Alcohol and Aging: Does Drinking Make You Look Older?

Therefore, detox can be done at either a local medical facility, dedicated detox center, or treatment center that also offers detox services such as Grace Land Recovery. Attempting to self-detox can end up causing even more harm and can even be life-threatening. Typically your tolerance level to alcohol will go up the more you drink.

But at 38 years old, I couldn’t escape the consequences of drinking. At night, my mind raced with anxious thoughts and I never felt well-rested. The day after drinking, even just one glass of wine, I’d feel groggy, hungover and just sad. 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. Drinking heavily and often can have a significant impact on your overall health.

Alcohol Causes Oxidative Stress

That can be particularly hard on seniors, who are already more likely to wake up often or have a sleep disorder like insomnia. The older you get, the longer alcohol stays in your system. Drinking alcohol may make you more likely to develop certain skin conditions, such as psoriasis, rosacea, and seborrhoeic or nummular dermatitis. Almost every adult deals with arcus senilis by the time they’re 80. While this condition is generally harmless, it is a visible sign of aging. Research shows that people who drink heavily have a 33 percent greater chance of getting arcus senilis, a telltale gray ring around their corneas before they turn 60.

1. That’s where alcohol comes in — it dehydrates you and dries out your skin.
2. It also affects the healthy functioning of your digestive system, making it harder for you to absorb essential nutrients.
3. Researchers are also studying the possibility that alcoholic liver disease might be caused, at least in part, by your immune system attacking healthy body tissues.
4. Regular drinkers can trigger biological functions that make them age from the inside out.
5. For men, heavy drinking is defined as four drinks a day or more than 14 drinks a week.
6. It can impact your physical, emotional, and spiritual health, too—making you not only look but also feel older than you are.

Is alcohol physically addictive?

The biggest visible change that alcohol makes to the body is one that is actually indirectly made. When the liver gets damaged as a result of alcohol use, it can indirectly lead to skin damage. Other preexisting medical conditions also can get worse with drinking, including diabetes, high blood pressure, congestive heart failure and osteoporosis. Chronic alcohol use also can damage the brain and exacerbate the effects of certain diseases. Research has shown that excessive alcohol use can diminish white matter in the brain. White matter lies under the brain’s gray matter and is the network of nerve fibers that transmit information throughout the brain.

Alcohol Can Make You Feel Older, Too

After an episode of heavy drinking, your liver processes some of the alcohol you consumed. The rest of the alcohol will leave your body through your sweat and breath. Alcoholic drinks are high in calories and have no nutritional benefit to your body. Depriving yourself of adequate sleep can make you age faster.

Alcohol abuse can then worsen the symptoms of those conditions. When you drink alcohol, it’s absorbed through the small intestine, processed by the liver, and circulated through your major organs. As you get older, you have less muscle mass and your liver isn’t as strong. This leaves a larger amount of alcohol in your bloodstream. This causes the effects of alcohol to be stronger, even if you’re drinking the same amount you always have.

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. A RAND corporation study found a 41% increase of heavy drinking (four or more drinks on one occasion) among women during the pandemic. It is never too late to get the help that you need for drinking.

It also affects the healthy functioning of your digestive system, making it harder for you to absorb essential nutrients. This includes vitamins A, B, D, and E; minerals like calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc; and even basics like proteins 2cb effects and carbohydrates. Alcohol’s all-around negative effect on nutrition means that heavy drinkers often become malnourished. This limits the body’s ability to maintain itself, resulting in faster aging. Older adults with mental health conditions such as depression, dementia, cognitive impairments, or anxiety are at a greater risk for developing problems with alcohol.

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. The effect alcohol can have on breathing in older adults taking opioids is stark. In one small 2017 study, when participants were given 20 mg of oxycodone, the amount of air entering their lungs decreased by 28%.

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

Let’s also take a look at why, as you get older, drinking alcohol may affect you differently. 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 lsd overdose symptoms physically see is the effect that drinking has on your brain. Studies have shown that alcohol can age the brain so much that young people who drink regularly have been found to share similar brain activity to those of elderly adults.

All in all, the sooner you quit or moderate your drinking, the better. It can occur when the liver can no longer filter out a yellow-orange substance in the blood, causing it to show up in the skin, according to WebMD. In darker-skinned people, it may be more noticeable in the whites of the eye.

If you’re aging faster than you would otherwise, you’re also increasing what foods contain alcohol your risk of age-related health problems. Dehydration can sap your skin of moisture and elasticity, leading to sagginess, dryness, and wrinkles. Moreover, the older you get, the more likely you are to be dehydrated. Even one night of heavy drinking can make your lines and wrinkles look more pronounced. If caught early enough, quitting drinking and other lifestyle changes can treat liver disease. Others fall in between, acquiring some undesirable physical traits due to the way alcohol affects all organs of the body.

Even if you’re not a heavy drinker, the toll that alcohol can take ages you. One night of heavy drinking can make your wrinkles more evident. While that consequence is temporary, if it continues, it could have lasting effects.