It can impact your physical, emotional, and spiritual health, too—making you not only look but also feel older than you are. Those are partly from dehydration, a common condition among older people, sober or not. (Our sense of thirst, funnily enough, is dulled with age.) Alcohol pulls water from your body, hence my cotton mouth and headache.
It Can Dry Your Skin
They’re not responsible for your behavior, but they can offer gentle reminders or avoid encouraging you to drink more. Most medications and alcohol don’t interact well with each other. Not only will alcohol make conditions like hypertension and diabetes worse, but it also mixes poorly with the medications typically used to treat those conditions. This can be dangerous for people who already have slower reaction times and poor balance without alcohol.
Are You Feeling Suicidal?
“It can exacerbate depression, increase blood pressure, and lead to cardiac arrhythmias,” Koob says. 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.
Drink moderately (if at all)
However, you can always take steps to adopt a healthier relationship with alcohol. The first step is to learn about common reasons for drinking, signs of excessive drinking, and the unique risks alcohol poses to older adults. While you’re not alone—research shows that alcohol use is rising among older adults—trying to drink away your problems only creates a dangerous spiral. When you drink alcohol, it’s absorbed through the small intestine, processed by the liver, and circulated through your major organs.
Depression in Older Adults
Some drinks are stronger and more damaging than others. The measure you use for beer should be different from that you use for vodka or wine in determining what is moderate alcohol consumption. According to the current USDA https://ecosoberhouse.com/ Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the recommendation for moderate drinking is a maximum of two drinks per day for men, one drink per day for women. Regular exercise is important to physical and mental health as you age.
- Alcohol can diminish the effectiveness of medications, and medications can amplify the effect of alcohol on the body.
- It might also help to drink water between sips of alcohol.
- Higher blood alcohol levels can lead to falls, injuries, and confusion.
- They also agreed to several medical exams to measure signs of heart disease and aging.
- You may have more trouble regulating your emotions or managing your coordination.
This helps prevent you from becoming dehydrated when you’re not drinking. The idea of having a drink to relax before bedtime may not be a good one, especially does alcohol make you look older as you get older. Instead of lulling you into a restful night, alcohol can actually keep you from getting to sleep and lead to restless slumber.
Your liver helps to get rid of substances that can harm you. Excessive drinking burdens the liver, which tries to detoxify the alcohol from your body. This can give room to other toxins in your skin to do the damage.
Taking simple steps like staying socially active and wearing sunglasses can help slow down the aging process and improve your overall well-being. Sun damage and skin cancers are common on the thin skin of the lower eyelids. Wearing sunglasses not only protects your eyes and surrounding skin from harmful UV rays, but also keeps you from squinting.
- Exercises that involve rhythmic movement, such as swimming or running, and activities that involve deep breathing, such as yoga, can also be helpful.
- But it can also hurt your health over time, especially as you age.
- But at Ria Health, we recognize that this can be easier said than done.
People older than 65 who don’t take any medications should average no more than one drink a day (seven per week) and have no more than three at one sitting. (A drink is one 12-ounce can or bottle of beer, one 5-ounce glass of wine, or one 1.5-ounce shot of an 80-proof or less liquor.) Talk with your doctor to find out what’s right for you. Alcohol may not only make you more likely to get sick as you age, it also can make common medical problems worse. Studies show that heavy drinkers can have a harder time with things like osteoporosis, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, ulcers, cancer, memory loss, and certain mood disorders.
