Why Alcohol Affects Menopausal Women More

Why is it bad to have alcohol in menopause?

Alcohol makes your menopausal symptoms worse, so if you’re suffering, I’m sure you don’t want them to be worse. Women by nature have less alcohol dehydrogenase. This is an enzyme that helps metabolize alcohol in the body. This is especially true in perimenopausal women.

Alcohol can be considered a trigger for hot flashes for some, and is known to disrupt sleep in many. So I suffer from both of those and I can attest that it magnifies those symptoms if I have some alcohol. It’ll disrupt my sleep. I won’t get a, a good night’s sleep through the night. I’ll be up at three or four and I’ll be suffering from more hot flashes than usual.

Cognition and memory might also be affected with long-term use as well. Alcohol is also calorie dense, so you’re gonna add extra calories, extra weight gain, and if you’re already struggling with this during menopause, it’s not the greatest.

So as you get older, it becomes harder for your body to metabolize alcohol. This means if you drink alcohol during perimenopause, it’ll potentially stay in your system longer, and you may feel side effects more strongly and for longer duration.

An additional contributor to slower metabolism of alcohol is your cartilage and tendons, which start to slowly lose water as you age. Why does this matter? The less water present in your body, the less you’re able to dilute alcohol in your system and combat its negative side effects.

So what can you do? Stop alcohol completely or limit your consumption. And you can alternatively try a virgin healthy drink. My favorite drink for menopause is my Lemon Flaxseed drink, which is full of estrogen. Flaxseed is a natural phytoestrogen and it’s like a healthy cocktail and I really love the taste. I put one lemon, half with the skin on and half without, and I blend this with water, ice, three dates and a tablespoon of flax seed and blend it. It gets nice and fluffy and it feels like a cocktail. It tastes like a cocktail, and it absolutely does wonders and is great for you.