Why your body doesn’t tolerate alcohol like it used to. Plus, a look at the latest health warnings
By
Sonya Collins,
AARP
17 Comments
PublishedJanuary 03, 2025
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As you add more candles to your birthday cakes, you may notice that your organs don’t work as efficiently as they once did. Your balance might not be as good, and your response time may not be as quick. Perhaps you have more aches and pains than you did last year.
Just like your body inevitably changes with age, your drinking habits most likely need adjustments, too. That’s because with increasing age, “our bodies become more sensitive to the effects of alcohol,” says Kenneth Koncilja, M.D., an internal medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic. Plus, accumulating research finds that drinking alcohol comes with some serious health risks, particularly for older adults.
Here are seven reasons why doctors and public health experts say age and alcohol don’t mix.
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1. It takes less to get drunk
Your liver processes alcohol, and like the rest of your body, this organ isn’t getting any younger. That’s a big reason an aging body becomes more sensitive to alcohol.
“We also have changes in our body composition as we age,” says Lauren Kelly, M.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “We’re made up of less water and more fat.”
That reduction in the body’s natural water content, in part because water-retaining muscle tissue shrinks, makes older people more prone to dehydration and more likely to feel drunker, quicker.
“As you age, you get a higher blood alcohol concentration — what they measure on a breathalyzer — than a younger person who drank the same amount,” Koncilja says. And that means you can get hit with all the side effects in fewer sips.
“That can include cognitive effects, sedative effects — like how you get sleepy with alcohol — effects on balance and coordination, raising your risk for falls,” Koncilja adds. It can also include effects on attention and driving skills, he says.
2. Drinking can increase your risk of disease and death
That drunk or tipsy feeling should clear up by the next day, maybe leaving you with a hangover. But the consequences of consuming alcohol can extend beyond that.
A new advisory from United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, M.D., warns about the direct link between alcohol consumption and cancer.
Alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the U.S., the advisory says, and drinking it increases a person’s risk for seven types of cancer, including breast, colorectal, esophageal, liver, mouth, throat and larynx. When it comes to breast cancer, Murthy notes that more than 16 percent of cases in the U.S. are attributable to alcohol consumption.
“Alcohol is a well-established, preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually in the United States — greater than the 13,500 alcohol-associated traffic crash fatalities per year in the U.S. — yet the majority of Americans are unaware of this risk,” Murthy said in a news release. In the advisory, he outlines recommendations to increase awareness of the health risks, including a call for warning labels on beverages that contain alcohol.
In addition to this latest advisory, a recent study of more than 135,000 older adults, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that even as little as one drink a day raises the risk of death by any cause for older adults with pre-existing conditions or low socioeconomic status. And no one, regardless of health or socioeconomic status, was immune to the effects of more than one drink a day.
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In the study, those who had more than one drink a day had higher odds of death for any reason. Moderate drinkers (about 1.5 to 2.75 drinks a day for men and .75 to 1.5 drinks a day for women) also had a higher risk of cancer death. Heavy drinkers faced greater odds of both cancer- and heart-related death.
It’s important to remember, Koncilja says, what “one drink” really is: “It’s so easy to fall into that trap of thinking you’re only drinking one glass of wine. I don’t know how much people pour, but I don’t pour just five ounces.”
The definition of one drink is:
- Beer and wine coolers: 12 ounces
- Wine: 5 ounces
- Liquor: 1.5 ounces
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3. Alcohol can worsen other chronic diseases
If you already have a chronic health condition, drinking won’t do you any favors there either.
“Older adults have higher rates of chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, and combining that with alcohol increases risk for different problems related to those conditions,” Kelly says.
Maintaining a healthy weight is key to preventing most of the chronic diseases that become more common as you age. This, of course, becomes more challenging after age 50 as your metabolism starts to slow down. Most booze is high in calories and carbs — the perfect formula to derail any weight management plan.
“If you’re talking about having a healthy glycemic index and a low-carb lifestyle, alcohol doesn’t fit in,” Koncilja says.
Given its high calorie and carbohydrate content, alcohol and diabetes don’t mix either. Whether you are living with diabetes or trying to prevent it, heavy drinking — more than three drinks a day or seven a week — will throw you off course.
Drinking too much can raise your blood pressure, too, making it especially risky for people who already have hypertension. Once blood pressure goes up, so does the risk for heart attack and stroke. In fact, heavy drinking both raises risk for heart attack and stroke on its own and also indirectly by raising blood pressure.
4. Booze is bad for your bones
Alcohol can wreak havoc on your bones, too.
Your risk for osteoporosis — thinning, brittle, porous bones that break easily — increases with age. Calcium helps keep them strong, but too much drinking prevents your bones from absorbing this essential mineral.
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And there’s more. The older you get, the more likely you are to fall, which can be catastrophic if you’ve got brittle bones. Even sober, older adults are more prone to falls, so knocking back a few drinks can get extra dangerous. What might have been a tipsy stumble when you were younger, could become a hip-breaking disaster.
5. Alcohol can make you more susceptible to pain
As you get older, you’re more likely to live with chronic pain and you may be more susceptible to depression. While either one of these conditions may make you want to pour yourself a drink, think twice before you do.
“Alcohol is a facilitator of chronic pain,” Kelly says. “It can make people more sensitive to pain.”
Alcohol plays a similar game of tug of war with depression and anxiety.
“A lot of adults 50 and up are caring for their children and their parents,” Koncilija says. “Alcohol is an easy way to cope with the pressure, but it’s not a healthy way.”
Heavy drinkers are more likely to have anxiety and depression than people who drink less. For some, it may be that depression and anxiety drive them to drink. For others, drinking too much may lead to depression and anxiety.
6. Drinking can disrupt your sleep
When you throw sleep troubles into the mix, you get a really tangled web.
Falling asleep and staying asleep become more challenging with age. Sure, a nightcap may help you relax and drift off, but as soon as the booze is through your system, you’re likely to wake up and struggle to get back to sleep.
“Drinking decreases REM sleep,” Kelly says, “which is that deep, restorative sleep.”
Poor sleep can exacerbate or raise your risk for a number of health conditions, including obesity, chronic pain, depression and dementia. What’s more, many of those conditions can keep you up at night, too. Alcohol only makes matters worse.
7. Alcohol can mess with your meds
Since we tend to accumulate more diagnoses as we get older, we often accumulate more prescriptions as we age. A report from the Lown Institute found that nearly half of older adults take five or more prescription drugs — and a lot of them may not go well with alcohol.
With some medications, even a sip of alcohol is a no-no. With others, taking the medication too soon before or after a drink could put too much stress on your liver or cause sedation. The interactions that alcohol can have with medications vary greatly from one drug to the next and may also depend on your individual health.
If you want to cut back
If you’re clocking more than seven drinks a week or more than three on any given day, doctors and health experts recommend changing your habits. Even if you haven’t hit that upper limit, you could benefit from drinking less as you get older. According to the World Health Organization, no level of alcohol consumption is considered safe.
If you want to limit your drinking and you don’t know how, tell a friend or family member. “The more you talk about it, the more likely you are to hold yourself accountable to habit changes,” Koncilja says.
And if you find it too difficult to stop drinking on your own, your doctor is there to help.
“When people are struggling with their alcohol use, there are really helpful medications that doctors can prescribe,” Kelly says. “I encourage them to talk to their doctor.”
It’s crucial you ask your doctor or pharmacist whether there are any risks to drinking while taking your specific medications.
Sonya Collins is a contributing writing and award-winning health and medical journalist. Her work has appeared in Fortune and Scientific American and on WebMD.com.
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