Alcohol and Your Immune System: Does It Help or Hurt?

Drinking also makes it harder for your body to properly tend to its other critical functions, like fighting off a disease. When the body is unable to clear a pathogen, an infection can worsen and lead to more severe, life threatening complications. Here’s what you need to know about how alcohol affects your immune system. Keeping your immune system strong is an important way to help fend off dreaded winter coughs, sniffles and the flu. Each drinker was tracked for five hours, with blood samples drawn 20 minutes following peak intoxication and at the two-hour and five-hour marks. It is also important to never share a cup or drink from the same container as another person as this directly exposes you to their germs through any residual saliva. Evan O’Donnell is an NYC-based content strategist with four years’ experience writing and editing in the recovery space.

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• Not only that, alcohol has been proven to damage the liver, which can result in death.
• Our stories are reviewed by medical professionals to ensure you get the most accurate and useful information about your health and wellness.
• However, when does it morph from a regular, innocent occurrence into alcohol use disorder or alcoholism?
• When it comes to immunity, drinking any alcohol puts you at higher risk of getting sick.

Her articles can be found on Your Tango, Thrive Global, does alcohol weaken your immune system to Heart, Medium, Muck Rack, and on various professional websites. In fact, with the emergence of COVID-19 , the term “compromised immune system” has become all too common over the past few years.

Weakens Your Body’s Defenses

Experts say they will help keep your immune system in check if consumed in moderation, of course. Moderate drinking seems to be good for the heart and circulatory system, and probably protects against type 2 diabetes and gallstones. Heavy drinking is a major cause of preventable death in most countries.

• However, excessive drinking can decrease the production of T cells which results in a weaker immune system.
• The ethanol in alcohol damages immune cells because it generates free radicals.
• Depending on your personality, understand the value that your friends and family bring to the experience.
• While alcohol’s actual effects on the immune system are complex at a chemical and cellular level, chronic alcohol use has been shown to affect every area of the immune system.

Several studies have also shown that the lungs are highly vulnerable to the effects of alcohol. For example, alcohol can reduce the ability of respiratory epithelium cells to remove mucous from the lungs, which can directly damage lung tissue and weaken the proper functioning of the lungs over time. Although this chronic weakening of lung function may not cause any immediate symptoms, these effects can manifest when a severe respiratory infection occurs. Although most research has focused on the effects of heavy alcohol consumption on the immune system, several studies have also confirmed that even moderate consumption can have significant effects on the immune system. For example, one study found that women who consumed 330 mL of beer for 30 days exhibited a significant increase in leukocytes, mature CD3+ T-cells, neutrophils, and basophils. In contrast, men who consumed a similarly moderate amount of beer for the same period exhibited a significant increase in basophils alone. Uh, some people say, you know, I really want to do an inventory on who I am.

Study: One episode of binge drinking enough to weaken immune system

Instead, cover your mouth using a tissue or sleeve if you don’t already have a cold or flu virus. The appearance of sores in your mouth, a sign of a weakened immune system, cannot fight off the virus that causes them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers “moderate drinking” to consist of one standard drink per day for women or two standard drinks per day for men. A “standard drink” is defined as 12 ounces of beer, five ounces of wine, or a 1.5 ounce shot of liquor. You may have noticed that after a long period of excessive drinking, you catch colds more frequently. Alcohol can weaken your immunity to bacteria and viruses in several ways. Drinking during the COVID-19 pandemic poses physical and psychological risks.

How Alcohol Impacts Your Immune System

Also, long-term changes in immunity include the creation of inflammation, especially in the intestines. In the long run, it may lead to diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Some of the ways alcohol affects our health are well known, but others may surprise you. Here are six less-known effects that alcohol has on your body, as well as how your liver breaks it down.

Research has indicated that normally 75% of Americans feel they are under moderate to high stress most of the time, and that’s just day to day life prior to COVID. Stress is one of the things that plays a major role in your immune system. It can impact your blood pressure, cholesterol level, brain chemistry, blood sugar levels, and hormonal balance. It is also increasingly viewed as a cardiovascular risk factor. Studies have shown that short term stress can actually boost the immune system, but chronic stress, which we are all facing now, has a significant effect on the immune system, which can manifest an illness. There is currently no vaccine so we are counting on our immune system to do most of the work for us.

These disruptions to the composition of the gut microbiota and to gut barrier function have important implications beyond the intestinal system. Infection with viral hepatitis accelerates the progression of ALD, and end-stage liver disease from viral hepatitis, together with ALD, is the main reason for liver transplantations in the United States. The article by Dolganiuc in this issue explores the synergistic effects of alcohol and hepatitis viruses on the progression of liver disease as well as alcohol consumption’s injurious effect on liver antiviral immunity. Clinicians have long observed an association between excessive alcohol consumption and adverse immune-related health effects such as susceptibility to pneumonia. Your immune system is made up of white blood cells that work to fight infections and other diseases.