Have you ever noticed your pain reducing while drinking alcohol? Or do you actually find that your pain is worse the morning after a social evening?
How Alcohol Affects Pain
Context is important- if you’re a social drinker you might find that drinking coincides with being social and distracted. That in itself can help to reduce pain, and it’s possible for these people that drinking a soft drink could alleviate their symptoms in a similar way, because the alcohol was not the real factor. For cases where the alcohol itself has had an impact, it generally boils down to the fact that alcohol is a nervous system depressant. This is why your reactions slow after consuming alcohol, but it also explains the two causes of pain relief explained below:
Alcohol as a Muscle Relaxant
In smaller doses, alcohol acts as a muscle relaxant. If your pain stems from muscular tension, it makes sense that a drink could therefore dull your symptoms temporarily. This could apply to other causes of pain too, if they are exacerbated by tension. It’s rare that there’s no muscular involvement at all in a patient’s pain picture, so it stands to reason that a lot of people would report reduced pain levels while drinking.
However, there’s a good reason that most cases will involve tight muscles. The brain signals for muscles to tense up around a painful area as a means of protecting the sore spot. If you remove tension around joints that may be hypermobile for example, you might find that the position that was comfortable to fall asleep in has actually irritated those joints by morning. Similarly, you might find yourself more prone to a cricked neck after an evening of drinking.
Alcohol as a Pain Killer
The other way that a drink might help is that it reduces pain sensitivity briefly. If you’ve ever woken up with bruises and scrapes you can’t remember, this might be partly why. We know that pain science is complicated, but the interaction between alcohol and the central nervous system builds a clear link: slow the communication between pain and brain, reduce what’s felt.
Why Your Pain Might Increase After
In the short term, after your body processes the alcohol, there are a few potential reasons for increased pain. This might even be a higher level than it was before you had the first drink. We mentioned above that sleeping positions that the body would normally protect against are easier to fall into after drinking. This can cause postural aches and pains. Alcohol has the capacity to dehydrate you too, which may play a role in cramping and joint stiffness, especially for spinal disc issues.
If you had quite a lot to drink, you might have significantly increased inflammation within the body. This will obviously irritate conditions that are already inflammatory, like autoimmune rheumatological conditions.
Long term effects impact the nervous system. Prolonged inflammation among other physiological effects of binge- or heavy drinking are not good for the health of your nerves. Peripheral neuropathy causes pins and needles, burning, or sharp pain in the hands and feet when the nerves are sensitised or their layer of insulation is compromised. The central nervous system can develop neuropathy too, which can affect pain processing and turn up the background level of pain across the whole. body.
Osteopathy for your Pain
Maybe you’ve found that an evening drink helps your symptoms, and now you gravitate towards one most nights. This is probably a sign that you need to start getting to the root of your pain. Your osteopath can help here. For muscular symptoms, we can prescribe exercises to stretch and strengthen muscles that’s specifically tailored to you. Hands-on treatment can be a good place to start, but simple issues are often especially responsive to changes you can make at home and work in terms of activity and ergonomics.
If you have noticed a pattern with your pain and alcohol, let your osteopath know. This information can help in forming your diagnosis as it gives some additional context to what aggravates or relieves your symptoms
