There are several risk factors that make a person more likely to develop COPD, including a genetic condition known as alpha-1 deficiency-related emphysema. Cigarette smoking is one of the most significant risk factors for developing COPD as well. If you’ve been diagnosed with COPD, quitting smoking and stopping chronic alcohol use can go a long way to reducing symptoms and helping you live a healthier life. COPD is typically caused by long-term exposure to lung irritants, which can damage your lungs and airways. In the United States, inhaling cigarette smoke is considered to be the number one cause of COPD.
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Patients with severe COPD symptoms who don’t respond to treatment may need surgery to improve their breathing. Drinking alcohol can interfere with the medication you might take for COPD, such as antibiotics or steroids. “One or two drinks a day has not been shown to impact COPD,” says Neil Schachter, MD, a COPD specialist at Mount Sinai Health System.
- And studies show that high levels of alcohol use may increase your risk for pneumonia, one of the main concerns people with COPD have.
- It's unclear if the same guidance applies to cannabis, but many experts do advise COPD patients to avoid any form of vaping or smoking.
- Also, COPD is mostly caused by smoking, but if someone smokes and drinks, it’s hard to determine whether it’s the smoking or the drinking—or both—making COPD symptoms worse.
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Since research shows that high consumption of alcohol over a long period can harm the body, including the lungs, people should avoid heavy drinking. 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. The answer to whether we can drink alcohol with COPD isn’t necessarily clear. While the occasional alcoholic beverage may be safe, heavy drinking can make COPD symptoms worse and impair the health of our lungs. Your immune system is a crucial system that keeps your lungs healthy and able to fight off infections. Infections and COPD are a huge issue that could increase your chance of being hospitalized or experience exacerbated symptoms and irreversible lung damage.
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What research has been done focuses mainly on the effects of alcohol on lung function, dietary health, and medications. One thing that most researchers agree on is that heavy alcohol consumption can effect the lungs and can likely cause reduced lung function in people with chronic respiratory diseases. Heavy alcohol use can suppress, inhibit, or deplete a variety of essential nutrients, electrolytes, and antioxidants that your body needs to stay healthy. A deficiency in this antioxidant, which can happen if you drink heavily, can increase your risk for lung damage, exacerbations, and worsened COPD symptoms. Researchers have not found clear evidence that drinking alcohol can directly cause chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, drinking alcohol may damage the lungs and the body’s immune response.
- Regular, heavy drinking can damage the immune system and the lungs.
- Essentially, alcohol's diuretic effects causes nutrients and electrolytes to be lost when you urinate, leading to deficiencies in sodium, potassium, chloride ions, and other substances.
- The authors of a 2016 study concluded that people with alcohol use disorder are more likely to experience lung injury and respiratory infections.
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Most of the short-term risks of alcohol concern the possibility of overdosing and the immediate effects of alcohol intoxication. These effects include impaired memory, balance, reflexes, and decision-making. If you have COPD, you're probably especially concerned about making healthy diet and lifestyle choices. You have to maintain your health carefully to prevent the disease from progressing, and that means eating nutritious foods and avoiding unhealthy and toxic substances.
Symptoms of COPD typically include coughing, spitting up phlegm (mucus), difficulty breathing, wheezing, shortness of breath, and tiredness. However, small amounts of alcohol have not been shown to worsen a person’s COPD symptoms. In order to best avoid developing COPD, it’s important to avoid heavy alcohol consumption and to quit smoking if you’re currently a smoker. A study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that a third of adults with chronic health problems such as COPD drank regularly; 7% said they drank heavily.
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Contact a healthcare provider to get information about any pulmonary rehab programs near us. However, the most important thing we can do for our lungs is to quit smoking. We can’t necessarily undo the damage that’s already been done, but stopping smoking can slow the progression of COPD. It can also prevent other complications of smoking, such as heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer. Many pain and anxiety drugs become more intoxicating as they mix with alcohol, and that means they can slow your heart rate and breathing to a dangerously low level.
It’s a good idea to talk to your doctor about your specific COPD medications to make sure drinking alcohol won’t cause an interaction or unwanted side effects. Many people also smoke both tobacco and cannabis, which can put them at a greater risk of lung damage. A 2023 study suggested that people who smoke both have more damage to the small airways in their lungs than those who only smoke tobacco. In the United States, cigarette smoking is the main cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), an incurable lung condition that can make it hard to breathe. Getting sufficient, good quality sleep is necessary for staying healthy and living a fulfilling life with COPD. Heavy alcohol consumption, however, can cause a variety of symptoms and health complications over the course of many years.
However, most of these effects disappear once the intoxication wears off. PERF publishes a free blog, and responds to reader’s questions and concerns, for those who experience breathing difficulties or exercise limitations. Reframe supports you in reducing alcohol consumption and enhancing your well-being.
There are, of course, many proven health risks that come from drinking too much alcohol, especially if you’ve been doing it for a long time. However, one 2015 study found that light to moderate drinking (between 1 and 60 drinks a month) did not seem to make COPD worse or cause more health problems related to COPD. But the researchers weren’t able to say what the effect of heavy drinking (more than 60 drinks per month) was on COPD, since there weren’t enough heavy drinkers in the study. Even though, studies have shown that being diagnosed with medical conditions and chronic illnesses often sway people from drinking, people with COPD more often do not quit drinking. People with COPD and other respiratory diseases are as likely to quit drinking despite their diagnosis.
COPD is a serious condition that impairs our breathing and impacts our quality of life. While an occasional drink may not be harmful, heavy drinking can exacerbate COPD symptoms and put us at a greater risk for respiratory infections. It can also disrupt our sleep and decrease the effectiveness of certain COPD medications.
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Alcohol also impairs decision making, short-term memory, and can lead to anxiety and depression. 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. But it also affects your brain in other ways; in the short term, alcohol affects the brain's ability to does alcohol affect copd control your mood, your memory, and your impulse control.
The relationship between drinking alcohol and smoking is well established. 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. Unlike tobacco cigarettes, cannabis smokers often inhale more deeply and hold the smoke in for longer, exposing their lungs to more of the harmful chemicals. While there is no direct relationship indicating that drinking alcohol is the cause of COPD, there is evidence that drink does impact the respiratory system in certain negative ways. That people with COPD and similar chronic illness were heavy drinkers before being diagnosed, suggesting drinking could have a connection to the cause of their COPD.