Have you ever noticed that objects seem fuzzy after a few drinks? Alcohol disrupts how the brain interprets visual cues, leading to blurred vision. It temporarily weakens the eye muscle coordination, making it difficult for the eyes to focus.
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There are a couple of specific ways that alcohol can affect your eyes. And if you have one too many alcoholic drinks, you may start to slur your speech and have trouble walking in a straight line — and that’s all before dealing with a hangover the next day. They may also recommend screening for liver function or nutrient deficiencies.
- Drinking alcohol regularly can also cause dry eye symptoms and involuntary twitching of the eyelid, known as myokymia.
- Light sensitivity is another example of what happens to your eyes when you drink alcohol and how it is related to what happens to your brain.
- Over time, alcohol can cause damage to your central nervous system.
- As a result, vitamin B1 deficiency can lead to weakness or paralysis of the eye muscles.
- While some alcohol-induced visual impairments may improve with reduced consumption, severe long-term damage, like optic nerve damage, can be irreversible.
Excessive alcohol consumption affects eyesight and vision
A damaged pancreas can also prevent your body from producing enough insulin to use sugar. This can lead to hyperglycemia, Alcohol Use Disorder or too much sugar in the blood. Drinking too much alcohol over time may cause inflammation of the pancreas, resulting in pancreatitis. Pancreatitis can activate the release of pancreatic digestive enzymes and cause abdominal pain.
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Now, the disease has become rarer and is often only seen in people suffering from alcoholism. The optic nerve is in charge of sending impulses from the retina of the eye to the brain. A damaged optic nerve can lead to low vision and sometimes blindness.
Since alcohol is a depressant, it can slow breathing, leading to a lack of oxygen to the brain. Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream. It is expressed as the weight of ethanol in grams per 100 milliliter (ml) of blood.
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This vision problem can lead to headaches, especially during the sobering-up stage. And, blurry vision hangover the pupils will take a little more time to get back to normal. Expect slow pupil reaction time for up to 24 hours after your bout of excessive drinking.
This condition damages the optic nerve, leading to irreversible vision loss. Additionally, long-term alcohol use can contribute to retinal damage, which affects the ability to perceive colors and see clearly. One of the most common short-term effects of alcohol consumption is bloodshot or red eyes. Did you know that alcohol affects not only your liver and brain but also your eyes?
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Recognizing and dealing with these foundational problems can bring healing not just to the individual, but to their loved ones as well. Seeking professional help can provide the tools needed to uncover and address these deep-seated causes. Unhealthy alcohol use includes any alcohol use that puts your health or safety at risk or causes other alcohol-related problems. It also includes binge drinking — a pattern of drinking where a male has five or more drinks within two hours or a female has at least four drinks within two hours. The body absorbs alcohol relatively quickly, but it takes longer to get the alcohol out of the body. Consuming several drinks in a short time causes the alcohol builds up in the body.
Alcohol can make your eyes more sensitive to light, leading to discomfort in brightly lit environments or on sunny days. This increased sensitivity is a direct result of alcohol’s effect on the pupils and how they react to changes in light. Being mindful of alcohol https://zevach.cl/2025/03/12/how-to-deal-with-stress-17-expert-ways-to-cope-the/ consumption can reduce this sensitivity, helping you enjoy daylight activities without discomfort.
As a result, information is not passed between the eyes and the brain as quickly as it usually is when a person is sober. This delayed response leads to slowed eye-muscle coordination, causing people who are under the influence of alcohol to experience blurry vision or double vision. Furthermore, alcohol can significantly slow down the speed at which pupils react to changes in light.
Slurred speech, a key sign of intoxication, happens because alcohol reduces communication between your brain and body. This makes speech and coordination — think reaction time and balance — more difficult. That’s one major reason why you should never drive after drinking. As for the relation between intake of alcohol and eye twitching, there are a few ways alcohol consumption might indirectly impact the intensity of the spasms. Excessive drinking leads to sleep disturbances, dehydration, stress, anxiety, and eye strain. All these are factors that easily can trigger or make eyelid twitching worse.