Staying Within Safe Drinking Limits 4 Your Liver’s Sake

I often write about staying within safe drinking limits for your brain’s sake. But what about your liver? It’s the organ that must metabolize (process) the alcohol in each standard drink.

What are safe drinking limits and where does the liver fit in?

Staying within safe drinking limits is important for the health of the liver because of all the things the liver does for our health.

Staying within safe drinking limits is important for the health of the liver. The liver performs critical functions for our body’s overall health.

According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), safe drinking limits are defined as:

  • For women: no more than 7 standard drinks in a week, with no more than 3 of those 7 in any one day
  • For men: no more than 14 standard drinks in a week, with no more than 4 of those 14 in any one day.

A standard drink is defined as 5 ounces of wine, 12 ounces of regular beer, 1.5 ounces of hard liquor (80 proof), 3.3 ounces of champagne and 8-9 ounces of malt liquor.

Visit these NIAAA links for more information on standard drinks and drinking limits | patterns.

As for the liver, it takes the liver about one hour to metabolize one standard drink. Six drinks will take six hours. In the meantime, it “sits” in body tissues and organs, such as the brain and the liver, and this “sitting” is what damages or changes function of that organ. Check out this article for more information, “Understand How the Body Processes Alcohol…”.

 

Why is the liver so important to our overall health?

In addition to detoxifying poisonous chemicals (such as alcohol, prescription and illegal drugs), the liver provides so many other key functions for our overall health. It:

  • stores iron, vitamins and minerals from the foods we eat to be used as needed
  • makes the bile that’s necessary to digest our food
  • stores the sugar in carbohydrates, glucose and fat for energy
  • makes our blood
  • makes new proteins – the ones we need to grow and stay healthy
  • makes clotting “stuff” so we don’t bleed to death
  • removes the poisons in the air we breathe (think car exhaust and aerosol sprays)
  • defends our bodies against the constant onslaught of germs we encounter daily.

Clearly our liver does so many, many critical things for our overall health. So for your liver’s sake (and your brain’s), stay within safe drinking limits so you don’t damage this important organ. For help with cutting back if you need it, check out NIAAA’s website, “Rethinking Drinking: Tips to Try.” And for more on the liver, visit WebMD’s site, “Liver Failure Causes, Symptoms, Treatments, Tests & More.”

Lisa Frederiksen

Lisa Frederiksen

Author | Speaker | Consultant | Founder at BreakingTheCycles.com
Lisa Frederiksen is the author of hundreds of articles and 12 books, including her latest, "10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You'd Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much,” and "Loved One In Treatment? Now What!” She is a national keynote speaker with over 30 years speaking experience, consultant and founder of BreakingTheCycles.com. Lisa has spent the last 19+ years studying and simplifying breakthrough research on the brain, substance use and other mental health disorders, secondhand drinking, toxic stress, trauma/ACEs and related topics.
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