What Alcohol Is Really Doing To Your Body After 50

Dr. Ruth Machin talks about age-specific risks and more:

To your good health

Fun fact: aging makes alcohol harder to process because liver enzymes become less efficient, while loss of muscle and gain of fat reduce body water, meaning alcohol is less diluted and has a greater effect.

Menopause can exacerbate this because alcohol can worsen already-disrupted sleep and may increase symptoms such as hot flushes.

Nevertheless, it’s especially around this time of life that an evening glass of wine can develop into a regular habit, and of course alcohol is often used as an unhealthy attempt to cope with stress or anxiety, and/or can be used the intention of increasing confidence in social situations.

As for the risks, they include:

• Liver damage: prolonged excessive alcohol consumption can progress from fatty liver, which is reversible, to liver inflammation and eventually permanent scarring and cirrhosis.
• Aging and weight: alcohol is associated with shorter telomeres, which are protective DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes and a marker of biological aging. Alcohol is also calorie-dense without providing nutritional value, with a standard 12% wine serving containing around 155 calories, making it particularly unhelpful when abdominal fat tends to increase around menopause.
• Mental health: alcohol is a depressant, and regular drinking can worsen anxiety and depression, which can already become more common during menopause.
• Cancer risk: alcohol is classified as a group 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization, and alcohol consumption further increases the risk of several cancers, including mouth, throat, esophageal, stomach, colorectal, liver, and breast cancer. A 2026 meta-analysis found that breast cancer risk increased with any alcohol consumption and rose proportionally with the amount consumed.
• Heart disease: the former idea that moderate alcohol consumption, particularly red wine, protects the heart came largely from observational studies with flawed comparisons between drinkers and non-drinkers. When researchers accounted for former heavy drinkers and people who stopped drinking because they were already ill, the apparent cardiovascular and mortality benefits disappeared.

In short: quitting is good. Failing that, less is better than more.

For more on all of this, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like:

• Occasional Drinking? 3x Risk Of Liver Scarring ← a lot of people think “occasional drinking” is safe; it isn’t
• How Much Alcohol Does It Take To Increase Cancer Risk? ← the short answer is “any amount”; the only safe amount is zero
• Can We Drink To Good Health? ← this is mostly about red wine and heart health
• How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol ← this is about the more general reasons to quit, and how to do so
• What Happens To Your Body When You Stop Drinking Alcohol ← a realistic timeline of recovery

Take care!