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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.
Dr. Sengupta shares some of the not-so-obvious effects that alcohol has on your body. Your liver detoxifies and removes alcohol from your blood through a process known as oxidation. When your liver finishes that process, alcohol gets turned into water and carbon dioxide.
The bottom line is that alcohol is potentially addictive, can cause intoxication, and contributes to health problems and preventable deaths. If you already drink at low levels and continue to drink, risks for these issues appear to be low. But the risk is not zero.
Although alcohol can make a person feel happy, pleasant, and sociable in short periods of time, excessive or chronic, long-term drinking can lead to alcohol dependence or alcohol addiction, officially referred to as an alcohol use disorder.
Effects of short-term alcohol use. Drinking excessively on an occasion can lead to these harmful health effects: Injuries—motor vehicle crashes, falls, drownings, and burns. Violence—homicide, suicide, sexual violence, and intimate partner violence.
Excessive drinking on an occasion or over time increases your risk of illness, injury, and chronic disease. It can also lead to social, emotional, and mental health challenges. Drinking less alcohol can prevent these harms and lead to a better quality of life—for yourself and others.
Understand the effects of alcohol use on different internal organs, as well as the immune system and disease risk. Get the facts about underage drinking, the associated risks, and how to prevent underage drinking. Find resources for help with alcohol use disorder, and learn about treatment options.
Drinking alcohol is associated with risks of developing noncommunicable diseases such as liver diseases, heart diseases, and different types of cancers, as well as mental health and behavioural conditions such as depression, anxiety and alcohol use disorders.
Over the long term, alcohol can increase your risk of more than 200 different diseases, including in the liver and pancreas, and certain cancers. Drinking alcohol is so common that people may not question how even one beer, cocktail, or glass of wine could impact their health.
Research has shown that people who misuse alcohol have a greater risk of liver disease, heart disease, depression, stroke, and stomach bleeding, as well as cancers of the oral cavity, esophagus, larynx, pharynx, liver, colon, and rectum. 7-10 These individuals may also have problems managing conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, pain...