According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is no so-called “safe” level of alcohol consumption, and the more alcohol a person drinks, the greater their risk of health issues. What about the kidney pain some people claim to feel after a night of drinking? According to Dr. Bobart, there’s no research to suggest a link between alcohol and kidney pain.
- One possible mechanism is oxidative stress resulting from increased production of reactive oxygen species, which leads to an excessive amount of free radicals, which in turn trigger tissue injury and increase inflammation.
- As a result, your kidneys will struggle to maintain the proper amount of fluid within your body.
- Before joining the site, she was a freelance journalist for seven years, specialising in social affairs, gender equality and culture.
In summary, there is no exact evidence that alcohol consumption aggravates the state of CKD or increases all-cause mortality in CKD, and the protective effect of abstinence on such patients is unclear. Although many studies stated that people should not start drinking for any reason, and alcohol consumption can increase disease risk 125, we also cite many studies demonstrating the Crack Cocaine Symptoms And Warning Signs protective effects of light-to-moderate alcohol consumption in our review. Although there has long been controversy about the renal-protective effect of alcohol consumption on kidney injury, the renal-protective effects of polyphenols and other bioactivators from wine has been demonstrated in many studies 15,95,97,101–103.
Potential confounding factors of alcohol consumption
Uncoupling eventually leads to generation of damaging ROS like superoxide anion, instead of the vasorelaxant nitric oxide that maintains normal blood flow in the kidney. First, many studies are based on patients’ routine health checkups, as annual health examinations do not allow researchers to evaluate any fluctuation in serum creatinine and other biomarkers. Moreover, many patients were excluded from the long-term observational studies because they did not attend routine annual health checkups.
Cited by other articles
The association of baseline alcohol consumption and decline in kidney function over 12 years among 5729 participants. Points and bars represent beta coefficients and 95% confidence intervals, respectively. These are signs that the kidneys are not working as they should, and they can be symptoms of acute kidney injury due to a high alcohol consumption. None of these tests prevent kidney disease, but they can give enough information for a doctor to recommend immediate treatment and lifestyle changes, which can mean cutting back on alcohol consumption or outright eliminating it.
About this article
Patients who are drinking more red wine may also benefit from its cardiovascular protective effects. In turn, heavy alcohol consumption is implicated in the development of these cardiac diseases, with chronic, heavy drinkers at higher risk than those who consume small to moderate amounts of alcohol. Drinking alcohol heavily can have several long-term health consequences including type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
There is a lower risk of ischemic heart disease for moderate drinkers without heavy drinking occasions and a higher risk for drinkers with the same average amount who engaged in heavy episodic drinking 76. Moreover, the harmful effect of episodic heavy drinking seems to be more obvious in people with light alcohol consumption, and it may be related to a rise in platelet reactivity and thrombosis after binge drinking 9. In general, excessive alcohol consumption leads to liver damage 29. However, some studies have found that ethanol can directly cause kidney damage, independent of liver damage 28,30,31.
Additional research is needed to clarify if alcohol does indeed promote kidney injury and the mechanisms by which alcohol-induced kidney injury may occur. In contrast, some studies find that heavy alcohol consumption may predict poorer outcome in patients with chronic kidney diseases (Kronborg et al. 2008; Shankar et al. 2006; White et al. 2009). For example, White and colleagues (2009) reported that heavier drinkers (those consuming more than 30 g of alcohol/week) were at higher risk of incident albuminuria, which is typically a symptom of kidney disease.
Unfortunately, existing clinical studies have not analyzed why some patients with CKD give up drinking and the influence of giving up drinking on the prognosis of these patients. Therefore, the effect of ethanol on the kidney is beyond our original understanding. Alcohol can not only directly damage the kidney, but also causes renal dysfunction by damaging other organs. In addition, some studies proved that alcohol consumption aggravates kidney injury in diabetic nephropathy rats 64. Hepatorenal syndrome, which is secondary to alcoholic hepatitis 65, and acute kidney injury, secondary to rhabdomyolysis, also cannot be ignored 46.
However, previous studies have not revealed beverage-specific associations 28. Figure 1 showed the crude follow up condition of the three drinking groups. The detailed differences among the three drinking groups are analyzed by the univariable and multivariable Cox model.