Drinking too much alcohol can harm your health Learn the facts

And we may not give it a second thought because we’ve heard over and over again that it’s fine to drink in moderation. One study found that people who drank and ate during a problem solving test performed better than their sober counterparts. The study was necessarily limited, and alcohol can certainly have detrimental effects on brain functions when confused in excess. A little inebriation could get the juices flowing, but don’t chug an entire handle of vodka in hopes of painting the next Mona Lisa. Moderate drinkers also tend to have more education than never-drinkers. And education, like wealth, seems to go hand in hand with better health.

• The best advice, and the safest thing to do, is always discuss this with your health care provider to determine if it’s safe to drink alcohol or not.
• Violent vomiting is usually the first symptom of alcohol poisoning.
• Moderate drinking seems to be good for the heart and circulatory system, and probably protects against type 2 diabetes and gallstones.
• From this, the study’s authors concluded that while light drinking might have a modest protective effect for certain conditions among certain people, “Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none.”
• Interestingly, these differences in the ADH1C gene do not influence the risk of heart disease among people who don’t drink alcohol.
• The guidelines do not recommend that individuals who currently do not drink start drinking for any reason.

While alcohol intake and depression seem to increase the risk of one another simultaneously, alcohol abuse may be the stronger causal factor . In heavy drinkers, binge drinking may cause your liver to become inflamed. In worst-case scenarios, liver cells die and get replaced with scar tissue, leading to a serious condition called cirrhosis . Liver diseases caused by alcohol consumption are collectively known as alcoholic liver diseases. Very notably, these findings even suggest levels of alcohol consumption currently deemed “low risk” by the U.S. From this, the study’s authors concluded that while light drinking might have a modest protective effect for certain conditions among certain people, “Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none.”

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Epidemiologic evidence has shown that people who drink alcohol heavily are at increased risk for a number of health problems. The relationship between alcohol consumption and blood pressure is noteworthy because hypertension is a major risk factor for stroke as well as for CHD. However, in many studies comparing lower levels of alcohol use with abstention, findings are mixed. Some studies have found low alcohol consumption to have no effect on blood pressure or to result in a small reduction, while in other studies blood pressure levels increased as alcohol consumption increased. The study was carried out by researchers at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation , who investigated levels of alcohol consumption and health effects in 195 countries between 1990 to 2016. They used data from 694 studies to work out how common drinking was and from 592 studies including 28 million people worldwide to work out the health risks. Whereas light or moderate alcohol consumption may be good for your heart, excessive drinking weakens the heart muscle and can prevent it from pumping blood properly.

A 2018 animal study found that resveratrol had protective effects on cardiovascular function in diabetic rats. While the 2020 review suggests that consuming small amounts of alcohol may carry some benefit, consuming large amounts, even occasionally, remains detrimental. Meanwhile, 54.9% of people reported that they had consumed alcohol in the past month. At the end of the day, determining if alcohol is good or bad for you requires making sound decisions with respect to your health. These recommendations are, of course, based on the assumption that a person is pretty much healthy, with no underlying issues. Here, we explain how alcohol affects your body — both positively and negatively — why all alcohol isn’t created equal, and how to make the right choices for your personal health. It’s hard to know what to think about the recommendations for alcohol consumption when the narrative around it changes like the wind.

When to avoid alcohol

But alcohol in all of its common forms—beer, wine, liquor—actually has some unexpected health benefits like strong hearts, sharper brains, and uninhibited creativity. When older adults exceed these limits, the study found, their risk of losing years of their life to disease and disability begins to rise. With each additional drink per day, they put themselves at higher risk for lost years of life and function. While these studies stress that no level of drinking is risk-free, newer research suggests that you can drink safely in very small amounts, but it’s much less than you might think. But the health benefits of drinking may not be so cut and dry, and the risks, on the other hand, are hard to ignore. By not drinking too much, you can reduce the risk of these short- and long-term health risks. If you enjoy alcohol and don’t binge, there is no compelling reason to avoid it.

In observational studies, the heart benefits of those behaviors might have been erroneously attributed to alcohol, Dr. Piano said. A new study concludes there’s no is alcohol good for you amount of alcohol consumption that’s safe for overall health — a finding that’s likely to surprise moderate drinkers, and that has left some experts unconvinced.

Is zero alcohol a realistic option?

If you can’t approach your parents, talk to your doctor, school counselor, clergy member, aunt, or uncle. It can be hard for some people to talk to adults about these issues, but a supportive person in a position to help can refer students to a drug and alcohol counselor for evaluation and treatment. If you’re going to a party and you know there will be alcohol, plan your strategy in advance. You and a friend can develop a signal for when it’s time to leave, for example. You can also make sure that you have plans to do something besides just hanging out in someone’s basement drinking beer all night. Plan a trip to the movies, the mall, a concert, or a sports event.

What’s more, alcohol can contribute to obesity and the long list of health problems that can go along with it. Alcohol is a source of excess calories and a cause of weight gain that can be harmful in the long term. Some people should avoid even that much and not drink at all if they have certain heart rhythm abnormalities or have heart failure. Exercise can also boost HDL cholesterol levels, and antioxidants can be found in other foods, such as fruits, vegetables and grape juice. Normally, it has an extremely low alcohol content — so much that it’s not classified as an alcoholic beverage.

Impact on Your Brain

Alcohol actually blocks some of the messages trying to get to the brain. This alters a person’s perceptions, emotions, movement, vision, and hearing. Alcohol is created when grains, fruits, or vegetables are fermented. Fermentation is a process that uses yeast or bacteria to change the sugars in the food into alcohol.