The Effects Of Alcohol On One Kidney
Even though most people have two kidneys, it only takes one kidney to function. But, if you have only one kidney, you must live a healthy lifestyle. So, if you have one kidney and drink alcohol, you can cause life-threatening issues.
A healthy lifestyle includes a nutritious diet, exercise, and regular check-ups. This means no alcohol. This risk of kidney disease from alcohol is drastically increased with only one kidney.
Although you can remain healthy with one kidney, drinking alcohol causes damage beyond your one kidney. Remember, kidney damage and disease can lead to other health issues.
Alcohol Risks: A Body Out Of Balance
Heavy drinking also has an indirect effect on kidney health. The body is a big domino set, says Dr. Bobart. If you have one part of your body thats not in balance, it can cause problems in many other parts of the body.
Drinking heavily can increase the risk of high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes, for example. Both of those conditions are the mostcommon causes of chronic kidney disease in the United States.
Chronic alcohol use is also a major cause of liver disease. When your liver isnt functioning well, it can impair blood flow to your kidneys. Liver disease can have significant impacts on the kidneys, says Dr. Bobart.
Your Chances Of Getting Kidney Stones Increase With The Quantum Of Alcohol
The more you drink alcohol, the greater the chances of your getting kidney stones. The reason is very simple. Substituting alcohol for water can dehydrate you as it acts as a diuretic. You can prevent getting kidney stones by drinking copious quantities of water. Substituting water with alcohol would be counterproductive as your body would be constantly losing water. If your diet has too much salt in conjunction with high alcohol consumption, then your chances of developing kidney stones increase as it causes greater quantity of calcium in your urine. Further, you need to avoid foods high in phosphates like beans, dairy products, and nuts and those which are high in oxalate, such as potato chips, French fries, beets, spinach, and nuts like the plague if your uric acid level is high. This combination of calcium and oxalates leads to the formation of renal calculi.Alcohol might adversely affect magnesium exchange in the kidney tubules caused by a marked increase of magnesium excretion in the urine, leading to hypomagnesemia.
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Can Alcohol Use Lead To Blood In Urine
Alcohol is not typically a direct cause of blood in urine. However, that is not to say it doesnt contribute to other conditions that may cause blood in urine.
If long-term alcohol use occurs, it can damage the kidneys, which may cause blood in urine. Prolonged or excessive alcohol use harms the kidneys and may lead to kidney disease. Most frequently, damaged kidneys can cause the presence of blood in urine.
Alcohol abuse harms many organs in the body, including the kidneys. To better understand the effects of alcohol and causes of blood in urine, its important to understand how the kidneys work.
- Kidney disease
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Symptoms Of Alcohol Damage To Kidneys
After drinking, you may feel soreness around your kidneys. You will feel this soreness on both sides of your spine under the ribcage. It may be sudden, sharp, or stabbing pain. But, it could be a dull pain. Some people may feel it on one side, while others feel it on both.
Kidney pain can sometimes be hard to pinpoint. You may feel it in the upper or lower back. However, some feel kidney pain between the buttocks and the lower ribs. Alcohol may cause instant kidney pain. But, it may not cause pain until after you stop drinking.
Symptoms of the alcohol effects on the kidneys:
- Nausea
- Chills
Drinking Alcohol Affects Your Kidneys
Drinking alcohol affects many parts of your body, including your kidneys. A little alcoholone or two drinks now and thenusually has no serious effects. However, excessive drinkingmore than four drinks dailycan affect your health and worsen kidney disease. When experts talk about one drink, they are talking about one 12ounce bottle of beer, one glass of wine, or one ounce of hard liquor.
The Centers for Disease Control estimates that most American adults drink alcohol. Too often, some of these regular drinkers have more than five drinks at one time. In fact, about a quarter of drinkers reported they had done this on at least one day in the past year. Binge drinking has harmful effects on the kidney that can even lead to acute kidney failure. A sudden drop in kidney function is called acute kidney failure. This often goes away after a time, but it can occasionally lead to lasting kidney damage.
Even without binge drinking, regularly drinking too much too often can also damage the kidneys. The damage occurs more slowly. Regular heavy drinking has been found to double the risk chronic kidney disease, which does not go away over time. Even higher risk of kidney problems has been found for heavy drinkers who also smoke. Smokers who are heavy drinkers have about five times the chance of developing CKD than people who dont smoke or drink alcohol to excess.
