What happens if you drink alcohol when you have a cold? It turns out the harm is so great

Colds are a common disease in daily life. Improper diet will make the condition worse. Therefore, for the sake of health, people must pay close attention to their diet when they have symptoms of a cold. People always say that you can’t drink alcohol after catching a cold, but what will happen if you drink alcohol after catching a cold? Most people don't really understand this. In fact, drinking after catching a cold can cause four major harms to the human body. The first is that it will aggravate the cold.

1. Drinking alcohol will make the cold worse

Because most cold patients, especially those with severe symptoms, have fever, they usually need to take antipyretics, usually paracetamol. Once you drink liquor or strong alcohol, the metabolites produced by them will cause serious damage to the liver until it is completely necrotic.

Colds and flu are reactions to upper respiratory tract inflammation. Drinking alcohol when you have a cold will aggravate the dilation and congestion of the mucosal blood vessels, increase respiratory secretions, further aggravate the condition, and delay the healing time. Therefore, drinking alcohol when you have a cold is not only unhelpful, but harmful.

2. Taking cold medicine and drinking alcohol can easily damage the liver

Almost everyone knows that drinking alcohol can damage the liver, and household cold medicines are also drugs that can easily cause drug-induced liver damage. Therefore, experts remind the public that if you are an alcohol lover, taking cold medicine while drinking heavily may cause double damage to your liver.

At present, liver damage caused by not following doctor's orders or drug instructions in my country accounts for nearly 10% of all adverse drug reactions. Severe drug abuse can also lead to acute liver necrosis, liver failure and even death. Therefore, when using everyday household medicines such as cold medicines, you must never ignore their potential threats.

Most of the common cold medicines on the market today are compound preparations containing multiple ingredients. Many of them contain acetaminophen. Drugs containing this ingredient have indeed been clinically proven to have good effects in reducing fever and relieving body pain, so they are often used to treat headaches and fevers caused by colds, but they may also cause damage to human liver function.

If a patient already has signs of impaired liver function, continued use of such drugs may further exacerbate the toxic reaction in the body. Therefore, citizens should carefully distinguish. If they find that the cold medicine contains acetaminophen as the main ingredient and their liver function is not very good, it is best to use it with caution or follow the doctor's advice.

3. Produce other adverse effects

When you have a cold, your body's resistance is relatively low. Drinking alcohol will cause irritation to the throat and produce some adverse effects, such as pharyngitis and laryngitis.