NUTRITION | ALCOHOL
Healthy from the Start Resources for Shiftworkers
There are short- and long-term impacts of consuming alcohol, and it’s important to limit your intake as much as possible. As a general rule, if you are drinking, you should have no more than 4 standard drinks per day, and no more than 10 drinks per week, but less is always better.
Alcohol can affect your body in many different ways. In the short-term, it can reduce your inhibitions, impair your judgement, and cause nausea, vomiting, and a hangover the next day, all of which can impact your performance at work (38,39). Beyond the short-term, there are a range of negative long-term effects as well, particularly if you consume alcohol regularly. This can include higher rates of mental health problems, increased risk of diabetes, higher rates of cancer, and even heart issues and liver failure (38,39).
For all of these reasons, drinking can cause a lot of problems when it comes to functioning as a shiftworker. Unfortunately, there is no healthy amount of alcohol to consume, so it’s important to limit your drinking as much as possible. If you are drinking, make sure you stay below the maximum recommended amounts - for healthy adults this means no more than 10 drinks per week and no more than 4 drinks in one day (38,39).
Beyond the risks of developing certain health conditions, alcohol can worsen many of the challenges that shiftworkers already face:
• Nutrition: Alcohol blocks certain nutrients from being absorbed by your digestive system, and when you drink, alcohol is stored as fat in your body, which can lead to weight gain and even malnutrition.
• Physical Recovery: Alcohol impacts how well your muscles can grow and repair, depletes energy sources that you need for movement, and slows down tissue healing. All of this can contribute to physical fatigue or higher risk of injuries at work.
• Brain Activity: Alcohol impacts your ability to store and process new information and disrupts the pathways that help us to develop memories, with a single session of drinking impacting brain activity for up to 3 days!
• Alcohol also significantly disrupts your sleep – you can read more about that here.