Effects of Alcohol on Each Part of the Body

The liver metabolizes most of the alcohol you consume, breaking it down into acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is a toxin that can damage the body’s organs and tissues before it is further broken down into acetate. These powerful chemicals manage everything from your sex drive to how fast you digest food. To keep it all going smoothly, you need them in the right balance.

Over time, it causes heart muscles to droop and stretch, like an old rubber band. Your heart can’t pump blood as duloxetine withdrawal timeline well, and that impacts every part of your body. The brain is highly vulnerable to the damaging effects of alcohol, which disrupts communication between brain cells.

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Excessive or chronic alcohol use can lead to a steady decline in cognitive function, causing memory problems, difficulty learning new information, mood changes, and behavior changes. This article discusses the long-term effects of alcohol, including the risks to your physical health and mental well-being. Alcohol widens your blood vessels, making more blood flow to your skin. The heat from that extra blood passes right out of your body, causing your temperature to drop. On the other hand, long-term heavy drinking boosts your blood pressure. It makes your body release stress hormones that narrow blood vessels, so your heart has to pump harder to push blood through.

Drinking also adds calories that can contribute to weight gain. And drinking raises the risk of problems in the digestive system. For example, it may be used to define the risk of illness or injury based on the number of drinks a person has in a week. Alcohol withdrawal can be difficult and, in some cases, life threatening. Depending on how often you drink and how much, you may need support from a healthcare professional if you want to stop drinking.

Mental health

And prolonged alcohol use can lead to mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. With continued alcohol use, steatotic liver disease can lead to liver fibrosis. Eventually, you can develop permanent and irreversible scarring in your liver, which is called cirrhosis. Heavy drinking can also lead to a host of health concerns, like brain damage, heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver and even certain kinds of cancer.

Tips for Reducing Alcohol Consumption

It also can harm your liver, which plays an important role in your immune system by making antibacterial proteins. This form of arthritis results from painful buildup of uric acid in the joints. You can get gout from eating too much food high in chemicals called purines, which include red meat, shellfish, and alcohol — especially beer and liquor. A final way alcohol affects weight is by increasing an individual’s propensity towards more caloric foods. By Lindsay CurtisCurtis is a writer with over 20 years of experience focused on mental health, sexual health, cancer care, and spinal health. When it comes to alcohol, if you don’t drink, don’t start for health reasons.

However it happens, drinking means you need a sound to be louder so you can hear it. Drinking heavily for a long time has been linked to hearing loss. Some people who drink eventually develop a how to take xanax responsibly tolerance to alcohol.

According to the World Health Organization, it contributes to three million deaths globally each year. So is it true that something with such severe side effects can actually be good for us? At this point, you may have alcohol cravings or drink to avoid the low feelings withdrawal causes rather than for the pleasurable feelings alcohol consumption may offer.

Long-term heavy drinkers are much more likely to get illnesses like pneumonia and tuberculosis. But more recent research suggests there’s really no “safe” amount of alcohol since even moderate drinking can negatively impact brain health. Steatotic liver disease develops in about 90% of people who drink more than 1.5 to 2 ounces of alcohol per day. Alcohol use can exacerbate mental health conditions, like anxiety and depression, or lead to their onset. In addition, prolonged misuse can lead goodbye addiction letter to alcohol use disorder.

It can also make it harder to keep a steady body temperature and control your movements. Heavy drinking means eight or more drinks a week for women and 15 or more for men. Alcohol is a toxin, and it’s your liver’s job to flush it out of your body. But your liver may not be able to keep up if you drink too much too fast. Alcohol can kill liver cells, and lead to scarring called cirrhosis.

Below we explore the specific parts of the body alcohol affects. But if you feel you need extra help, you may want to check out your local branch of Alcoholics Anonymous. Excess alcohol use can also impair nutrient absorption in the small intestine and increase the risk of malnutrition. In the United States, people younger than age 21 are not legally able to drink alcohol. Certain factors may increase your chances of experiencing alcohol use disorder. A weakened immune system has a harder time protecting you from germs and viruses.

1. Research indicates that heavy alcohol use can also increase the risk of suicide.
2. Your liver detoxifies and removes alcohol from your blood through a process known as oxidation.
3. But prolonged alcohol abuse can lead to chronic (long-term) pancreatitis, which can be severe.
4. Alcohol can also contribute to arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats) and hypertension (high blood pressure), increasing the risk of heart attack, stroke, and heart failure.

Your brain helps your body stay well-hydrated by producing a hormone that keeps your kidneys from making too much urine. But when alcohol swings into action, it tells your brain to hold off on making that hormone. 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. People who drink heavily over a long period of time are also more likely to develop pneumonia or tuberculosis than the general population. The World Health Organization (WHO) links about 8.1 percent of all tuberculosis cases worldwide to alcohol consumption.

Alcohol is the second most caloric macronutrient (1 gram of alcohol equals seven calories ) and contains zero nutrition for the body. Most glasses of wine contain roughly 120 calories and this on top of a regular day of calorie consumption can lead to weight gain. Many reach for a cocktail or glass of wine to cope with a bad mood but it turns out that alcohol may be contributing to a vicious cycle of moodiness. Alcohol is a depressant and it has a direct effect on the balance of neurotransmitters (serotonin, GABA, dopamine) in the brain. Couple those feelings with a slight hangover and you are setting yourself up for the need to have another drink the following day to „help“ with the negative feelings. In people assigned male at birth, alcohol consumption can decrease testosterone production and sperm quality.

Alcohol use, especially excessive alcohol consumption, can harm your physical and mental health. From damaging vital organs to impairing brain function and jeopardizing relationships, the negative consequences of excessive alcohol use are far-reaching. Chronic alcohol use raises your risk for health problems, including heart disease, liver disease, cancer, and mental health disorders.

If you have a little too much alcohol once in a while, it probably won’t do lasting damage if you’re otherwise healthy. At the end of the day, it is important to find other ways to cope with stress and relax outside of alcohol consumption. If it is difficult to go more than one day without a drink, consider reaching out for support. For example, any amount of drinking increases the risk of breast cancer and colorectal cancer. It could be that it messes with the part of your brain that processes sound. Or it might damage the nerves and tiny hairs in your inner ear that help you hear.