Having an occasional glass of alcohol may not cause any harmful effects if your kidney functions regularly. Still, you should talk with your doctor about the safety and impact of drinking alcohol if you already have kidney disease https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/how-alcohol-affects-your-kidneys/ or kidney cancer. Heavy drinking can also cause liver disease, which makes your kidneys have to work harder. When you have liver disease, your body doesn’t balance the flow and filtering of blood as well as it should.

• Excessive alcohol consumption can have profound negative effects on the kidneys and their function in maintaining the body’s fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance, leaving alcoholic people vulnerable to a host of kidney-related health problems.
• Ethanol administration in rats showed particular alterations in the renal antioxidant system and glutathione status [4,5].
• Both of these factors affect hormones that regulate kidney function, just as changes in fluid volume and electrolyte balance do.
• They regulate water intake and outtake, they balance the amount of minerals in the body, and they produce vital hormones, according to the Kidney Foundation of Canada.

The damage can usually be reversed if you stop drinking and allow your kidneys to recover, but it can sometimes cause irreversible damage to the kidneys. Although the mechanism of alcoholic myopathy is not fully understood, it is likely that disruption of mitochondria-related energy homeostasis is important in promoting muscle cell (myocyte) injury (Eisner https://ecosoberhouse.com/ et al. 2014). Studies historically have shown that alcohol consumption markedly increases magnesium excretion in the urine and may affect magnesium levels in other ways as well. For example, when rats are given alcohol, they also require significant magnesium in their diets, suggesting that alcohol disrupts absorption of this nutrient from the gut.

Special Benefits and Confounding Factors of Alcohol Consumption

In other words, the kidneys’ ability to excrete excess fluid by way of dilute urine is impaired, and too much fluid is reabsorbed. Hyponatremia probably is the single most common electrolyte disturbance encountered in the management of patients with cirrhosis of the liver (Vaamonde 1996). This abnormality may reflect the severity of liver disease, but the available data do not allow correlation of kidney impairment with the degree of clinical signs of liver disease, such as ascites or jaundice. The few studies focusing on alcohol’s direct effects on perfusion in human kidneys suggest that regulatory mechanisms retain control over this component of kidney function despite alcohol consumption. Even at high blood alcohol levels, only minor fluctuations were found in the rates of plasma flow and filtration through the kidneys (Rubini et al. 1955). This may result from high levels of toxins leading to tissue injury and inflammation.

However, other studies found that long-term alcohol consumption aggravates renal fibrosis, which may be related to epithelial mesenchymal transdifferentiation and fibrosis induced by ethanol [33,47,56]. In the kidneys, ROS is generated via both enzymatic and non-enzymatic processes [22,23,27,32,36,37]. In addition, Das et al. reported that alcohol consumption impairs the ability of CAT to catalyze the decomposition of H2O2 in the kidneys [41]. This subsequently promotes the conversion of H2O2 to the more reactive hydroxyl radicals, which cause damage in antioxidant capacities and mitochondria in renal cells [34,42,43].

Can I still have an occasional drink if I have kidney cancer?

Alcohol consumption, including vodka and red wine, also reduced serum insulin concentrations and enhanced the insulin sensitivity index [24,25]. A moderate amount of alcohol drinking decreases the risk of developing diabetes, showing a U-shaped association [26]. Binge drinking aside, regular heavy drinking can damage kidneys over time. Consistent excessive alcohol consumption has been found to double the risk of developing chronic kidney disease, which does not go away on its own. Those who drink heavily and smoke are about five times more likely to develop chronic kidney disease than those who do not have those habits. Other studies found that alcohol combined with energy drinks, caffeine, or soft drinks can disturb the physiological redox reaction and cause lipoperoxidation in the liver and nephrotoxicity [30,118].

Your doctor may prescribe proton pump inhibitors or H2 antagonists to reduce the production of stomach acid. See your doctor to treat kidney stones or a kidney infection if they are the cause. Severe or recurring kidney infections may require hospitalization or surgery.

How Can Kidney Disease Be Prevented?

In addition to contributing to the development of high blood pressure, alcohol also has the potential to affect certain high blood pressure medications. Promote healthy kidney function and blood pressure by limiting the amount of alcohol you consume. WebMD also recommends getting tested regularly, especially if you have a higher chance of developing kidney disease than the general population. Cancer experts strongly recommend not drinking alcohol at all due to its potentially harmful effects on the body. Alcohol is known to increase your risk for several different types of cancer and cause kidney damage over time. Several epidemiological studies have shown that mild alcohol consumption benefits cardiovascular health (Coate 1993; Kannel and Ellison 1996) by reducing the risk of coronary heart disease (Mukamal et al. 2006).

• We think that the enhancement of CAT activities may not come from high concentration of ethanol, but rather from the compensatory improvement of antioxidant capacity after the intervention with low-concentration ethanol in the early stage.
• Even at high blood alcohol levels, only minor fluctuations were found in the rates of plasma flow and filtration through the kidneys (Rubini et al. 1955).
• We also realize that previous studies did not include an adequate number of heavy drinkers, especially female heavy drinkers.
• Specific effects of drinking patterns have been demonstrated in a study of ischemic heart diseases [76].