Alcohol and Aging Effects: Does Alcohol Make You Look Older?

The risk of earlobe creases indicating aging was similarly 26%-36% higher among heavy drinkers than among light-to-moderate drinkers. Alcohol misuse or alcohol use disorder is a pattern of drinking that can cause harm to a person’s health and social relationships.

But heavy drinking, even occasionally, can have harmful effects. Other people develop a harmful reliance on alcohol later in life. Sometimes this is a result of major life changes, such as the death of a spouse or other loved one, moving to a new home, or failing health. These kinds of changes can cause loneliness, boredom, anxiety, or depression. In fact, depression in older adults often aligns with drinking too much. Katie has always enjoyed a glass of wine to unwind a few times per week.

Can alcohol age you?

If you are adventurous enough to apply it, dilute it with a bit of water the day after drinking to get a clean, even, day-after-drinking glow. Just make sure to moisturize afterwards, since it will almost certainly work to dry out your skin. Starchy, sugary foods—like white bread, ice cream, and potato chips—can cause all sorts of problems with your face, too. That’s because they spike your blood sugar levels, which can ignite inflammation and spur acne breakouts, says Dr. Zeichner. Drinking alcohol can also make you look older by causing broken capillaries, which are the tiny blood vessels near your skin’s surface. With age, these blood vessels will become less elastic, and alcohol can make them burst, leaving you with red, spidery splotches and discoloration around your nose, cheeks and jawline.

Drinking even a small amount of alcohol can lead to dangerous or even deadly situations because it can impair a person’s ecosoberhouse.com/ judgment, coordination, and reaction time. This increases the risk of falls, car crashes, and other accidents.

Alcohol Detox at Home: A Quick Guide

As a result, you may notice the urge to urinate more frequently when you drink alcohol. Chronic dehydration can make you look and feel older, even if you take good care of yourself with a skin care routine that includes moisturizers and sunscreen. A bout of heavy drinking will make wrinkles like crow’s feet, brow furrows and smile lines appear more prominent.

Not only because it keeps you hydrated and healthy but it can reverse some of those skin dehydration effects. If you’ve been drinking every day for 20 years it won’t pull a complete Benjamin Button, but it will help. Ria’s telemedicine-based program is designed to simplify things, allowing you to access the support you need from the comfort of home. We use evidence-based methods to help you moderate or stop drinking, and our convenient smartphone app makes the whole process portable. You no longer need to disrupt your life in order to start drinking less. When a person suspects a problem with alcohol, it is essential to seek help.

Stressing Out

One novel clock that is built from DNA modifications in monocytes, which was developed by Xu’s group, shows the strongest association with alcohol consumption and epigenetic age. Monocytes play an important role in inflammation and aging process. The answer is not so straightforward, based on a recently published study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine. If heavy drinking is a regular thing, you could face some potentially irreversible skin damage. Many people enjoy an alcoholic beverage or two on occasion with friends or family, but alcohol can be addictive. As we age, alcohol consumption can also make existing health problems worse and have dangerous interactions with some medications. Anyone at any age can develop an unhealthy reliance on alcohol.

• For example, it can lead to liver damage, cancer, immune disorders, and brain damage.
• And then there are the frequent hangovers from binge drinking.
• By adding extra stress to your body and depriving it of the nutrients it needs to rebuild, alcohol can place you years ahead in the aging process, and affect how you look.
• Steatosis, alcoholic hepatitis, fibrosis, and cirrhosis are all conditions of the liver that are caused by over-drinking.
• You no longer need to disrupt your life in order to start drinking less.
• Wrinkles may be caused by alcohol’s ability to dehydrate the skin as well.

Brain – Alcohol-related brain damage can involve the premature onset of dementia and dementia-like symptoms. On brain imaging scans of chronic alcoholics, this damage is evidenced by a visible shrinkage in brain volume and deteriorating fibers. Pancreas – Problem drinking can lead to pancreatitis, characterized by inflammation and swelling of the blood vessels in the pancreas. The condition can cause serious, life-threatening complications.

Does Alcohol Age Your Appearance in Other Ways?

When combined with counseling, this approach is proven highly effective. Contact us to find out does alcohol make you look older how we can help you navigate the path to recovery and optimize your physical and mental health.

Drinking alcohol can pull more water out of your body and make your chances of dehydration even higher. Of course, it’s impossible not to worry sometimes, but it becomes a problem when stressing takes over your life. Dr. Warren Willey recommends dealing with stressful situations by meditating for 10 minutes a day. You’ve probably seen before and after photos of United States presidents showing how stress has aged them. Well, according to a 2004 study, long-term stress shortens a part of our chromosomes called telomeres, the Washington Post reported at the time. Long-term stress makes them even shorter and causes the body to age more quickly.