Alcohol Use and Your Health Alcohol Use
The pancreas helps The 14 Best Nonalcoholic Drinks of 2024, by Food & Wine regulate how your body uses insulin and responds to glucose. If your pancreas and liver don’t function properly due to pancreatitis or liver disease, you could experience low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia. Many people assume the occasional beer or glass of wine at mealtimes or special occasions doesn’t pose much cause for concern. But drinking any amount of alcohol can potentially lead to unwanted health consequences. And prolonged alcohol use can lead to mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.
By illuminating the key events and mechanisms of alcohol-induced immune activation or suppression, research is yielding deeper insights into alcohol’s highly variable and sometimes paradoxical influences on immune function. The insights summarized in this issue of ARCR present researchers and clinicians with opportunities to devise new interventions or refine existing ones to target the immune system and better manage alcohol-related diseases. Alcohol–immune interactions also may affect the development and progression of certain cancers. Meadows and Zhang discuss specific mechanisms through which alcohol interferes with the body’s immune defense against cancer. They note, too, that a fully functioning immune system is vital to the success of conventional chemotherapy. The clinical management of all of these conditions may be more challenging in individuals who misuse alcohol because of coexisting immune impairment.
Public Health
Long-term heavy drinking causes alterations in the neurons, such as reductions in their size. Treatment for alcoholism also addresses the medical and psychological consequences of alcohol addiction. Health professionals counsel the person and family about the nature of addiction and help the person find positive alternatives to using alcohol. Health professionals also help the individual cope with any related problems, such as depression, job stress, legal consequences of drinking, or troubled personal relationships. If too much alcohol is harmful but some is beneficial, how do you decide how much is okay? The risks that come with drinking alcohol frequently outweigh the benefits.
- To avoid driving after consuming alcohol, it’s helpful to designate a nondrinking driver, or to use public transportation.
- For more information about alcohol’s effects on the body, please visit the Interactive Body feature on NIAAA’s College Drinking Prevention website.
- With these conditions, you’ll only notice symptoms during alcohol intoxication or withdrawal.
- And all of this is true despite the well-known and well-publicized risks of drinking too much alcohol.
This article discusses the long-term effects of alcohol, including the risks to your physical health and mental well-being. In addition, AUD is an addiction disorder, which means you may have a difficult time stopping alcohol consumption, even when you want to. The definition of AUD also includes the impact that such drinking has on your health and life. Generally, however, the difference between alcohol misuse and AUD lies in looking at how a person drinks in the short term, as opposed to over a prolonged period of time. Because alcohol is a depressant, it can also contribute to mental health conditions, like anxiety and depression. Research indicates that heavy alcohol use can also increase the risk of suicide.
Effects of long-term alcohol use
Alcohol can disrupt fetal development at any stage during a pregnancy—including at the earliest stages and before a woman knows she is pregnant. Blackouts are gaps in a person’s memory of events that occurred while they were intoxicated. These gaps happen when a person drinks enough alcohol that it temporarily blocks the transfer of memories from short-term to long-term storage—known as memory consolidation—in a brain area called the hippocampus. Adolescent brains are more vulnerable to the negative effects of alcohol than adult brains.
How we reviewed this article:
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. Drinking alcohol on a regular basis can also lead to dependence, which means your body and brain have grown used to alcohol’s effects.
But more recent research suggests there’s really no “safe” amount of alcohol since even moderate drinking can negatively impact brain health. 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. Even drinking a little too much (binge drinking) on occasion can set off a chain reaction that affects your well-being. Lowered inhibitions can lead to poor choices with lasting repercussions — like the end of a relationship, an accident or legal woes. Each of those consequences can cause turmoil that can negatively affect your long-term emotional health. Steatotic liver disease develops in about 90% of people who drink more than 1.5 to 2 ounces of alcohol per day.
