Can You Drink Alcohol if You Have COPD?

October 14, 2021 mimedia

It includes emphysema, characterized by damage to lung air sacs, and chronic bronchitis, involving bronchial tube inflammation and mucus buildup. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — otherwise known as COPD — is a chronic lung disease. Despite these consequences, some people may develop an addiction to alcohol and beunable to give up drinkingon their own.

Abusing alcohol can create symptoms of allergic reactions, worsen lung functioning, and lead to sleep-disordered breathing, all of which can compromise the health of someone with COPD. Over time, drinking too much alcohol can weaken the lungs’ ability to clear themselves of mucus. A deficiency in this antioxidant, which can happen if you drink heavily, can increase your risk for lung damage, exacerbations, and worsened COPD symptoms. It is also much harder for the cilia lining your airways to move that thick, sticky, bacteria-ridden mucus out of your lungs, significantly raising the risk of respiratory infections. To help you better understand the risk, the following sections will explain in more detail how alcohol can affect your lungs, nutrition, and even interfere with COPD treatments.

However, this is difficult to study in populations of people with COPD, since COPD patients experience chronic airflow obstruction that makes it difficult to detect minor changes. There hasn’t been much scientific research in this area which makes it difficult to discern how alcohol affects people with COPD specifically. If pancreatitis becomes chronic and is not treated properly, it can cause permanent damage to the organ and lead to diabetes or death.

There are two other problems with the studies that suggest alcohol use could prevent COPD. Those are the kind of studies experts use to approve medications and make treatment recommendations. They don’t prove that alcohol was the reason someone didn’t get COPD.

Treatment for Co-Occurring Alcohol Abuse and COPD

In fact, studies show that heavy alcohol consumption can increase our risk of respiratory infections. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic inflammatory lung disease that causes obstructed airflow from the lungs. The effects of alcohol can vary based on individual health status, drinking regularity, and COPD progression. While light to moderate drinking might not worsen COPD, heavy alcohol use is linked to increased symptom severity and lung function impairment. While small quantities of alcohol may be safe, heavy drinking can make COPD symptoms worse.

You will need to talk to your doctor, who will take your unique medical history and physical condition into account, to know whether or not light or moderate drinking is safe for you.
Some people with COPD may demonstrate allergic and allergic-like reactions following alcohol consumption.
This can be particularly dangerous for people with COPD who already have oxygen levels that are lower than normal.
Symptoms of COPD typically include coughing, spitting up phlegm (mucus), difficulty breathing, wheezing, shortness of breath, and tiredness.
We may have a harder time coughing after consuming alcohol, making it more difficult to clear our lungs — which is why we might feel like we have an “alcohol cough.”

As the condition worsens, the symptoms will worsen, too. The earliest symptoms of the condition are often mild. In its earliest stages, COPD may cause no symptoms at all. Still, 1 in 4 Americans with the disease have never smoked.

Bronchodilators, the inhaled medications used to open airways, may also cause enhanced side effects when alcohol is consumed.
The answer to whether we can drink alcohol with COPD isn’t necessarily clear.
The mucus obstructs the flow of air through your airways, causing worsened coughing, wheezing, and and overall worsening of lung function.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — otherwise known as COPD — is a chronic lung disease.

Certain antibiotics, including Bactrim, Flagyl, and Tindamax can have even more severe effects when mixed with alcohol. For instance, many antibiotics are known to not mix well with alcohol, causing uncomfortable side effects like dizziness, drowsiness, and stomach distress. Some medications used to treat COPD cause uncomfortable side effects or can be dangerous when combined with alcohol. The mucus obstructs the flow of air through your airways, causing worsened coughing, wheezing, and and overall worsening of lung function. As a diuretic, alcohol flushes water out of your body, which in turn dries up your mucus, making it extra thick and sticky. Some studies, however, have hinted at a link between heavy alcohol use and increased severity of COPD.

In fact, smoking ultimately accounts for as many as 8 in 10 COPD-related deaths. Nearly 90 percent of all COPD cases are caused by cigarette smoking. This suggests that many people with COPD regularly drank before being diagnosed with COPD.

Direct Impact on Respiratory Function

Still, alcohol does affect your body when you have COPD. But with alcohol, there isn’t a clear-cut answer yet. That’s why if you’re a smoker, doctors recommend you stop smoking right away.

