Waterman

I've been sober since mid-April, and my wife and I have noticed an increase in my body hair.......Beard growth(and other). That's weird! Alcohol must REALLY have a major physical effect on our bodies! Just another reason to stay off the booze.

hb3

Alcohol raises your estrogen levels and lowers testosterone levels. I am not quite sure if it induces production or estrogen, or simply supresses testosterone, but indeed it does raise estrogen in comparison to testosterone.

Waterman

Good Lord! I never have heard this.........All the more reason to stay sober.....

hb3

Yep ^^

One of the reasons your muscle atrophies is the lowered testosterone/raised estrogen.

JohnnyZ

An observation after suddenly stopping alcohol: my distance vision has gotten much sharper. I've always struggled with near-sightedness. I've worn corrective lenses since 2nd grade. Eleven years ago, I had lasik surgery and it was the best thing I've ever done for my eyes/vision. Although, there were often times when I wondered why things were a little blurry, over the years I just lived with it and learned to ignore it. Then, on only my 2nd or 3rd full day totally without alcohol (I'm on my 11th today) I realized a drastic improvement in my distance vision. The next morning, I purposely remembered to "test" my vision, and again, it was fantastic! What really solidified my newly discovered clearer distance vision was being in a situation last Friday night where I went to use my distance glasses which I use on rare occasions just to get a bit of increased sharpness (I was at a concert), and all I saw was a complete blur. I put the glasses on several times over the course of the show, and the result was the same. Since I could see near perfectly without the glasses and most surely better than I'd expected going into the show, I concluded that my eyesight has most definitely improved and that my glasses were now much too strong for my eyes.

And, a thought just occurred to me- if my eyes have improved this much since totally stopping alcohol, imagine what other improvements are going on throughout my body! I know I have been feeling much better... :-)

Texasblind

Are you positive about this? Because if this is true, it would explain so much in my early sobriety. Things have evened out, but early on...

CarolD

Hair grows faster in warm weather ...so says my beautician.
I expect being more healthy w/o alcohol is a factor.
I

kurtrambis

Man boobs, one of the great reasons for blokes to gave up alcohol, then again .....

Texasblind

Warning: this just might be a little too much, but even now, after 18 months of sobriety, I still learn something new. I haven't shared this before.

Alright, I just talked to my dad the biochemist and he confirms hb3's story. I'm a little relieved, and a little mad. This happened to me and I didn't know how to explain it and who to talk to. Once again, doctors are just not well trained in addiction medicine. Nobody could ever explain to me why my estrogen levels were high in my blood tests. I'm sure I'll embarass the hel* out of myself, (but if it comforts even one person) I had no idea why my breasts were so tender and nobody could explain it to me. They all figured since I was a drunk and a big muscular guy, I just HAD to be on steroids too. I would swear up and down that alcohol was the only drug, but nobody believed Tex the drunk.

Thankfully, things are all back to "manly" normal, but dam*! I was so scared in early sobriety because I couldn't tell what was going on and no doctor seemed to know. The blood tests all said I was taking hormones or steroids or something, but I knew I hadn't been.

Waterman

Alcohol can do some weird things, for sure. All the more reason to quit and stay off of it. They need to talk about these things in AA........

Pinkcuda

This is from a scientific study.

Waterman

Now that's funny!!