Alcohol Addiction: Long-Term Health Risks and Medical Complications

The less alcohol you drink, the lower your risk for these health effects, including several types of cancer. Any amount of alcohol can cause Substance abuse an increased risk of headaches, with symptoms worsening with greater consumption. Wine-drinking, in particular, is a common trigger for migraine headaches because of factors like dehydration, histamines, and sugar. In general, people who drink excess alcohol experience malnutrition, which can affect the brain.

Heart and Circulatory System

We had planned to undertake sensitivity analyses examining the robustness of the results to the method of alcohol measurement (intake over multiple time points versus once) and limiting to studies that reported results for ‘never’ drinkers. We did not undertake these sensitivity analyses due to only a small number of studies available for any of the dose-response analyses (i.e. a maximum of six studies). For GRADE assessments, it was necessary to summarise the risk of bias assessments across studies for each outcome. We followed recent GRADE guidance for making these judgements 37. These summary assessments of risk of bias were used in determining the overall certainty of the body of evidence using GRADE, and the basis for each is reported as footnotes to the summary of findings tables. Once you stop alcohol intake, a doctor can address your specific symptoms.

• The review was commissioned to inform an update of the 2009 Australian Guidelines to Reduce Health Risks from Drinking Alcohol (the Alcohol Guidelines) 13.
• If you drink for long periods of time, it can cause depression, and when you abruptly stop drinking, it can cause anxiety,” says Dr. Anand.
• Cell membranes are highly permeable to alcohol, so once alcohol is in the bloodstream it can diffuse into nearly every cell in the body.
• “Generally, over time, there have been new studies that show that chronic alcohol use — at very heavy use — can lead to brain damage, both gray and white matter.
• The physical effects of a hangover will appear as soon as your blood alcohol content (BAC) returns to zero.
• Drinking large amounts of alcohol for many years will take its toll on many of the body’s organs and may cause organ damage.

Are there any health benefits to drinking alcohol?

The breakdown of alcohol also leads to the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). These are highly unstable molecules that can turn on and off certain functions in the body. In the liver, ROS affects how fat cells are produced, triggering the accumulation of fat known as hepatic steatosis or fatty liver disease. Due to the size of the reviewed literature, we were unable to perform double screening of all references, and we performed checks rather than independent assessment of the risk of bias and data extraction. At least three authors read all included studies (SB, JM, MP, JR), and a second author reviewed all papers for which there was uncertainty over inclusion or interpretation. All quantitative data were extracted and analysed by an experienced biostatistician (JM).

What is moderate alcohol use?

It also meant that we relied on published data for our assessment of study design, risk of bias and for analysis. We present the dose-response relationships for females and males separately where possible (i.e. where the study was undertaken with only long term affects of alchol one sex, or the results were reported separately by sex within a study). Case-control studies were excluded, except for nested case-controls. Case-control studies compare “people with a specific outcome of interest (‘cases’) with people from the same source population but without that outcome (‘controls’), to examine the association between the outcome and prior exposure” 31.

Dependent drinkers with a higher tolerance to alcohol can often drink much more without experiencing any noticeable effects. The morning after a night of over-imbibing can cause some temporary effects on your brain. Things like trouble concentration, slow reflexes and sensitivity to bright lights and loud sounds are standard signs of a hangover, and evidence of alcohol’s effects on your brain.

Finding treatment for alcohol use disorder

Continued consumption (such as in alcohol use disorder) then leads to cell death in the hepatocytes as the fat stores reduce the function of the cell to the point of death. These cells are then replaced with scar tissue, leading to the condition called cirrhosis. Firstly, unhealthy drinking habits can lower dopamine levels and decrease endorphins over time. The way extended alcohol use depletes these “happy hormones” can exacerbate or cause mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. Unhealthy alcohol use is one of the most consistent factors that increases the likelihood of developing a blood or brain vessel blockage disease, respectively called coronary artery disease and cerebrovascular disease.