Heavy drinking of alcohol may cause problems with your vision and overall eye health including the following conditions. Your overall visual performance may be altered since drinking heavily impairs brain function.
You may also experience delayed reactions while driving. Alcohol tends to affect the speed at which your iris constricts and dilates. Drinking alcohol may decrease the sensitivity of your peripheral vision. Drinking too much alcohol can alter your contrast sensitivity, or how precise you can discern between shades of gray.
Also referred to as tobacco-alcohol amblyopia, people who drink or smoke in excess can develop optic neuropathy though it is rare.
Even though studies have shown the vision loss to be a result of a nutritional deficiency, some professionals believe that the condition develops because of toxic effects of alcohol and tobacco.
Optic neuropathy can also develop as a result of methanol poisoning. Methanol is used in some hand sanitizers instead of ethyl alcohol. Alcohol has been shown to be a trigger for severe migraine headaches in some people. The visual aura may appear as blind spots , graying of vision or zig-zag patterns of light. Sign up for our Health Tip of the Day newsletter, and receive daily tips that will help you live your healthiest life. How alcohol intake affects visual temporal processing.
Vision Res. Retinal-image quality and night-vision performance after alcohol consumption. J Ophthalmol. Testing alcohol myopia theory: examining the effects of alcohol intoxication on simultaneous central and peripheral attention. A signal detection analysis of the effects of alcohol on visual contrast sensitivity Perception. Tobacco-alcohol optic neuropathy. Those are certainly some of the most dangerous risks associated with alcohol addiction, but alcohol is such a harmful substance that it can endanger almost every organ in your body.
Alcoholic eyes is a colloquial name for the effects of long-term alcohol use on the eyes. When you think of a person who abuses alcohol, you might imagine their eyes to be bloodshot or even have a yellow tint.
What you may not know is that drinking alcohol can have much more serious, long-lasting consequences on your eyesight—including permanent blindness. This is thought to be caused by a few different factors: alcohol raises our blood sugar levels, which can temporarily cause blurred vision. This can be extremely dangerous while driving. Another common effect of alcohol on your eyes is getting bloodshot eyes from drinking too much.
Alcohol causes the blood vessels in your eyes to get larger and fill with blood, which creates a red, bloodshot appearance. Your eyes might also get dry and irritated when you drink because alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it makes you need to urinate more frequently. And when you urinate frequently, your body including your eyes becomes dehydrated.
This causes many people to experience eye pain after drinking. Getting red eyes after drinking is not a long-term consequence, and your eyes should regain their normal color once the alcohol has left your system. But while these effects are temporary, even a small amount of alcohol can cause the uncomfortable effects of eye dryness.
One of the scariest possible consequences of alcohol on the eyes is permanent blindness or vision loss. Researchers think that people who drink heavy amounts of alcohol over a long period of time have an increased risk for diseases like age-related macular degeneration and optic neuropathy.
The cause is unclear, but it may be due to alcohol-related vitamin A deficiency. Unhealthy amounts of alcohol consumption can lead to a decrease in peripheral vision, weakened eye muscles, a thinning of the cornea, and loss of color vision—all things that can lead to permanent vision loss. Some of the effects of alcohol on the eyes are temporary or easily treatable.
Rather, this is a liver issue called jaundice which may indicate alcoholic hepatitis or inflammation of the liver.
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