A closer look at how drinking affects your health.
There are plenty of reasons why cutting back on alcohol can have a positive impact on your health. If you’ve ever found yourself waking up in bed with a headache, dry mouth and nausea the morning after a fun night out, you likely uttered the word “I’m never drinking again.”
Most of us have been there a time or two. 75% of people who overindulge in alcohol report experiencing feeling hungover the next morning. This is caused by drinking more than your body can process over one drink per hour.
But temporary discomfort is just the tip of the iceberg. Alcohol affects nearly every system in the body – even in smaller amounts. From brain function to metabolic health, regular consumption can contribute to long-term changes that may not be immediately noticeable.
For years, studies suggested things like a daily glass of wine could help prevent cancer or support heart health, but these claims have since been debunked. When it comes to alcohol, there is no safe amount that does not affect health. The World Health Organization publicly declared this in 2023, reminding everyone that decades ago, alcohol was deemed a Group 1 carcinogen and stressing that it’s a “toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance.”
Drinking alcohol can increase your risk of heart disease, tax your brain health, and can even put you at an increased risk of developing certain types of cancers. It can also take its toll on your body composition, leading to unhealthy deposits of fat that can increase your risk of liver disease and can lead to muscle loss and weakness over time.
Here is a deeper look at the impact that drinking can have on your body.
Increased visceral fat: Consuming alcohol can cause your body to pack on more fat, in particular visceral fat. This is the type of fat that wraps around the organs inside your abdomen, such as your liver, intestines and stomach. This can occur for a variety of reasons, as alcohol packs in extra calories and can stimulate your appetite and impair your judgment, causing you to overeat. It can also cause your body to release extra stress hormones that can lead to weight gain in the stomach area. And when you drink, the body prioritizes breaking down alcohol versus other nutrients like carbohydrates and fats, which can also lead to unwanted fat storage.
Too much visceral fat can lead to health issues such as heart disease, diabetes and stroke. And even moderate alcohol consumption puts you at risk of higher levels of visceral fat.
Decreased muscle mass: Drinkers may notice they have a harder time maintaining a toned physique. This is because alcohol hinders the body’s ability to break down protein, which can lead to reduced muscle mass overtime. It also impairs nutrient absorption, leading to nutritional deficiencies, and causes dehydration. And alcohol interferes with hormone levels, such as testosterone and growth hormones, which are key in muscle maintenance and can lead to muscle atrophy and degeneration.
Fatty liver disease: Alcohol can take a toll on the liver, as when it’s metabolised it generates acetaldehyde, a toxic compound that contributes to oxidative stress and inflammation in the liver. Drinking even small amounts of alcohol can lead to a buildup of fats in the liver. This condition, known as fatty liver disease, can occur from even just a few days of overdoing it with drinking.
About 90% of people who consume excessive amounts of alcohol have fatty liver disease. This is the first stage of alcohol-related liver disease and can progress into alcoholic hepatitis, which can lead to more severe liver damage – though this can sometimes be reversed if an afflicted person stops drinking. Fatty liver disease can also progress into cirrhosis in which the liver is significantly scarred and is generally not able to be reversed. If a person continues drinking into cirrhosis, it can lead to death.
Digestive disorders: Drinking too much alcohol can lead to inflammation of the pancreas, resulting in pancreatitis. This is a potentially deadly condition that causes the pancreas to swell and impairs its ability to make enzymes and hormones for proper digestion. Drinking can also irritate the stomach lining and lead to gastritis. This can cause stomach pain and if left untreated, can lead to ulcers and an increased risk of stomach cancer.
Cardiovascular risk: Regular drinking has been linked to higher blood pressure, which can increase the risk of cardiovascular incidents like heart attacks and strokes. Excessive drinking has also been linked to cardiomyopathy, a disorder that affects the heart muscles, and in extreme cases, too much alcohol can eventually lead to heart failure.
Cognitive impairment: Alcohol can also take a toll on brain health. Even in small amounts, it interferes with the brain’s communication pathways and alters how the brain processes information. This could result in delayed reaction times, altered judgement, impaired reasoning and memory, blurred vision and slurred speech and hearing. In addition to these temporary issues when drinking, there are some potential long term effects. Regular drinking over lengthy periods of time can lead to structural changes in the brain, affecting your cognition. Multiple studies have shown that heavy drinking can actually shrink your brain mass over time. And regular drinking can lead to increased risks of depression and anxiety.
