How Drinking Affects Your Kidneys?

First, take a good look at your drinking. Alcoholism is especially hereditary from father to son to grandson. Drinking alcohol affects many parts of your body, including your kidneys. A little alcohol—one or two drinks now and then—usually has no serious effects. However, excessive drinking–more than four drinks daily—can affect your health and worsen kidney disease. 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. 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. 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 don’t smoke or drink alcohol to excess.

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. This leaves alcohols vulnerable to many kidney-related health problems. Hepatorenal failure refers to the most frequent and gravest condition in which the kidneys are damaged. It occurs in a person who has cirrhosis of the liver from long-term heavy alcohol consumption. It can appear after severe gastrointestinal bleeding, or occasionally, for no identifiable reason. The kidneys gradually fail to produce urine and, within a short time, the patient expires.