Immune system
Drinking too much can weaken your immune system, making your body a much easier target for disease. Chronic drinkers are more liable to contract diseases like pneumonia and tuberculosis than moderate drinkers. Drinking a lot on a single occasion slows your body’s ability to ward off infections–even up to 24 hours after getting drunk.

• The liver damage caused by cirrhosis generally can’t be undone.
• Sometimes, bruising after drinking occurs because of the fact that alcohol dilates the blood vessels.
• Continued liver damage due to alcohol consumption can lead to the formation of scar tissue, which begins to replace healthy liver tissue.
• When someone develops an alcohol use disorder, they will show signs or symptoms that are characteristic of this condition.
• Females who consume high amounts of alcohol and also carry excess body weight have a greater chance of developing chronic liver disease.

The exact mechanism by which alcohol causes the formation of stomatocytes still is unclear. Alcohol-related liver disease may play a role in the development of stomatocyte hemolysis, because all four of the binge-drinking alcoholics in whom stomatocytosis originally was identified also had some evidence of liver dysfunction. This hypothesis is supported by the observation that in the four original patients, the stomatocytes disappeared during abstinence, but reappeared when alcohol consumption was resumed.

Acute and Long-term Effects of Alcohol on the Myocardium

Because blood samples are relatively easy to obtain, structural and functional changes in circulating blood cells and plasma proteins potentially can form the basis of laboratory tests for screening, diagnosing, and monitoring alcoholism. Many blood disorders result from impaired alcohol and bruising or abnormal production of blood cells. These disorders can be diagnosed by microscopic analysis of bone marrow samples;1 This type of diagnosis allows the physician to determine the overall number of cells in the bone marrow as well as the proportion of abnormal cells.

A person with this condition has little or no von Willebrand protein, which is important for blood clotting. Synthetic hormone treatment can improve blood clotting in people with the condition. In 2015, 16.5% of all liver transplants in the United States occurred due to alcoholic liver disease, making it the third most common reason for transplants behind chronic hepatitis C and liver cancer. Genetic, psychological, social and environmental factors can impact how drinking alcohol affects your body and behavior.

Alcoholic fatty liver disease

Thus, clinicians have noted that some people who consume alcohol in excess repeatedly develop thrombocytopenia (often severely), whereas other drinkers maintain normal platelet levels. To detect blood disorders, physicians frequently examine small blood samples (known as blood smears) under a microscope and assess the appearance, size, and number of the various blood cells. Each type of blood cell has a characteristic appearance that allows its identification in blood samples. Moreover, the proportion of the different cell types in the blood is relatively constant.

Also, as noted below, data from other studies demonstrate the protective role of administered antioxidants, such as a synthetic compound that mimics the native superoxide dismutase enzyme, called a superoxide dismutase mimetic. This suggests a direct or indirect role for ethanol-mediated oxidative stress in the heart (Jiang et al. 2012; Tan et al. 2012). Another trend in recent studies of alcohol and CV risk and disease is to include a measurement for binge drinking. In most investigations, this means consuming more than 5 standard drinks on a single occasion for men and more than 4 standard drinks for women.