There is also evidence that alcohol can disrupt or delay puberty. Even among the positive studies, potential health benefits are often quite small. In addition, alcohol may reduce the risk of one condition (such as cardiovascular disease) while increasing the risk of another (such as cancer). So it’s drinking too much alcohol can harm your health learn the facts hard to predict who might actually benefit and who may be harmed more than helped by alcohol consumption.
Research has demonstrated that long-term heavy drinking weakens the heart muscle, causing cardiomyopathy. Alcohol misuse can also lead to high blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia), or increased heart rate. Chronic, heavy drinking raises the risk for ischemic heart disease (heart problems caused by narrowed arteries) and myocardial infarction (heart attack). Just one or two alcoholic drinks can impair your balance, coordination, impulse control, memory, and decision-making. Too much alcohol can also shut down parts of your brain that are essential for keeping you alive.
Find science-based information on the effects of alcohol on health.
As consumption goes up, the risk goes up for these cancers. The evidence for moderate alcohol use in healthy adults is still being studied. But good evidence shows that drinking high amounts of alcohol are clearly linked to health problems.
You can take steps to lower your risk of alcohol-related harms.
Brain
- Childhood trauma, mental health issues, and stress can also lead people to begin drinking or drink more than usual.
- When you drink too much alcohol, it can throw off the balance of good and bad bacteria in your gut.
- In addition, alcohol may reduce the risk of one condition (such as cardiovascular disease) while increasing the risk of another (such as cancer).
- After more analysis of the research, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
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. 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. Pancreatitis can occur as a sudden attack, called acute pancreatitis. Acute pancreatitis can turn into chronic pancreatitis, which is a condition of constant inflammation of the pancreas.
Alcohol and cancer: A growing concern
Alcoholics Anonymous is available almost everywhere and provides a place to openly and nonjudgmentally discuss alcohol issues with others who have alcohol use disorder. Like a clog in a drain, those thickened fluids can jam up your ducts. That can lead to pancreatitis, which is inflammation of the pancreas. When you drink too much alcohol, it can throw off the balance of good and bad bacteria in your gut.
Nutrition and healthy eating
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. Alcohol can affect behaviors that increase the likelihood of acquiring or transmitting HIV to others. If you choose to drink alcohol, the key is to keep your drinking at low to moderate levels. NIAAA Director George F. Koob, Ph.D., said that as of May 2023, the institute is not aware of specific health guidelines on alcohol consumption for transgender or gender-nonconforming individuals. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has information on how alcohol impacts your health.
Of course, no one needs to wait for new guidelines or warning labels to curb their drinking. Many are exploring ways to cut back, including the Dry January Challenge or alcohol-free drinks. It’s worth noting that current guidelines advise against drinking alcohol as a way to improve health. 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.
Mounting evidence links alcohol with cancer. Defining a “safe” amount of drinking is tricky — and controversial.
Your gut microbiome is a hotbed of bacteria that help keep your digestive system happy and healthy. The trillions of microbes in your colon and large and small intestines are critical to proper digestion. They also help fend off inflammation and support healthy metabolism. But there’s plenty of research to back up the notion that alcohol does lead to weight gain in general. You probably already know that excessive drinking can affect you in more ways than one.
Binge drinking is drinking enough alcohol to raise one’s BAC to 0.08% or above. Women typically reach this level after about four drinks and men after about five drinks in two hours. Binge drinking—and heavy drinking—is a type of alcohol misuse (a spectrum of risky alcohol-related behaviors). The definition of heavy drinking is based on a person’s sex. For women, more than three drinks on any day or more than seven drinks a week is heavy drinking. For men, heavy drinking means more than four drinks on any day or more than 14 drinks a week.
Alcohol’s health effects: What you need to know
It’s all too common that problem drinking disrupts bonds with a spouse, family members, friends, coworkers, or employers. If you drink every day, or almost every day, you might notice that you catch colds, flu or other illnesses more frequently than people who don’t drink. That’s because alcohol can weaken your immune system, slow healing and make your body more susceptible to infection.
- Lowered inhibitions can lead to poor choices with lasting repercussions — like the end of a relationship, an accident or legal woes.
- Alcohol interferes with the brain’s communication pathways and can affect the way the brain looks and works.
- Drinking alcohol can cause unique problems for older adults and people who are pregnant or who have other health conditions.
- For more details about its operating status, please visit cc.nih.gov.
- You and your community can take steps to improve everyone’s health and quality of life.
If you are pregnant, you should not drink any alcohol because it can harm your baby. The alcohol you consume resides mostly in the body’s water. This could help explain why women are more likely to have negative effects from alcohol. Binge drinking is behavior that raises blood alcohol levels to 0.08%.
So alcohol is more concentrated and more “powerful” in women than in men. Think of putting a drop of red food coloring in both a small and a large cup of water. Heavy alcohol use also can cause stomach problems, interactions between medicines and alcohol, and sexual problems. It can lead to violence, accidents, social isolation, and problems at work, school, or home. You also may have legal problems, such as traffic tickets or car crashes, as a result of drinking. Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a chronic brain disorder that makes it difficult to control alcohol use, even when it’s causing problems.
In the United States, moderate drinking for healthy adults is different for men and women. It means on days when a person does drink, women do not have more than one drink and men do not have more than two drinks. The definitions for a drink in the US are the common serving sizes for beer (12 ounces), wine (5 ounces), or distilled spirits/hard liquor (1.5 ounces). 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.
