decline, liver disease, mental health conditions, and more. Symptoms can range from headache, elevated blood pressure, heart palpitations, and nausea and vomiting to tremors, hallucination and in severe cases death. Alcohol dependence and addiction are just two risks of drinking every day. Heavy alcohol consumption can pose several other health risks, including gastritis, and eventually liver and heart disease.
- Hence, drinking alcohol makes it harder for your immune system to gear up and mount a defense response against invading pathogens and viruses.
- Eventually, this impairs immune response while increasing the risk of health issues.
- It can lead to cancers in your liver, breast, and intestines.
- Though alcohol seems woven into the fabric of our social lives, drinking can have harmful health effects, even in small doses.
Weight gain
So is it true that something with such severe side effects can actually be good for us? By Lindsay CurtisCurtis is a writer with over 20 years of experience focused on mental health, sexual health, cancer care, and spinal alcohol use and death by suicide health. These effects might not last very long, but that doesn’t make them insignificant. Alcohol can cause both short-term effects, such as lowered inhibitions, and long-term effects, including a weakened immune system.
Your sleep quality will decrease
That means you have to go more often, which can leave you dehydrated. When you drink heavily for years, that extra workload and the toxic effects of alcohol can wear your kidneys down. Alcohol irritates the lining of your stomach and makes your digestive juices flow. If enough acid and alcohol build up, you get nauseated and you may throw up.
How Alcohol Use Disorder Is Treated
If alcohol continues to accumulate in your system, it can destroy cells and, eventually, damage your organs. But when you ingest too much alcohol for your liver to process in a timely manner, a buildup of toxic substances begins to take a toll on your liver. Your liver detoxifies and removes alcohol from your blood through a process known as oxidation. When your liver finishes that process, alcohol gets turned into water and carbon dioxide. Dr. Sengupta shares some of the not-so-obvious effects that alcohol has on your body.
But if you feel you need extra help, you may want to check out your local branch of Alcoholics Anonymous. Regardless of possible health benefits, the reality is that alcohol is a toxic and psychoactive substance. According to the World Health Organization, it contributes to three million deaths globally each year.
Earlier studies limited the impact of alcohol intake on physical health only. However, drinking alcohol can hamper your disease-protecting system. Only after a significant period do you observe the harmful effects of daily drinking habits. While alcohol is high in calories, and wine, beer, and drug addiction blog and resources mixed drinks add sugar to one’s diet, cutting it out may or may not help you lose weight depending on how much alcohol you consume regularly. “You get the best benefit from alcohol when you drink in moderation. Just being dry for 1 month and going back to drinking in excess is a bad idea.
You could break out in cold sweats or have a racing pulse, nausea, vomiting, shaky hands, and intense anxiety. Some people even have seizures or see things that aren’t there (hallucinations). Your doctor or substance abuse therapist can offer guidance and may prescribe the textures of heroin medication like benzodiazepines or carbamazepine to help you get through it. Alcohol dependence can make it harder to think or remember things. Over time, heavy drinking can cloud your perception of distances and volumes, or slow and impair your motor skills.
If you’re pregnant or think you could become pregnant, the safest approach is not to drink alcohol at all to keep risks to your baby to a minimum. Your immune system works to keep you as healthy as possible by fighting off foreign invaders, such as viruses, bacteria, and toxins. To your body, alcohol is a toxin that interrupts your immune system’s ability to do its job, thereby compromising its function.
Well, alcohol intake may lead to night sweats by speeding up your heart rate and widening your blood vessels, triggering the release of perspiration. Hence, drinking alcohol makes it harder for your immune system to gear up and mount a defense response against invading pathogens and viruses. As a result, you may find yourself having frequent sore throat pains, catching colds and infections more often. In short, alcohol may increase your risk of experiencing gastritis and digestive symptoms. “But now we know that even the lightest daily drinkers have an increased mortality risk,” she cautions. “It used to seem like having one or two drinks per day was no big deal, and there even have been some studies suggesting it can improve health,” says first author Dr. Sarah M. Hartz.
A large portion of the immune system is housed in the gastrointestinal tract and the GI tract is alcohol’s first point of contact after consumption. Alcohol directly impacts the lining of the GI tract and the damage that is done from frequent alcohol consumption can lead to leaky gut which triggers inflammation throughout the body. Alcohol also affects the immune system but altering the positive bacteria in the gut and damaging immune cells in the GI tract. As evidenced by these recent reviews, the harms of daily alcohol consumption may outweigh the potential benefits in the long run. But what effects can you expect to experience if you have a nightcap (or two) every day?
Unhealthy alcohol use includes any alcohol use that puts your health or safety at risk or causes other alcohol-related problems. It also includes binge drinking — a pattern of drinking where a male has five or more drinks within two hours or a female has at least four drinks within two hours. Every person has their own reasons for drinking or wanting to reduce their alcohol consumption.
