This can result in a headache and dry mouth and throat.Īs a COPD patient, it’s very important that you get an adequate night’s sleep each and every day. Alcohol further acts as a diuretic, causing you to urinate more frequently. This reduces both the quantity and the quality of sleep that you get in a night. Many people feel that a drink at night helps them fall asleep, and this may be true, but it’s also true that alcohol can cause you to wake up often during the night. Similarly, the effects of anxiety and pain medications could be increased, causing your heart and breathing rates to slow down dangerously, even to the point of death. Even small amounts of alcohol can have this effect. The result? You become even more sedated than would a non-COPD patient who consumed the same amount of alcohol.Īlcohol Can Interfere With Your MedicationsĪlcohol is known to interfere with many COPD medications such as glucocorticoids and antibiotics. This lowering of oxygen can lead to an excess buildup of carbon dioxide in the lungs.Ĭarbon dioxide buildup is bad for anyone, but it’s especially harmful for COPD patients, because their lungs, damaged by the disease, cannot respond properly to the buildup by increasing their breathing rate to expel the excess carbon dioxide. This can worsen your shortness of breath.ĭrinking alcohol can make you feel less bothered by breathlessness for a little while, but this can be dangerous, because while you may not feel as much discomfort, still you are experiencing the same lowering of oxygen saturation in the blood that may bother you when completely sober. The result is that it becomes increasingly difficult for you to expel mucus from your lungs. This system is damaged by ongoing alcohol use, and does not operate as well as it should. One of the things that glutathione does is help protect your lungs from tobacco smoke.Ĭhronic ingestion of alcohol actually damages the surface of your lungs and it’s on the surface that the mucociliary transport system operates, attracting mucus and eradicating it from your lungs.
The probability and possibly the severity of such flare-ups can be worsened if you drink and you also smoke cigarettes. Glutathione is an antioxidant that’s found within the lungs, and when you drink alcoholic beverages, the alcohol in them will lower your glutathione levels. Here are some things to know about drinking when you have COPD: However, it’s good to educate yourself as well.
He or she knows your symptoms, your level of fitness and general health, and can give you the best advice on the subject. The first advice is to consult with your doctor. Must you extend this whole “live a clean and healthy life” regimen to alcohol consumption as well? Or can you go ahead and have a drink when you want to, without affecting your COPD symptoms? If you’ve been diagnosed with COPD, of course you’re told that you should eat healthy, exercise, get adequate sleep, and avoid triggers such as pollen if you have allergies.
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