A common form is wine, which is a staple for many Americans during their evening meal. The majority of people do not realize that consuming alcohol on a regular basis can be the cause of significant long-term health problems and other life-threatening effects. However, binge drinking and long-term alcohol abuse can damage the optic nerve, leading to vision loss. Alcohol consumption can cause early onset of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). A person may reduce their risk of developing vision issues due to alcohol by limiting their alcohol consumption.

No reliable sourcing indicates how many people experience vision issues due to alcohol. Prevention may be the best way to improve a person’s outlook for their eyes and other aspects of mental and physical health in relation to alcohol. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) defines drinking in moderation as limiting intake to two drinks or less per day for males and one drink or less per day for females. You should drink responsibly and consume plenty of water when out for a night on the town. It’s why people who have had a stressful day might tell themselves that they would like to have a drink to help them unwind.

How Alcohol Abuse Affects Your Eyes

Even small changes can help reduce a person’s risk of developing issues with their eyes or other aspects of health. Heavy alcohol consumption could produce free radicals in the liver. Swelling of the blood vessels in the eye or the look of red bloodshot eyes is a common feature of those who have been lifetime drinkers. Another problem that excessive drinking leads to is migraine headaches, as the eye becomes sensitive to light; the result is pain. Your overall visual performance may be altered since drinking heavily impairs brain function.

The more alcohol the subjects drank, the worse their vision became under low-light conditions. They saw halos and starbursts, had difficulty seeing contrast, and experienced longer recovery time after a bright light was shined in their eyes. One study found that having a 0.08% blood alcohol level (the legal limit for driving in most states) can affect various types of eye movements in healthy young adults.

BROKEN BLOOD VESSELS

Alcohol is known for the damage it causes in the liver, including fat build-up, inflammation, and scarring. Drinking excessively can also cause a build-up of red blood cells in the liver, which https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/why-is-my-vision-blurry-after-drinking-alcohol/ causes the whites of the eyes to yellow. The best thing you can do to alleviate eye-related symptoms caused by alcohol consumption is to cut back on drinking or eliminate alcohol altogether.

Your muscles might not move as effectively while you are under the influence of alcohol. When this happens, you may have blurred vision or double vision due to weakened eye-muscle coordination. While double vision https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/alcoholic-ketoacidosis-symptoms-and-treatment/ from drinking is a temporary effect, this is just one of the reasons that drinking and driving can be so dangerous. When you drink alcohol, your vision may change in various ways during and shortly after drinking.

Other Retinal Conditions

This is also why you experience delayed reactions and why driving is dangerous. The technical term for an eye-twitch, which is actually an eyelid twitch, is myokymia, and it can be brought on by excessive alcohol intake. It’s a temporary, but irritating, side effect of drinking too much. One of the eye’s most important functions is the ability to distinguish between objects based on darkness and light. Alcohol impairs that ability, with some studies suggesting that contrast can be affected by as much as 30%, even if a person’s blood alcohol level is below the legal limit. Here are just a few of the ways that drinking alcohol can do harm to your eyes.

• Rapid eye movement is another side effect that can occur in those who consume too much alcohol over a long period of time.
• After graduating top of his class with a Bachelor of Science in Informational Technologies and Administrative Management, he joined Rebuild Your Vision in 2002.
• PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge database, Scopus, Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched.
• A recent study revealed that an amount of alcohol far below the legal driving limit can cause dryness of the eyes to increase.

In this article, we present a review of ocular conditions related to alcohol consumption. A search of the literature published from 1952 to March 2020 was performed. The titles and abstracts were screened and the eligible studies were selected. PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge database, Scopus, Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched.