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Do you know the risks of too much alcohol? Find out more here.
Alcoholic drinks contain a high number of calories, which can impact your weight. Fat, especially on men, tends to go to the belly and belly fat is more dangerous than other fats. It can can squeeze your organs, it can also release harmful chemicals into your blood and this can lead to cardio vascular disease, diabetes and even dementia.
Regularly having just a couple of pints of lager can weaken your heart and shrink your arteries. This makes it harder for blood to be pumped and pass through, which increases your blood pressure. That same pressure can lead to blood clots – which can cause strokes and brain damage.
From anxiety to stress, alcohol can have negative effects on your mental health. Too much alcohol can change your brain’s ability to stay balanced and run smoothly. The more you drink the more your brain is affected, making you nervous and low. It can also stop you from sleeping properly, leaving you sluggish and irritable.
Having more than just two beers or two glasses of wine in a regular basis can put your liver at risk. The liver breaks the chemicals in the body and when it has to break down too much alcohol it struggles to do its job and can become fatty and scarred.
Alcohol can negatively affect your gut. It can cause the stomach acid that’s meant to break down your food to attack the lining of the stomach and the muscles that surround it. Alcohol is high in calories and carbs, so when these are washed down your gut they put it under a lot of strain. That’s why you can feel bloated as your intestines try to cope. Regularly drinking too much alcohol can make you experience more severe effects like nausea, vomiting, ulcers and even stomach cancer if left untreated.
Alcohol slows and prevents the release of sex hormones affecting blood flow to the penis – and this can make it harder to get and sustain an erection. Moreover, alcohol can damage the testicles over time and this can also lower testosterone levels, and harm fertility.
Not everyone who drinks alcohol will get cancer, but scientists have found that several cancers, including the seven listed on this page, are caused by drinking alcohol – with the risk increasing the more you drink.
The risk of developing these types of cancer starts to increase even at low levels of drinking. So the less you drink, the more you reduce your risk.
Breast cancer
Bowel cancer
Mouth cancer
Food pipe (oesophageal) cancer
Upper throat (pharyngeal) cancer
Voice box (laryngeal cancer)
Liver cancer
Heavy drinking can also cause cirrhosis of the liver (where damage to the liver causes scar tissues to build up) which can then lead to cancer.
If you choose to drink, to keep health risks from alcohol low it’s safest for both men and women to drink no more than 14 units a week, spread over three or more days with several drink-free days, and no bingeing.
To keep your risk of cancer low, it’s also important not to smoke, to make sure you are getting enough exercise (aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate activity a day, five days a week), maintain a healthy weight, eat a balanced diet and protect yourself from the sun.
However, for cancers, we know that drinking even at lower levels (for example, below 14 units per week) can increase your risk. Put simply, this means the less you drink the lower your cancer risk from alcohol.
