Can Drinking Alcohol Cause Kidney Cancer or Kidney Disease?

You may have kidney pain after drinking alcohol due to dehydration or inflammation of your stomach lining. But it can also happen if you have other health conditions, including a kidney infection. A compromised diluting ability has important implications for the management of patients with advanced liver disease.

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Alcohol is also known to dehydrate the body, which can affect the regular function of the kidneys. People who drink too much are also more likely to have high blood pressure. In many patients with liver cirrhosis, the kidneys’ ability to create dilute urine is compromised, leading to a state of abnormally low sodium concentration (i.e., hyponatremia). In hyponatremic patients, the amount of fluid retained by the kidneys is disproportionately greater than the amount of sodium retained. In other words, the kidneys’ ability to excrete excess fluid by way of dilute urine is impaired, and too much fluid is reabsorbed. Hyponatremia probably is the single most common electrolyte disturbance encountered in the management of patients with cirrhosis of the liver (Vaamonde 1996).

Alcohol intake and the risk of chronic kidney disease: results from a systematic review and dose–response meta-analysis

Consistent excessive alcohol consumption has been found to double the risk of developing chronic kidney disease, which does not go away on its own. Those who drink heavily and smoke are about five times more likely to develop chronic kidney disease than those who do not have those habits. Free radicals (also called reactive oxygen species [ROS]) are one of the by-products of alcohol metabolism and are known to cause cellular damage, unless the body can use antioxidants to clean them up. Oxidative stress occurs when the body cannot detoxify free radicals as fast as they are being produced, and it is pivotal in triggering alcohol-related tissue injury. Studies suggest that several mechanisms produce ROS in alcohol-damaged organs, including the liver (Cederbaum et al. 2009), heart (Tan et al. 2012; Varga et al. 2015), and kidney (Latchoumycandane et al. 2015). CYP2E1 is of particular interest when thinking about potential mechanisms for alcohol-related kidney damage.

Renal Patients and Alcohol

These changes in fluid volume, electrolyte balance, and blood pressure may have stimulated the activity of hormones to return body fluid volume and composition back to normal, which occurred soon after consumption. Another noteworthy problem is alcohol consumption in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). In recent years, CKD has become one of the most serious global public health problems. Recent studies how does alcohol affect the kidneys estimated that CKD affects about 119.5 million people worldwide [10,11]. Although the evidence suggests there is limited harm in drinking some alcohol, alcohol consumption can impact on other organs and negatively impact on your overall health, which may in turn affect your chronic kidney disease. For example, alcohol intake may be paired with an unhealthy lifestyle and diet, leading to other health issues.

Point and bars represent beta coefficients and 95% confidence intervals, respectively. Health care professionals caution that drinking a lot of water or not enough water could be especially dangerous for certain people. “Those with advanced liver, kidney, or heart failure need to limit how much fluid they drink,” says Betz. On the other end of the spectrum, she says, people with kidney stones, polycystic kidney disease, or chronic urinary tract infections may have higher fluid needs than the general population. If you fall into any of these categories, always talk with a trusted care provider about the right amount of water intake for you. Research into alcohol consumption and chronic kidney disease is conflicting, as most research into this looks at otherwise healthy individuals, however, kidney injury can occur due to excessive alcohol use.

• Although some exceptions exist, several historical studies have reported similar modest reductions in sodium and potassium excretion following alcohol use.
• The good news is that you can prevent this by not drinking too much alcohol.
• The best way to tell if you’re among them is to check out a urine color chart (a tool backed by research, by the way).
• In addition, long-term alcohol consumption can lead to injuries of renal tubules [1,2,30,39,51].
• While definitions can be variable, one way to look at this is the consumption of 4 or more drinks on an occasion (for women) and 5 or more for men.
• In turn, heavy alcohol consumption is implicated in the development of these cardiac diseases, with chronic, heavy drinkers at higher risk than those who consume small to moderate amounts of alcohol.

In contrast, some studies find that heavy alcohol consumption may predict poorer outcome in patients with chronic kidney diseases (Kronborg et al. 2008; Shankar et al. 2006; White et al. 2009). For example, White and colleagues (2009) reported that heavier drinkers (those consuming more than 30 g of alcohol/week) were at higher risk of incident albuminuria, which is typically a symptom of kidney disease. Japanese (Yamagata et al. 2007) and Italian (Buja et al. 2011) cohort studies revealed a U-shaped association between alcohol consumption and incidence of proteinuria. It is possible that the contradictory findings are the result of varying effects of different types of alcoholic beverages on the kidney, or the result of different alcohol consumption patterns in different countries. Both acute and chronic alcohol consumption can compromise kidney function, particularly in conjunction with established liver disease.

• Notably, these mechanisms have not yet been validated experimentally in the kidney.
• A few studies have linked rhabdomyolysis and myoglobin toxicity with acute kidney injury, supporting a possible association among alcohol use, alcohol-related acute myopathy, and kidney damage.
• However, during chronic ethanol consumption, the body also uses CYP2E1 in the liver as well as the kidneys.
• Even higher risk of kidney problems has been found for heavy drinkers who also smoke.

Managing Blood Sugar and Chronic Kidney Disease

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• Unlike previous reports, some researchers indicated that ethyl alcohol pretreatment can improve renal antioxidant activities and capacity.
• This often goes away after a time, but it can occasionally lead to lasting kidney damage.
• Non-athletes may be better off saving their money on electrolyte-infused beverages, and should avoid drinks or powders with added sugar.
• Similarly, there’s minimal evidence to suggest that alcohol increases the risk of kidney stones or kidney infections.