General Health

Here’s what the science says about drinking alcohol when you have COPD. If a person has COPD or is at risk for the disease, they should consider staying away from alcohol. A person with any of these risk factors needs to consider them when deciding whether to also drink alcohol. Since COPD is most often diagnosed after age 45, heavy alcohol use also could potentially be a contributing factor for smokers who develop the disease. This antioxidant helps protect the lungs from damage caused by inhaled toxins such as tobacco smoke.

Mental Health and Loneliness

People with COPD or at risk for the disease should consult with a doctor before deciding whether to drink alcohol and how much. A person with a health issue like COPD or a person with a risk of the disease may wish to take into account the complications that alcohol can cause. A 2015 study identified a relationship between heavy drinking and persistent smoking or failing to quit smoking. Since COPD is a lung condition, any negative impact of alcohol on the lungs may make a person more predisposed to develop a COPD disease.

Mental Health Resources

Even a single episode of heavy drinking can inhibit your body’s ability to fight viruses and bacteria for up to 24 hours. Small amounts of alcohol are not enough to cause any permanent damage to your liver, but when you drink too much at once, the liver gets overloaded with metabolites and becomes inflamed. However, excessive, long-term alcohol consumption can cause serious damage to your heart and cardiovascular system. In the long term, heavy alcohol use can cause permanent damage to the parts of the brain responsible for memory, motor skills, and emotional regulation. The feeling of intoxication you get when you drink enough alcohol to get drunk comes mainly from alcohol’s effects on the brain. You have a higher risk of experiencing these negative effects the more heavily you drink and the longer the period of time that you drink for.

Risks of Alcohol Use

It reduces the levels of an enzyme that helps protect your lungs from damage and inflammation caused by smoking. All of this causes more severe COPD symptoms as a result of the thickened mucus building up to excess in your lungs. The main way that alcohol affects the lungs directly is by inhibiting their ability to move mucus up and out of the lungs. What research has been done focuses mainly on the effects of alcohol on lung function, dietary health, and medications. Studies even show that chronic, heavy drinkers are more prone to contracting contagious diseases like pneumonia, tuberculosis, and HIV. Heavy alcohol consumption, however, can cause a variety of symptoms and health complications over the course of many years.

Oral corticosteroids, which are sometimes does alcohol affect copd used to treat severe flare-ups, can be particularly problematic when combined with alcohol. Alcohol impairs the function of cilia, the tiny, hair-like structures lining the airways that sweep mucus and trapped particles toward the throat for expulsion. The substance is a diuretic, which can lead to mild dehydration, causing the mucus in the airways to become thicker and stickier. Alcohol acts as a central nervous system (CNS) depressant, and this effect extends directly to the muscles involved in breathing, such as the diaphragm and intercostal muscles. My alcohol recommendations for someone with COPD are the same as they would be for anyone else, Han says.

Effects of Drinking Alcohol With COPD

High alcohol intake isn’t good for anyone for many reasons, and acute intoxication, or getting drunk, is always risky.” While Han isn’t overly concerned about moderate alcohol use and COPD medications, she says it’s always a good idea to ask your pharmacist if it’s OK to drink while you’re taking any new medication. The kind of study she’s referring to, called a randomized, controlled trial, is much better at showing whether one particular thing — in this case, alcohol — can have a good or bad effect on your health. It’s not like someone is telling people to drink or not drink, says MeiLan K. Han, MD, professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System.

It can also lead to withdrawal symptoms like sweating, restlessness, irritability, nausea, tremors, hallucinations, and convulsions. Without COPD treatment from your doctor, the condition will continue to worsen and become more life-threatening.

Alcohol Can Interfere With Medications

Researchers have found that heavy drinking reduces levels of an antioxidant in the body called glutathione. People may have a harder time coughing after consuming alcohol, which means they may not be able to clear their lungs appropriately. In addition to quitting smoking, we can manage COPD by eating a healthy diet; eating smaller, more frequent meals; staying hydrated; and practicing breathing exercises. Alcohol can also increase our risk of respiratory infections, disrupt our sleep, and decrease the effectiveness of some COPD medications. It can also prevent other complications of smoking, such as heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer. However, the most important thing we can do for our lungs is to quit smoking.