Alcohol use affects bone health and healing in a variety of ways. Ceasing alcohol use can boost your overall bone health.
Article at a Glance:
Important points to remember about how alcohol affects bone health and healing include:
Drinking too much alcohol can harm bone development, health and healing
Alcohol has many different effects on bones, including disrupting hormone production and regulation and vitamin absorption
Alcohol use can cause direct harm to bones, including weakening and breakage
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Alcohol use can impede new bone growth and raise your risk of osteoporosis
Ceasing alcohol use can help you boost your bone health
Treatment for alcohol abuse can be effective
Alcohol and Bone Healing
Alcohol can greatly affect bone health and healing.Alcohol abusecan impact every part of your body, including bones. Bone is living matter, and can both grow and be damaged like any other body part.
When youdrink too much alcohol, it can:
- Make bones weaker
- Stop bones from healing
- Cause direct damage to bones, including breakage from falls
- Affect hormone production
- Impair vitamin absorption
- Affect bone development
- Raise your risk of osteoporosis
Effects of Alcohol on Bones
Heavy alcohol use (more than one drink a day for a woman and more than two drinks a day for a man) can cause problems with bones in a few different ways. Alcohol use can affect cortisol production, other hormone production and vitamin absorption.
Impaired Hormone Regulation and Production
Excessive alcohol intake can:
- Increase cortisol production:Alcohol can raise the amount of a hormone in the body called cortisol. Cortisol is known as the stress hormone in your body. It can have many harmful actions in the body, and one of them is that it can harm the bones. It can both cause the bones to break down and stop them from healing quickly.
- Harms the production of testosterone and estrogen:A hormone called the growth hormone is important to bone health and can be harmed through heavy alcohol use. Also,in men, alcohol can harm the making of testosterone. Testosterone has many roles in men, and one of them is to help bone growth.Women can have hormone problems from alcoholuse too. In women, alcohol can harm the making of estrogen. Much like testosterone, estrogen also helps bone growth. So when alcohol harms the body’s making of these hormones, bone growth can suffer.
Impaired Vitamin Absorption
Alcohol can also cause problems with your bones getting the vitamins they need to stay healthy. These vitamins include calcium and vitamin D. Even if you take a daily vitamin, your body may not be able to use and process these vitamins as well if you are using alcohol heavily. With heavy alcohol use, your bones are not getting the building blocks they need to grow.
Direct Bone Damage
Besides having an impact on vitamins and hormones that bones need, alcohol can have an impact on the bones themselves. Studies have shownthat alcohol can harm the bones directly. It does this by harming the cells in bone which make new bones grow.
Alcohol use can also cause falls, which can break bones. This is true whether or notyou struggle with heavy alcohol use. When someone is drunk, their balance and gait are not as good as normal. Falling can cause injury or bone fracture, and spine and hip fracture are more common inpeople who struggle with alcohol abuse.
Because the bones do not heal as well in people with heavy alcohol use, it can take much longer to get better from a severe injury.
Alcohol and Bone Development and Deterioration
Alcohol use can also cause bone weakening and breakage.
Impaired Bone Development
You tend to develop more bone when they are younger. Doctors typically tell young people to get enough calcium in their diet. The more bone you have when you are younger, the more healthy your bones are likely to be when you get older. People start to lose bone mass as they get older, which happens even if they do not struggle with heavy alcohol use. However, heavy alcohol use can speed up and worsen the process of bone deterioration.
Heavy drinkingcan prevent bones from being formed when someone is young. Younger people who have heavy alcohol use do not make as much bone as those who do not.Studies have shownthat heavy alcohol use means that older people also lose more bone more quickly than people who do not drink alcohol. Regardless of what age you are, alcohol can harm your bones.
Osteoporosis Risk
Heavy alcohol use is known to put you at high riskof developing osteoporosis. When bones become less dense, you may develop osteoporosis. This disease has no symptoms, but your bones become less dense and more fragile. If you fall, you can break a bone more easily than normal. Your doctor can run a painless test called a bone mineral density test (also known as a BMD test) that can tell if you have this disease or are at risk for it.
When you stop drinking alcohol, your bones can get a bit healthier. One of the best ways to keep your bones healthy is to seek help in stopping alcohol use. The Recovery Village offersalcohol rehaband comprehensive treatment programs to help you or a loved one overcome alcohol addiction.
Havemore questions about alcoholor its effects on the body? Interested in differentalcohol-related topics? The Recovery Village can answer your questions and help you learn more about problematic alcohol use.
If you or a loved one struggle with alcohol addiction, trained professionals at The Recovery Village can help. The Recovery Village offers many different addiction treatment options to help you overcome addiction.Reach out to ustoday for more information.
