For example, depending on your level of alcohol use, quitting drinking may help resolve the first stage of alcohol liver disease. If you are drinking a lot, stopping or decreasing your alcohol use can also help your chances of not developing severe liver disease. What’s more, a short period of binge drinking — let’s say a month — can cause a reduction in T cells. And this reduction is equal to that of someone who has been binge drinking for 6 months. Your immune system has several different cell types, each of which has a different but very important job to help keep you healthy. In contrast, mice that consumed ethanol after the BCG vaccination were protected against a subsequent M. Taken together, these data suggest that chronic ethanol exposure interferes with immunity to new antigens but not with immunity established before alcohol consumption. According to the CDC, moderate drinking is generally safe for healthy individuals of legal age. Moderate drinking equates to two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women. More than this is considered excessive and may cause damage to the immune system. Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and the Developing Immune System Response to […]