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What Other Kidney Issues Are Associated With Alcohol/drinking
Kidneys are vital to the overall healthy functioning of the human body and serve as filtration devices for any harmful or toxic substance that enters your bloodstream. When someone drinks in excess, the kidneys have to work harder to filter the bodys blood and can cause immense stress on the kidneys. The dehydrating effect of alcohol can negatively impact your bodys cell and organ functions. Additionally, alcohol in the body can impact the hormones that contribute to healthy kidney function in your body.3
Regular heavy drinking has been known to double the risk of developing chronic kidney disease. Those who smoke cigarettes in addition to drinking heavily are about five times more likely to develop kidney disease than those who only drink excessively.3
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How Much Is A Drink
When it comes to knowing how much alcohol is dangerous for kidney health you first need to know how much is a drink.
Experts define one drink as any of the following:
- 12-ounce bottle of beer
- 5 ounce glass of wine
- 1.5 ounces of liquor
Depending on how many drinks you have will determine the type of drinking you do. The various levels of drinking include
- Light drinking
- Heavy drinking
- Abusive drinking
Light drinking is having 1.2 drinks per day. Moderate drinking consists of 2.2 drinks per day.
Heavy drinking is having 3 or more drinks a day for women. For men, heavy drinking is having more than 4 drinks a day . Heavy drinking requires more work from the kidneys. It also doubles the risk for kidney disease.
Binge drinking is typically having more than 4 to 5 drinks within 2 hours. This can raise the blood alcohol to dangerous levels. Abusive drinking is considered having 5.4 drinks a day.
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Avoiding Kidney Stones: What To Do
There are things you can do to avoid kidney stones, and it all starts with what you put into your body. The main thing to remember is that you must stay hydrated with fluids, particularly water, to help the kidneys move along substances that cause kidney stones to form. Healthline advises increasing your intake of citrus fruits, which have citrate. Citrate can help prevent kidney stones from forming.
If you drink regularly and notice you pass kidney stones often, you may need to cut back on your drinking or stop altogether. Consulting with your doctor about your drinking can give you a better idea of what to do.
Generally, avoiding excessive drinking is a sound idea. If you or someone you know drinks four or more drinks daily, this is defined as excessive drinking. Consuming alcohol in moderation looks different for different people, but limiting your drinking is one way to avoid creating conditions that could lead to the formation of kidney stones, such as dehydration, which we covered above.
You may also want to watch the foods you eat. Healthline also advises limiting salt and lowering your intake of animal protein. High salt levels can cause calcium to build up in the urine, and animal protein boosts the uric acid the body produces. It also advises watching your intake of foods that contain oxalate, such as:
- Chocolate
Avoiding cola drinks and lowering your sugar intake can also help you avoid kidney stones.
Kidney Structure And Function
Cushioned in fatty tissue near the base of the spinal column, the kidneys are efficiently designed organs that perform two primary tasks in the body: excretion of metabolic end products and precise regulation of body fluid constituents. As they accomplish these tasks, the kidneys form and collect urine, which exits through the ureters to the bladder.
Each of the 2 million functional units in a pair of normal kidneys forms urine as it filters blood plasma of substances not needed by the body. Within each nephron, blood plasma enters a tiny ball of unusually permeable capillaries , filters into a capsule that surrounds the glomerulus, then flows through a long, looping conduit called the nephron tubule.
The kidneys continuously perform their tasks of purifying and balancing the constituents of the bodys fluids. Although resilient, the kidneys can deteriorate as a result of malnutrition, alcohol abuse or dependence, or liver and other diseases. Healthy kidneys are vital to the function of all the bodys organs and systems.
Mary Beth de Ribeaux
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What Does Drinking Do To Your Kidneys
Alcohol can cause changes in the function of the kidneys and make them less able to filter your blood. In addition to filtering blood, your kidneys do many other important jobs. One of these jobs is keeping the right amount of water in your body. Alcohol affects the ability of your kidneys to do this.
Alcohol And Kidneys: What It Means For Your Renal Diet
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To drink or not to drink? A common question among those with kidney issues. Research shows the combination of alcohol and kidneys could be harmful in excess. This article discusses the effects of drinking on kidney function in both the short and long term. It also discusses the question is alcohol bad for your kidneys when you have kidney disease.
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Binge Drinking Alcohol And Kidney Disease
If you are a binge drinker, then you put yourself in the increasing danger of kidney disease. Binge drinking is consuming 4 to 5 plus drinks an hour. However, binge drinking floods your body with alcohol and increases BAC drastically. As a result, your kidneys cant keep up and lose their function. This damage from alcohol on your kidneys causes lasting damage.
What Are Diseases Developed Due To Excessive Alcohol Intake
Many alcohol-related diseases can be developed due to alcohol intake. Excessive alcohol consumption has been shown to cause:
- Liver disease
- Cancer in different organs of the body
- Low blood sugar
- Alcohol poisoning dehydrates the body, which further exacerbates conditions such as heart failure or kidney disease.
