For example, it can lead to liver damage, cancer, immune disorders, and brain damage. Also, it may worsen pre-existing conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure. Besides a person’s health, drinking alcohol can have other negative effects on his or her body. Here is a closer look at how a person’s looks suffer from excessive alcohol consumption.

You may also notice that your body’s reaction to alcohol is different than before. Some older people feel the effects of alcohol more strongly without increasing the amount they drink. This can make them more likely to have accidents such as falls, fractures, and car crashes.

Facts About Aging and Alcohol

Next, alcohol harms various organs, especially the liver. Image by Dietmar Becker from UnsplashThere are many ways alcohol can put an extra strain on your body. Alcohol causes your body to release more stress hormones, which speeds up the aging process.

Make some medical conditions hard for doctors to accurately diagnose and treat. For example, alcohol causes changes in the heart and blood vessels. These changes can dull pain that might be a warning sign of a heart attack. Katie has always enjoyed a glass of wine to unwind a few times per week. In recent months, her one glass has turned into two or more, sometimes even a whole bottle.

Alcohol does age you, but it can also cause temporary flushing in the skin or redness. The skin is easily dehydrated due to high alcohol consumption. Still, over a period of time, the skin can be rejuvenated, but blood vessels that burst are much more challenging to fix. There are just as many negative invisible body changes that can occur due to heavy drinking as there are visible body changes. Perhaps the biggest sign of aging that you can’t physically see is the effect that drinking has on your brain.

Drinking alcohol can pull more water out of your body and make your chances of dehydration even higher. Programs are flexible and customized to target your specific needs. We work with individuals, couples, and families to ensure that you and your loved ones are on the same page when it comes to your sobriety.

Are There Any Signs Of Aging That You Can’t See?

Broken capillaries, the tiny blood vessels near the surface of the skin, tend to crop up as you get older. If you drink too much, the blood vessels can burst, causing red spots and spidery splotches. Older drinkers are maybe even more likely to experience this. Their blood vessels are less elastic than young people’s. Therefore, drinking alcohol can compound the natural effects of aging. The pros and cons of drinking alcohol are frequently relayed, and there’s a new addition to the ever-growing list.

(Note that even without alcohol, the risk of a car accident goes up starting at age 55.) Also, older drivers tend to be more seriously hurt in crashes than younger drivers. Other people develop a harmful reliance on alcohol later in life. Sometimes this is a result of major life changes, such as the death of a spouse or other loved one, moving to a new home, or failing health. These kinds of changes can cause loneliness, boredom, anxiety, or depression. In fact, depression in older adults often aligns with drinking too much. As you grow older, health problems or prescribed medicines may require that you drink less alcohol or avoid it completely.

Drinking alcohol every day can speed up brain aging by one week per session, according to a study of more than 17,000 people

It can also age you prematurely, making you look, feel, and act older than you actually are. More importantly, alcohol can age your body quicker than it should. This can result in the increased chances of serious medical conditions developing 11 things people don’t tell you about growing up with an alcoholic parent or minor ailments becoming major ones. If you’re someone that is a heavy drinker, chances are you have begun noticing changes to your body over time. For example, you may notice unexplained weight gain or changes in your skin.

Heavy alcohol use can even prevent the male body from being able to make testosterone properly. This combination of hormonal issues can lead to the development of breasts in men. It can also lead to men carrying their weight samhsas national helpline around their hips and thighs instead of their bellies. This is a negative thing because men are supposed to carry more weight in their bellies while women are supposed to carry more weight around their hips and thighs.

Alcohol Affects Your Blood Vessels

In some cases, you may even notice that minor ailments due to alcohol consumption are now becoming more serious. Sleep disruption – It’s no secret that dark circles or puffy bags under your eyes make you look old and tired. Because alcohol messes up your sleep cycles, drinking before bed makes it more likely that you’ll wake up during the night and get less deep sleep. Even if alcohol makes you doze off quickly, you’re still likely to wake later in the night. You need those deep stages of sleep for healthy, restorative rest to help you look good and also to maintain good cognitive function, say experts from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Broken bones from a stumble are a serious health issue for seniors.

Obviously, the smartest way to prevent aging from alcohol consumption is by lowering daily intake. However, when a person has a preoccupation with alcohol, he or she may lose control and have the inability to stop. This person may develop a tolerance, 4 ‘mocktail’ recipes for ulcerative colitis which means that he or she must drink more and more to get the same pleasing effects. When addiction occurs, alcohol interferes with work and social interactions. In fact, a person may experience relationship problems with friends and family.

In other words, a person suffers from poor quality of sleep. Without being able to enjoy deep sleep, which is known to restore health, a person will look and feel much older than his or her actual age. Since alcohol depletes levels of vitamins, the skin’s collagen levels plummet. As a result, a person’s skin may lose all elasticity and become wrinkled.

• Joy Manning, a Philadelphia-based freelance writer and creator of the Instagram account Better Without Booze, can also attest to the life-changing effects of sobriety.
• In fact, premature dementia is related to alcohol-related brain damage.
• Drinking alcohol can pull more water out of your body and make your chances of dehydration even higher.

In this post, we examine why alcohol is bad for your skin and how you can reduce the effects of aging on your body. Regular drinkers can trigger biological functions that make them age from the inside out. If you drink heavily or consistently, you could activate the aging process, putting you at risk of health conditions that typically affect older people.

Is alcohol causing my face to age faster?

When a person becomes a chronic drinker, the habit takes a toll on multiple organs within the body. By the time a person uncovers a problem, it may be too late. In addition, alcohol misuse or alcohol use disorder can strain relationships with family members, friends, and others. At the extreme, heavy drinking can contribute to domestic violence and child abuse or neglect. Alcohol use is often involved when people become violent, as well as when they are violently attacked. If you feel that alcohol is endangering you or someone else, call 911 or obtain similar help right away.

But that doesn’t mean you should also give up your social life. She said the worst thing you can do during this process is isolate yourself. As you grow older, you start to metabolize alcohol at a slower rate, according to Elizabeth Trattner, a Miami-based acupuncture physician and nutritionist. The longer the booze stays in your system, the more alcohol builds up in your bloodstream, which puts you at greater risk for damaging effects.

Mixing it with certain sleeping pills, pain medications, or anxiety drugs can be life-threatening. Red wine has antioxidants called polyphenols that may help your cholesterol level and protect your blood vessels. If you drink it in moderation , some studies show that it might be good for your heart. But too much can lead to an abnormal heartbeat and high blood pressure.