Why the sunburn from alcohol consumption?!?!?!
Question: I drink quite often and am nearly 30 years old. But my skin color is quite often a bright red and it itches like I've been in the sun. Someone told me of the "tavern sunburn" from the alcohol coming out the pores. What causes this? I can't find much searching it on google. Also can this be a sign of something dangerous?
Answers: I drink quite often and am nearly 30 years old. But my skin color is quite often a bright red and it itches like I've been in the sun. Someone told me of the "tavern sunburn" from the alcohol coming out the pores. What causes this? I can't find much searching it on google. Also can this be a sign of something dangerous?
It's not a sunburn in the typical sense. When you drink alcohol, it causes the veins,arteries, and capillaries to dialate- and the total effect is that you look reddish. Eventually those capillaries will tend to stay widened, especially in the nose- and you get the typical alcoholic red nose- ala W.C. Fields. Alcoholics also tend more to develop rosacea, a condition of inflammation of the blood vessels which is aggrivated by consumption of alcohol, though not strictly speaking caused by it. People who never drink do develop rosacea as well, but alcohol certainly won't help. If you have been drinking regularly and a large amount, for a while, it's hard to say which you are looking at. It's not necessarily a bad sign, but it's not a real good one either- as it may signal that you've drunk enough to damage other things as well as the circulatory system. Any you aren't sweating alcohol by the way. You are sweating urea, a close cousin to urine. The alchohol is metabolized by your liver, in your small intestine, and filtered out by the kidneys. You do tend to blow off ketones in your breath, urine and sweat, though- byproducts of the metabolism of the alcohol- and that isn't the sweetest smell in the world by any means. In your particular case, I think you likely have rosacea, and it's aggrivated by the alcohol. But you would really need a doctor to give you the final scoop on it. If it is rosacea, it's up to you if you like the look well enough to aggrivate it, or if you'd rather give up some of the drinks and stay in the pink side of things. If you continue to aggrivate it, it can and will get worse, and you could end up staying red full time.
Alcohol irritates the blood vessels in the face, causing redness.
in some people, alcohol causes the capillaries in the face and nose to dilate and become inflamed. sort of an allergic reaction to alcohol.
contact a dermatologist and get his/her advice on the matter
you can be allergic to alcohol.