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Alcohol's Effects on the Body. Drinking too much – on a single occasion or over time – can take a serious toll on your health. Here’s how alcohol can affect your body: Alcohol interferes with the brain’s communication pathways, and can affect the way the brain looks and works.
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- Digestive and Endocrine Glands
- Inflammatory Damage
- Sugar Levels
- Central Nervous System
- Digestive System
- Circulatory System
- Sexual and Reproductive Health
- Skeletal and Muscle Systems
- Immune System
Drinking too much alcohol over time may cause inflammation of the pancreas, resulting in pancreatitis. Pancreatitis can activate the release of pancreatic digestive enzymes and cause abdominal pain. Pancreatitis can become a long-term condition and cause serious complications.
Your liver helps break down and remove toxins and harmful substances (including alcohol) from your body. Long-term alcohol use interferes with this process. It also increases your risk for alcohol-related liver disease and chronic liver inflammation: 1. Alcohol-related liver diseaseis a potentially life threatening condition that leads to toxins an...
The pancreas helps 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. A damaged pancreas can also prevent your body from producing enough insulin to use sugar. This can lead to hyperglycemia, or t...
One major way to recognize alcohol’s impact on your body? Understanding how it affects your central nervous system. Slurred speech, a key sign of intoxication, happens because alcohol reduces communication between your brain and body. This makes speech and coordination — think reaction time and balance — more difficult. That’s one major reason why ...
The connection between alcohol consumption and your digestive system might not seem immediately clear. The side effects often only appear after the damage has happened. Continuing to drink can worsen these symptoms. Drinking can damage the tissues in your digestive tract, preventing your intestines from digesting food and absorbing nutrients and vi...
Chronic drinking can affect your heart and lungs, raising your risk of developing heart-related health issues. Circulatory system complications include: 1. high blood pressure 2. irregular heartbeat 3. difficulty pumping blood through the body 4. stroke 5. heart attack 6. heart disease 7. heart failure Difficulty absorbing vitamins and minerals fro...
Drinking alcohol can lower your inhibitions, so you might assume alcohol can ramp up your fun in the bedroom. In reality, though, heavy drinking can: 1. prevent sex hormone production 2. lower your libido 3. keep you from getting or maintaining an erection 4. make it difficult to achieve orgasm Excessive drinking may affect your menstrual cycle and...
Long-term alcohol use can affect bone density, leading to thinner bones and increasing your risk of fractures if you fall. Weakened bones may also heal slower. Drinking alcohol can also lead to muscle weakness, cramping, and eventually atrophy.
Drinking heavily reduces your body’s natural immune system. A weakened immune system has a harder time protecting you from germs and viruses. 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 percentof all tub...
Excessive alcohol use has immediate effects that increase the risk of many harmful health conditions. These are most often the result of binge drinking and include the following: Injuries, such as motor vehicle crashes, falls, drownings, and burns. 6,7; Violence, including homicide, suicide, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence. 6-10
Jan 20, 2024 · Certain cancers, such as colorectal cancer, breast cancer and cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus and liver. Liver disease. Cardiovascular disease, such as high blood pressure and stroke. Heavy drinking also has been linked to intentional injuries, such as suicide, as well as accidental injury and death.
May 18, 2022 · The higher the blood alcohol concentration is, the more likely you are to have bad effects. Alcohol intoxication causes behavior problems and mental changes. These may include inappropriate behavior, unstable moods, poor judgment, slurred speech, problems with attention or memory, and poor coordination.
Feb 15, 2024 · 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. 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.
Aug 10, 2023 · Just one or two alcoholic drinks can impair your balance, coordination, impulse control, memory, and decision-making. This increases your risk of injuries. Too much alcohol can also shut down parts of your brain that are essential for keeping you alive.