How can alcohol abuse progressively, albeit temporarily, affect your capacity to breathe? -

After my wife died, I wound up all alone and I started hitting the sauce pretty hard. I became a functioning alcoholic for three to four years. I quaffed down from 10 to 15 beers a night most every night, sometimes more on weekends. I often became wide awake in the middle of the night and had to read a book and drink 2 or 3 beers just so I could get back to sleep and go to work the next day. In retrospect, it seems like I was also figuratively drowning in beer. During this time, I found myself having more and more trouble walking up stairs (at one point, I could only go up 4 steps at a time) and running out of breath doing simple chores, to the point that I felt like I was drowning and about to pass out if I overdid it. Running simply became impossible. Strangely enough, my breathing problem was a bit worse in the daytime, when I was always sober. I did not associate my drinking and this slow asphyxiation, neither did I seek treatment for it because, frankly, I didn t give much of a damn. I think I was just waiting to didi the hell out of this vale of tears. Then I guess my mourning period was over because in the last year or so I progressively lost my taste for over drinking. No AA meetings, no swearing off, no conscious decision whatsoever. I just spontaneously lost interest. I changed, somehow. I m now down to normal consumption, right back where I started from. BUT LO AND BEHOLD : amazingly, I m slowly getting my lung capacity back. Now I can even jog (jog, not flat out run yet) about a hundred and fifty feet without feeling like a fish out of the water, something I believe would have killed me a couple of years ago. I can walk fast without breathing through my mouth. And it s getting a little better all the time. If this keeps up for another year or so, I m going to sign up for badminton at my local sport center. Recent blood tests and ECG say I m fine at 50 years old. No hypertension, lungs sounded OK to the doc. So, what happened, and what s happening, and what s going to happen?

Let s not forget that alcohol is a poison. Taken in small quantities it only effects our balance, judgment etc. The liver can handle normal consumption to a degree but when it s overwhelmed like what you were doing it cannot function properly to remove toxins from our blood.The liver has many functions and if we abuse it it will effect every other organ by the chemical imbalance. One thing it does is it makes it more difficult for the muscles to utilize oxygen, leaving them with an excess of metabolic byproducts and not functioning efficiently. Also while you are drinking like that you tend not to exercise or take quot;shortcutsquot; and muscles begin to atrophy. Ok, sorry for the long winded explanation. But now that you re back at quot;normalquot; levels your body and muscles will start functioning properly again allowing you to tolerate more and more exertion. I m not saying you ll be able to run a marathon but it would be a worthy goal. Even if you end up jogging 7 miles a day or week or whatever it s a hell of a lot better than now. I haven t lost my wife but I don t know what I d do without her. Sorry for your loss. God bless and help you fulfill whatever your definition of success is.

sometimes people will get so drunk their body will forget they need to breath Alcohol abuse increases risk of acute respiratory distress It is common knowledge that alcohol abuse damages the liver. Yet evidence developed within the last decade shows that overuse of alcohol can damage the lungs as well. Although alcohol abuse does not cause a specific disease, it reduces the capacity of the lungs to combat and recover from infections and injury. Alcoholics are three to four times as likely as non-alcoholics to develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a life-threatening lung condition characterized by swelling and fluid build-up in the lungs’ air sacs. Fatal in 30 to 40 percent of cases, ARDS can be caused by any major inflammation or injury to the lungs. Severe pneumonia and sepsis (severe system-wide infection) are among the most common causes. ARDS is linked to alcohol use for several reasons. First, alcoholics are more likely to aspirate bacteria than non-alcoholics because of pro-bacteria changes to the mouth environment as well as diminished cough and gag reflexes. Additionally, numerous studies have found that alcohol abuse impairs immune function in the lungs and reduces the effectiveness of surfactant, a substance that stabilizes the lungs’ alveoli, or air sacs. Reduced immune function makes alcoholics more likely to suffer from pneumonia, one of the major risk factors for ARDS. They are also more likely to develop sepsis, partly from an increased likelihood of major physical injury. In addition, alcoholics who develop ARDS are more likely to die from the condition than non-alcoholics. Scientists have discovered several mechanisms underlying the effect of excessive alcohol intake on the lungs. One is depletion of the antioxidant glutathione, making the lungs more susceptible to oxidative stress and therefore more likely to succumb to infection or injury. Unfortunately, studies in mice show that supplementary glutathione is only effective as a treatment if given as a preventive—it will not reverse ARDS. Alcohol abuse also decreases levels of granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), a substance important to lung health. GM-CSF may be useful as a treatment for ARDS. In a small study, treating patients in septic shock with GM-CSF reduced lung injury. The NIH is currently studying in a large, multicenter trial whether supplementing ARDS patients with GM-CSF can improve outcomes. However, the most effective way to battle ARDS will likely remain prevention—in other words, helping alcoholics give up their deadly habit. i enjoyed researching this question! sorry to hear about your loss, happy to hear that you have recovered