Why Liquor is Extra Dangerous For the Liver

All kinds of alcohol can be highly damaging for the liver, but there are some things about liquor that make it extra dangerous. Three key things set liquor apart from beer and wine.

What You’ll Learn:

• Quantity and concentration factors that increase liver risk with liquor.

• Why shots are a big hit to the liver.

• How easy overpouring plays a role in liver damage.

• What can be done to reduce liquor use and help the liver recover.

Drinking alcohol has a direct impact on your liver no matter what type of alcohol you’re consuming. However, many consider liquor to be especially dangerous for the liver for several very pragmatic reasons.

If liquor is your drink of choice, you’ve got to be careful about how much and how quickly you’re drinking or you’ll do more harm to your liver than you would drinking beer or wine.

Liquor is Quicker to Drink

When you look at the volume of liquid that is consumed you can see why liquor could be riskier than beer or wine. Usually, liquor is mixed with other ingredients, but sometimes it isn’t 3.5+ extra ounces.

Many people add less than that when they mix a drink. They end up consuming the same amount of alcohol in a smaller drink that takes less time to finish.

The end result is it could take someone 30 minutes or less to have a 6-ounce mixed drink but close to an hour to finish a 12 ounce beer. And if you’re taking a shot, that means you’re finishing what counts as one drink in a matter of seconds.

Shots Can Easily Cause Liver Inflammation

Taking a shot of liquor delivers a whole portion of alcohol very quickly, which can be extremely harmful to the liver that has to process it. A healthy liver can handle one shot.

Take another shot soon after and your liver is now working overtime to get the toxins out of your system.

The liver simply cannot process shots fast enough, and that causes serious problems. When the liver processes alcohol it creates a byproduct called acetaldehyde. It’s a toxin that can damage liver cells as well as DNA.

The short-term damage is toxic buildup along with inflammation known as alcoholic hepatitis. Alcoholic hepatitis is the result of the immune system attacking the damaged liver cells.

Over the long-term if someone chronically drinks, inflaming their liver over and over, eventually scarring develops on the liver’s tissue (fibrosis). The scarring leads to cirrhosis, and it’s irreversible damage that impacts liver function.

Ten years of heavy, chronic drinking is enough to cause cirrhosis to develop.

It’s Easy to Overpour Liquor

Beer and even wine are pretty easy to portion out. But often with liquor there’s a lot of room for error since it’s very easy to overpour. A 1.5-ounce portion of liquor is about one standard shot glass, which is smaller than most people realize.

And some people drink doubles, meaning they put two servings of liquor into one drink. There are also certain types of drinks, such as Long Island Iced Tea, that include more than one serving of liquor.

This means that there’s no way for the liver to process the alcohol quickly enough, even if it takes you an hour to have the drink. The liver can only process one serving of alcohol an hour.

Ultimately, liquor drinks are a lot less precise than drinking beer and wine that don’t require mixing and next to no measuring when the right glass is used. The only way to be as consistent with liquor is to use a measuring cup.

Getting a Handle on Liquor to Save Your Liver

Some people are pretty startled when they consider the reality of what drinking liquor is doing to their liver. It’s good motivation for reducing how much you drink so that it stays in the low to moderate range.

You don’t have to quit drinking entirely, but fewer drinks means less liver damage.

There are a lot of ways people tame down their liquor use. Some common strategies include:

Only drinking socially and not keeping liquor at home.
This works because it’s all about accessibility. Having liquor at home provides easy access, making it harder to resist the urge to make a drink. Keep your drinking to social events and it should dramatically reduce the number of days that you drink.

The liver can begin recovering in days, so longer stints between drinking really helps.

Drinking premixed drinks.
If the concern is more about accidentally overpouring than the number of drinks, you can buy premixed beverages. Everything is already properly portioned out for you. An alternative is to switch from mixed drinks to beer or wine.

Having a mocktail in between cocktails.
If you’re out having drinks socially, a good way to reduce liquor consumption is by ordering an occasional mocktail.

If you typically have three drinks while out you can order a mocktail in between the cocktails to give your liver ample time to process the liquor. Often you won’t even notice the difference in the taste.

Using naltrexone medication.
If you feel like it will be difficult to manage alcohol cravings so you can reduce how much liquor you drink, then naltrexone medication can help.

Naltrexone is an FDA-approved prescription medication that is proven to help the brain’s reward system stop reacting to alcohol by suppressing opioid receptors. The effects are immediate, and over the long-term alcohol cravings subside.

Interested in naltrexone? Choose Your Horizon is a leading telehealth platform that can handle the naltrexone prescription process entirely online. It’s discreet, convenient and affordable.

Get started by taking the Alcohol Use Assessment. It’s free and can be completed in minutes.