What Does Alcohol Do to Your Body?

Individuals with AUD are often deficient in one or more essential nutrients including vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, folate, and thiamine (Hoyumpa 1986). These micronutrients have been shown to play an important role in immune system homeostasis and response Alcoholics Anonymous to infection (Mora, Iwata et al. 2008). To this end, heavy drinkers have been shown to exhibit an increase in both IgA and IgM levels when compared to both moderate and light male drinkers. Some of the most notable contributors to the innate immune response include natural killer (NK) cells, neutrophils, monocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells (DCs). “Alcohol damages the ability of your immune system to fight viral infections. In fact, both the Surgeon General and the World Health Organization advise anyone at high risk for COVID-19 to avoid alcohol because it increases your risk for infection.” Considering all these disruptions, it’s no surprise that alcohol slows the adaptive immune response.

Alcohol and the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis

Prolactin’s action on the mammary gland and in the maintenance of lactation has long been known and, indeed, is the source of the name for this hormone. It is one of the most abundant hormones in the pituitary gland and is produced and secreted by lactrope cells. Common manifestations of elevation of plasma PRL (hyperprolactinemia) in women include amenorrhea (lack of menstrural cycles) and galactorrhea (excessive secretion of milk). Men with hyperprolactinemia typically show hypogonadism, with decreased sex drive, low sperm production and impotence. A pituitary microadenoma or hyperplasia is the cause of does alcohol weaken your immune system hyperprolactinemia in most patients78.

Impact of AUD on Lymphocyte Development

Likewise, male rats fed an ethanol-containing liquid diet (8.7% v/v for up to 4 weeks) experienced a progressive loss of both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Boyadjieva, Dokur et al. 2002). Increased apoptosis of T and B lymphocytes isolated from the thymus, spleen, and lymph nodes of female mice was observed following 16 hour culture with 0.4%-2% ethanol, concentrations 5 to 25 times the definition of intoxication (Slukvin and Jerrells 1995). In contrast to these observations, moderate consumption of beer (330mL for women and 660mL for men) for 30 days resulted in a significant increase in the number of leukocytes, mature CD3+ T lymphocytes, neutrophils and basophils in women, while only basophils were increased in men (Romeo, Warnberg et al. 2007). 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.

How alcohol impacts the lungs

Those studies showed decreased cytolytic activity of NK cells in C57BL/6 mice consuming 20 percent ethanol for 4 weeks; however, no differences existed in the metastasis of B16-BL6 melanoma cells in alcohol-consuming and control animals (Meadows et al. 1993). Another study using different tumor cells (i.e., MADB106 mammary adenocarcinoma cells) demonstrated that ethanol administration 1 hour before tumor inoculation suppressed NK-dependent destruction of tumor cells, resulting in a 10-fold increase in the number of lung metastases in Fischer 344 rats (Ben-Eliyahu et al. 1996). The presence of ethanol in an in vitro culture of spleen cells also suppressed NK cell cytotoxic activity against MADB106 tumor cells (Yirmiya et al. 1992). T cells constitute a diverse population of lymphocytes that develop in the bone marrow and mature in the thymus. Each T cell expresses a unique T-cell receptor (TCR) that confers specificity for one particular foreign molecule (i.e., antigen).

• Lastly, and since it is currently well documented that there is an overlap between the endocrine and the immune systems, we will discuss how dysregulation in the hypothalamic-pituitary axis can negatively impact the body’s immune response.
• In summary, several in vitro and in vivo studies demonstrate that ethanol modulates the function of innate immune cells (monocytes and DCs) in a dose and time dependent manner (Figure 1).
• 2 Opsonization is a process by which a pathogen or other antigen is covered with antibodies and thereby marked for ingestion and destruction by other immune cells (i.e., phagocytic cells).
• Because our body sees alcohol as a toxin, something dangerous to remove as quickly as possible, the liver prioritizes processing it above everything else.

You may be wondering if it is harmful =https://ecosoberhouse.com/ to drink when you are feeling sick, and how much is too much. Alcohol can trigger inflammation in the gut, and destroy the microorganisms that live in the intestine and maintain immune system health. We know our immune system fights to keep us healthy, but we don’t ordinarily question how it works.