An increased risk of cancer: Alcohol has been classified as a leading preventable cause of cancer and is linked to 100,000 cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year. And it’s not just heavy drinking that has an impact. According to The U.S. Surgeon Advisory, the risk starts as low as one or fewer drinks per day for certain cancers, like breast, mouth, and throat cancers. The increased risk comes from factors like alcohol being metabolized into acetaldehyde, a toxic substance that can damage DNA. Consuming alcohol can also lead to hormonal changes like increased estrogen and insulin that can promote the growth of certain types of cancers.
Actionable Steps to Mitigate Alcohol’s Effects
If you’re concerned about the toll that alcohol may be taking on your body, there are things you can do to improve your health. Here are a few steps to take.
Cut down on how much you drink: Because the liver has the ability to repair itself, cutting back on alcohol can have a significant impact. Research shows that even a moderate reduction in alcohol intake can help to improve your liver health. And it doesn’t take long to see changes. People with fatty liver who quit drinking have experienced significant reductions in liver fat, inflammation and scarring in just seven days. And those with significant liver damage who abstain from drinking can slow down the chances of a progression into liver failure or untimely death.
Avoid drinking on an empty stomach: Anyone who has had a glass of wine, a beer, or a shot on an empty stomach can attest to the fact that it seems to hit them harder. If you drink without having eaten first, alcohol hits your small intestines faster, where absorption by the bloodstream is accelerated. This can lead to a higher blood alcohol concentration in a shorter time, which makes vital organs like your liver and kidneys have to work harder. Having food in your stomach slows down how fast you absorb alcohol, making it easier on your body.
Stick to the recommended limits: The Centers for Disease Control recommends men have no more than two drinks per day and that women cap it at one. It’s also important to familiarize yourself with what is considered a drink. For instance, when it comes to beer, a serving is 12 oz of a regular beer that would be around 5% alcohol. Some IPAs contain much higher alcohol by volume (APV) and many times people order a pint of beer, which is 16oz. One glass of wine is only 5 oz, which can be a lot smaller of a pour than people are used to.
Be kind to your liver: In addition to watching how much you drink, you can take steps to protect your liver. Eating a nutritious diet and maintaining a healthy weight, for example, can help you to ward off fatty liver disease. Wash produce to help avoid toxins and be mindful of medications that can be harmful to your liver.
Prioritize sleep: A good night’s sleep is crucial to being in good health. Regularly sleeping for 7 to 9 hours a night can help you to maintain a healthy body weight, reduce your blood pressure, improve your heart health and metabolism, keep your immune system strong, and so much more. It can also help to protect your liver function. One study found that a moderate improvement in sleep put people at a 29% reduced risk of fatty liver disease.
Get moving: In addition to helping you to control your weight, improve your mood, and help you to sleep better, exercise can also help you to repair a strained liver. One study looked at patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), a liver disease from excessive fat buildup and found that people who ate healthy and did high intensity workouts for 10 months dramatically improved their liver health.
Take a deeper look at your body composition and liver health: Alcohol-induced damage can often go unnoticed until more serious conditions develop. Fatty liver disease, for example, typically has no symptoms in early stages, making it difficult to detect. And since visceral fat is hidden behind the abdominal wall, it can’t be seen with the naked eye. That’s where Prenuvo’s Whole Body MRI Enhanced Screen including a body composition analysis comes in—it provides a detailed look at important health markers, including liver function.
With this enhanced screen, you’ll get a full report on your body fat, liver fat, muscle volume and symmetry, and the size of key abdominal organs. The MRI can also spot hundreds of conditions before symptoms appear, like tumors, spinal degeneration, and aneurysms. This combination allows you to track how alcohol is affecting your body over time and offers actionable insights to help you make healthier choices—whether that’s cutting back on how much you drink or tweaking your diet.
You can take an even deeper look at your liver health through Prenuvo’s Enhanced Screen, which includes testing for over 50 biomarkers, including ALT (alanine aminotransferase) and AST (aspartate aminotransferase). These enzymes are commonly used to assess liver function and can indicate damage caused by alcohol when elevated. The blood test gives you a thorough look at things like organ function, inflammation, hormone levels, nutrient deficiencies, and potential disease markers—so you can stay on top of your health
