There is a common belief that we can eat and drink whatever we like, and then repair the damage later. But in reality, when we cause damage to the inside, it will inevitably show on the outside. We should be concerned that alcohol can make us look older.
Alcohol’s effect on respiratory health, mental health and more
- According to a Northwestern Medicine study published in the journal Aging, scientists found that consuming certain types of alcohol over long periods of time as well as binge drinking both speed up biological aging.
- They don’t force you to engage in a behavior, but they can subconsciously provoke a behavioral response — in this case, reaching for an alcoholic drink.
- If you’re not quite ready to hang up your glasses — drinking is, after all, a pleasurable sensory and social experience — Morrow seconds Kling’s advice to drink mindfully, which is imperative as you age.
- More than 30% of alcohol-related deaths recorded in the U.S. from 2020 to 2021 were due to acute issues including accidents and injuries.
- And then there are the frequent hangovers from binge drinking.
- This exacerbates certain medical issues that might otherwise remain at bay in someone of your age.At Burning Tree Ranch, a long-term residential treatment center, we can’t make you any younger.
Although free radicals play their own role in protecting your health, when they’re not kept in balance by antioxidants, they begin to damage your fatty tissue, DNA and proteins. That damage can, in turn, contribute to diabetes, heart disease, neurodegenerative illnesses and other age-related conditions you want to avoid. Drinking while taking medications across a host of drug classes also can cause serious side effects in older adults, especially drugs with sedative effects. An array of over-the-counter medications can interact poorly with alcohol. These include aspirin, sleeping pills, heart drugs, acetaminophen (Tylenol, others), allergy medication, pain medication, and anxiety or depression medicine.
Keeping Your Brain Healthy As You Get Older
In many cases, even moderate drinking (defined below) appears to increase risk. Despite this, less than half of the US public is aware of any alcohol-cancer connection. Changing the labels as suggested by the Surgeon General will require congressional action that may never happen. Alcohol can affect the way some vital organs work and make them age faster. While heavy drinkers are more likely to have cirrhosis (permanent damage to your liver), even moderate drinking Substance abuse can lead to problems like fatty liver disease. It also can make it harder for your kidneys to do their thing.
Does drinking alcohol make you look older? Yes it does!
Back in my 20s, it would have taken four or five drinks to make me feel this way. Pounding water and electrolytes like I did when I was younger was no longer a fix. A RAND corporation study found a 41% increase of heavy drinking (four or more drinks on one occasion) among women during the pandemic. In addition, due to changes in the body, such as reduced muscle mass and body water, some older adults may reach higher blood alcohol concentrations https://ecosoberhouse.com/ than younger people after consuming the same amount of alcohol. As a result, older adults could develop alcohol-related problems at lower drinking amounts than younger people.
Alcohol linked to 7 types of cancer
Prior to that, she was the senior editor for the TODAY Show. She started her career as a general news and lifestyle reporter and has interviewed legends like Maya Angelou and covered the 2014 Olympics from Sochi, Russia. Vidya Rao is a freelance writer and multimedia content creator with more than a decade of experience specializing in wellness, food and small business journalism. She’s passionate about amplifying underrepresented voices.
Life
Extrinsic aging is when your skin ages faster than it should because of your environment and how you live. That’s where alcohol comes in — it dehydrates you and dries out your skin. The study was led by Lifang Hou, MD, PhD, chief of Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a professor of Pediatrics. It examined whether cumulative alcohol consumption — the number of years a person consumes beer, liquor, wine and total alcohol — as well as recent binge drinking were related to aging. What’s not so well known is the effect of alcohol consumption on biological aging, specifically binge drinking, long-term drinking and type of drinks — such as beer, wine or liquor.
- Increasingly, reports like these conclude there is no safe level of drinking.
- Therefore, drinking alcohol can compound the natural effects of aging.
- Alcohol also disrupts the colonies of microbes that live in your mouth, intestines, and gut, Bernstein explains, which can lead to overgrowth of “bad” bacteria.
- There’s evidence that alcohol affects your stress-response pathways, activating your fight-or-flight response and increasing your cortisol (your primary stress hormone) levels.
- Don’t fall for the belief that you’re too old to learn something new.
- Her work has been featured in The Heights, an independent student newspaper at Boston College, and Minnesota Monthly.
Our programs are flexible and customized to target your specific needs. We work with individuals, couples, and families alcohol and aging to ensure that you and your loved ones are on the same page when it comes to your sobriety. Contact us to find out how we can help you navigate the path to recovery and optimize your physical and mental health. If you or a loved one struggles to regulate or limit alcohol consumption, you don’t have to do it alone.
The older you get, the longer alcohol stays in your system. These findings may help people make lifestyle changes to promote healthy aging. Normally, the body creates a hormone called vasopressin, which helps your body retain water, limiting the amount of fluid that you excrete through the renal system. This helps prevent you from becoming dehydrated when you’re not drinking. One of the best things you can do for your all-around health and appearance is to drink less alcohol. But at Ria Health, we recognize that this can be easier said than done.
The Link Between Alcohol and Aging
One global study found that no amount of alcohol is completely safe and that alcohol was the biggest risk factor for disease worldwide. Another more recent study found that any amount of alcohol causes harm to the brain. Unfortunately, the already low levels of these enzymes continue to decrease as women age, meaning that alcohol is metabolized (changed into a form your body can use) much more slowly. For more information about alcohol treatment options and how to stop drinking, please visit the NIAAA website at niaaa.nih.gov. Similarly, many adults experience problems with the duration and quality of their sleep as they age.