Hornets can hold their alcohol like no other animal on Earth

• Nonhuman primates, on the other hand, voluntarily consume different amounts of alcohol and allow us to conduct studies in an outbred species that shares significant physiological and genetic homology with humans while maintaining rigorous control over diet and other environmental cues.
• 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.
• Both enzymes convert alcohol to acetaldehyde, which is further metabolized to acetate by acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) in the mitochondria.
• Activation of this system culminates in the production and release of corticosteroid (i.e., cortisol in humans and corticosterone in rodents) from the adrenal glands, which then act on various tissues to mediate the stress response.
• The endocrine system controls metabolism and energy levels, electrolyte balance, growth and development and reproduction.
• These results suggest that chronic ethanol affects GH secretion primarily at the hypothalamic level where it induces impairments in GHRH gene expression.

Heavy drinking can also lead to a host of health concerns, like brain damage, heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver and even certain kinds of cancer. Normal initiation and progression of puberty is under the control and is mediated by central inputs which stimulate the pulsatile diurnal secretion of LHRH into the hypothalamic-pituitary portal system. LHRH then stimulates the pituitary gonadotropin secretion and subsequent ovarian maturation45. This LHRH surge, which is normally inhibited during childhood through hypothalamic inhibitory inputs such as gamma aminobutyric acid and opioid peptides is triggered at puberty by stimulatory agents such as insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), norepinephrine, leptin, transforming growth factor (TGF)-α and the kisspeptins46-48. Mark Hutchinson of the University of Adelaide in South Australia says that the results tally with post-mortem data showing that chronic drinkers have less immune chemicals in their blood than normal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines excessive drinking as eight or more drinks a week for women, and 15 or more drinks a week for men.

Effects on Circulating Immunoglobulin Levels

2 Opsonization is a process by which a pathogen or other antigen is covered with antibodies and thereby marked for ingestion and destruction by other immune cells (i.e., phagocytic cells). “Although there is no evidence that moderate drinking harms the immune system, it is better to stick to wine or beer since these have lower percent alcohol,” Dasgupta says. Moderate drinking is defined as up to one drink per day for people assigned female at birthday and up to two drinks per day for people assigned male at birth, per the NIAAA.

• One study found that people who got less than 7 hours of sleep were nearly three times more likely to develop a cold compared with those who got 8 or more hours of sleep.
• Dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, therefore, can lead not only to reproductive dysfunction but also to other serious health problems such as mood and memory disorders, osteoporosis and muscle atrophy.
• Even drinking a little too much (binge drinking) on occasion can set off a chain reaction that affects your well-being.
• B cells mature into plasma cells that produce antibodies, also known as immunoglobulins (Ig), to eliminate extracellular microorganisms and prevent the spread of infection.
• Moreover, a recent systematic comparison examining gene expression changes found that temporal gene response patterns to trauma, burns, and endotoxemia in mouse models correlated poorly with the human conditions (Seok, Warren et al. 2013).
• As described above for thymopoiesis, the offspring of pregnant mice that from gestational day 1 to day 18 consumed a liquid diet in which 25 percent of calories were derived from ethanol exhibited decreased numbers of both immature and mature B cells in the spleens directly after birth.
• Similar results have been seen in SIV infection of male nonhuman primates (Bagby, Stoltz et al. 2003, Molina, McNurlan et al. 2006, Poonia, Nelson et al. 2006, Marcondes, Watry et al. 2008).

Impact of AUD on Adaptive Immune Responses

Human T cells incubated in vitro with variable concentrations of ethanol (0, 10, 25, and 50mM for 24 hours) showed a reduced expression of the VDR, accompanied by increased expression of RAS and ROS as well as increased T-cell death (Rehman et al. 2013). Additional analyses demonstrated that ethanol exposure promoted apoptosis by inducing breaks in the DNA of the T cells. This damage to the DNA most likely was mediated by ROS generation in response to RAS activation. Treatment with a compound that activates the VDR (i.e., a VDR agonist) restored the T cell’s VDR expression, down-regulated RAS expression as well as ROS generation, and thus preserved T-cell survival (Rehman et al. 2013).

In addition to laboratory studies confirming the impact of alcohol consumption on the innate immune system, several studies have looked at how heavy drinking can alter plasma cytokine levels. To this end, one study analyzed IL-10, IL-6, IL-18, and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) levels in 25 non-treating seeking heavy drinkers after they had consumed an alcoholic drink. The researchers reported significant reductions in the TNF-α levels three and six hours after the alcohol consumption.