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Health Risks of Alcohol: Problems Caused By Chronic Heavy Drinking
It also makes heartburn more likely because it relaxes the muscle that keeps acid out of your esophagus, the tube that connects your mouth and stomach. Excessive drinking may affect your menstrual cycle and potentially increase your risk for infertility. Slurred speech, a key sign of intoxication, happens because alcohol alcoholic ketoacidosis smell reduces communication between your brain and body.
Low-risk drinking advice
For example, some studies suggest that moderate alcohol drinking can affect fertility for some women. Research also shows that heavy drinking by men may lower testosterone levels and affect the making of sperm. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, and 1.5 ounces of 80-proof alcohol constitute one drink.
Heart health
Read about alcohol units to work out how much alcohol there is in your drinks. However, when researchers evaluate these potential factors, the risks outweigh any benefits. Alcohol influences neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. These brain chemicals what drugs was eminem addicted to are responsible for regulating your mood, concentration, motivation, and reward-seeking behavior.
What Are the Long-Term Effects of Alcohol on the Body?
- Every person has their own reasons for drinking or wanting to reduce their alcohol consumption.
- However it happens, drinking means you need a sound to be louder so you can hear it.
- Alcohol puts the brakes on your body’s defenses, or immune system.
- Alcohol is a diuretic, which means it moves water and salt out of the body and can cause dehydration.
- Drinking also adds calories that can contribute to weight gain.
Alcohol use can begin to take a toll on anyone’s physical and mental well-being over time. These effects may be more serious and more noticeable if you drink regularly and tend to have more than 1 or 2 drinks when you do. The morning after a night of over-imbibing can cause some temporary effects on your brain. Things like trouble concentration, slow reflexes and sensitivity to bright lights and loud sounds are standard signs of a hangover, and evidence of alcohol’s effects on your brain. Your gut microbiome is a hotbed of bacteria that help keep your digestive system happy and healthy.
Alcohol use can cause sexual dysfunction, such as difficulty achieving or maintaining an erection and decreased sexual sensations. The impact alcohol has on the reproductive system extends beyond these temporary effects. Chronic alcohol use causes hormone imbalances in both men and women and leads to problems with fertility. Heavy drinking, including binge drinking, is a high-risk activity.
Alcohol use can also lead to more lasting concerns that extend beyond your own mood and health. That’s because your body already has processes in place that allow it to store excess proteins, carbohydrates and fats. So, your system prioritizes getting rid of alcohol before it can turn its attention to its other work. And that’s on top of the toll that alcohol use can take on relationships, not to mention the potential for financial strain and legal troubles.
That’s because alcohol can weaken your immune system, slow healing and make your body more susceptible to infection. Pancreatitis can be a short-term (acute) condition that clears up in a few days. But prolonged alcohol abuse can lead to chronic (long-term) pancreatitis, which can be severe. 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. New evidence around the health harms from regular drinking has emerged in recent years.
Alcohol is a depressant and has a sedative-like effect, which can help individuals fall asleep; however, an individual will likely experience poor-quality sleep. Alcohol affects sleep quality by interrupting the body’s REM cycle and interfering with respiration. One night of binge drinking can jumble the electrical signals that keep your heart’s celebrities with fetal alcohol syndrome rhythm steady. If you do it for years, you can make those heart rhythm changes permanent and cause what’s called arrhythmia.
Your Brain Shrinks
Heavy drinking also may result in alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Binge drinking is behavior that raises blood alcohol levels to 0.08%. That usually means four or more drinks within two hours for women and five or more drinks within two hours for men.
People who binge drink or drink heavily may notice more health effects sooner, but alcohol also poses some risks for people who drink in moderation. Having a glass of wine with dinner or a beer at a party here and there isn’t going to destroy your gut. But even low amounts of daily drinking and prolonged and heavy use of alcohol can lead to significant problems for your digestive system.
Conditions
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 also affects the immune system but altering the positive bacteria in the gut and damaging immune cells in the GI tract. Furthermore, the CDC states that daily consumption of as little as one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men can increase the risk of developing cancer. It can inflame the stomach lining, causing heartburn and nausea.
And because your liver was so busy processing your drinks, it didn’t release enough sugar into your blood, bringing on weakness and the shakes. Normally, this organ makes insulin and other chemicals that help your intestines break down food. Along with toxins from alcohol, they can cause inflammation in the organ over time, which can lead to serious damage. After years, that means you won’t be able to make the insulin you need, which can lead to diabetes.
We go to happy hour after work, we give toasts at weddings, and we drink to celebrate and mark occasions. Oftentimes, we aren’t thinking about how much or how often we consume alcohol or its effects on the body. But once the sedative effect wears off, it can disrupt or lower the quality of your sleep.