sudden alcohol intolerance

[peatra]

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this! For a couple of years at least, I have felt quite awful quite quickly from having even 1-2 drinks. I never had this issue before. It looks as though my liver may have stopped producing the enzyme needed to break down alcohol. I know the answer is stop, which I will - I never drank often, anyway - but I'm wondering if other have experience with this health issue and if anyone has ideas about what it could mean for my overall liver health.

 

[tara]

What form of alcohol? Alcohol is a burden on anyone's system, and stopping it looks like a good idea to me if you are after improving your health. But for some people other components can be a bit rough too. Eg some people react badly to compounds in red wine, or beer, but not so bad with a little vodka.

 

[peatra]

It's as bad with vodka as it is with red wine, so it isn't sulfites. I think I can drink a low ABV beer without a reaction.

I never thought of it as a health issue because I drink infrequently and moderate alcohol is supposed to have health benefits. I certainly have to stop for now, but I think healthy would mean I was able to occasionally have 1-2 drinks, especially if it doesn't seem to be a genetic/lifetime issue.

 

[Peata]

How old are you? If you're over 30, it may be that you're developing some NAFLD.

 

[Pet Peeve]

The same happened to me. I used to drink several times per week and I just couldn't tolerate it anymore. Now I haven't tasted a drop in two months. I started to get some blood sugar issues after supplementing fish oil, some strange variety of insulin resistance i think. Alcohol supposedly lowers blood sugar and somehow this just makes me crash. I think you would need to rebuild your livers glycogen stores and possibly doing a lecithin detox for a couple of weeks. You can try to take one gram of lecithin and see how you feel, if you feel horrible this could mean you need it (and vitamin c 1-2 grams to overcome the detox reaction from the lecithin). Not very Peaty but it helped me lots. You could try chromium, biotin and lipoic acid - strangely enough they also helped me. Im not sure how this ties together but its my personal experience FWIW. I guess avoidance of sugar started a fat burning process that messed everything up.

BTW. When I drank just before I quit my reaction was pale face, social anxiety, facial and bodily "stiffness", mental slowness which came on with alcohol (which made me drink even more ironically).