- Kidney stone disease. One alcohol-related disease that can specifically affect the kidneys is kidney stone disease. Kidney stones are hard, crystalline masses that form in the urinary system. They can cause pain and obstruction in the urinary tract. The most common type of kidney stone is calcium oxalate stones, formed when calcium and oxalate combine.
- Extreme alcohol intake has also been shown to cause ones memory of events while under the influence without passing out or losing consciousness due to alcohol.
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Does Alcohol Affect The Kidneys
The kidneys are hard at work on any given day in a healthy person, but the kidneys of a heavy drinker work overtime. A heavy drinker is defined as a woman who drinks more than seven times a week or a man who drinks more than 14 times a week. People who maintain this kind of drinking habit are at double the risk for developing kidney disease compared to the general population, including moderate drinkers.
One form of alcohol abuse that contributes to kidney disease is binge drinking, usually defined as consuming four or five drinks within two hours. Binge drinking causes a persons blood alcohol content to rise to dangerous levels, which in turn causes the kidneys to lose their function so much, the term for this is acute kidney injury. Japans Internal Medicine journal noted that binge drinking can be a risk factor for such an emergency, including acute kidney injury , a condition whereby the kidneys are unable to stop dangerous levels of waste from accumulating in the blood, according to Mayo Clinic.
Alcohol May Affect The Acid
Kidneys play an essential role in determining the rate at which metabolic reactions take place by regulating acidity. This is because substantial metabolic reactions that are important in life are sensitive to the acidity of the surrounding fluid.The bodies metabolic balance interferes with the use of liquor, which changes the regulation of acidity.
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How Long Does A Bruised Kidney Take To Heal
If the injury was minor, it can take up to two weeks for a bruised kidney to heal on its own. Even with mild symptoms, kidney injuries can progress into serious complications and may cause internal bleeding. If you were in an accident that injured your back or abdomen, call your doctor to discuss your kidney health.
Symptoms Of Kidney Stones
Kidney stones are hard clumps of waste made up of chemicals in the urine. Stones are most commonly made of calcium oxalate and the concentration of these salts increases when the body is dehydrated. Symptoms of kidney stones usually involve severe pain and may include:1
- severe lower back pain
- chills
- and more.
If you are curious about whether your drinking may be negatively impacting your renal system and overall body, you may benefit from this article.
Kidney stones can form for several reasons. This page will inform you about kidney stones, their relation to alcohol use, how to treat kidney stones, and how to find treatment for an alcohol use disorder.
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How Do You Improve Kidney Function
Here are some tips to help keep your kidneys healthy. Keep active and fit. Control your blood sugar. Monitor blood pressure. Monitor weight and eat a healthy diet. Drink plenty of fluids. Dont smoke. Be aware of the amount of OTC pills you take. Have your kidney function tested if youre at high risk.
A New Benefit For Drinking In Moderation
The study followed more than 11,000 healthy men for 14 years and found that men who averaged at least seven drinks per week had a 30% lower risk of having elevated blood creatinine levels, a marker of kidney dysfunction, compared with men who had one or fewer drinks per week.
A similar protective effect of moderate alcohol use was found for another marker of kidney health known as the glomerular filtration rate , which measures the normal filtering capacity of the kidneys.
The results appear in the May 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Researchers say the findings are contrary to previous studies that have shown alcohol use may increase the risk of kidney failure due to alcohol’s effect on increasing blood pressure. Uncontrolled blood pressure is a risk factor for kidney failure.
While high blood pressure was more common in the group of men who drank moderate amounts of alcohol, this group had a decreased risk of kidney disease.
A similar, smaller study in women showed no protective effect of alcohol use on the risk of kidney dysfunction. Two other studies that examined the link between alcohol use and kidney health showed an increased risk of kidney dysfunction and kidney failure.
Many of the heart-healthy benefits of moderate drinking have been attributed to its ability to increase HDL cholesterol levels.
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The Relationship Between Alcohol Use And Kidney Disease
Kidney disease can be caused by a number of factors, with one of them being chronic alcohol use. While many other factors, such as family history and lifestyle, also affect a persons chance of developing kidney disease, alcohol can significantly increase a persons susceptibility to this condition.
When alcohol is consumed in an unhealthy way on a regular basis, kidney issues can be exacerbated to the point of kidney damage and disease. When a person develops kidney disease, he or she may experience a number of other health issues as a result.
Health problems caused by kidney damage may include:
- anemia
- damaged immune system, which can make people more susceptible to illness
- swelling in the legs, arms, and feet as a result of fluid retention
- sexual dysfunction