Eli5 Why shouldn’t I drink alcohol before surgery?
In: 50
I really really hope OP is not asking this when they’re gonna have a planned surgery very soon.
Also, if you know they’re giving you drugs, then automatically you don’t have any idea how the drugs will interact with the alcohol.
Since we know that drugs and alcohol should never ever mix most of the time anyway, it’s better to be safe.
So you don’t bleed to death. Alcohol messes with your blood and makes it thinner or not clot as well.
Because your doctor told you not to?
Several reasons:
1. Alcohol has a bad reaction with anesthesia or meds they may use during surgery.
2. Alcohol affects clotting and thereby healing
An older friend of mine (and quite the drinker), needed a surgery and they had to keep sending him home because he drank the day before. Eventually, they simply kept him in the hospital a couple days before surgery so he couldn’t.
So, I don’t know the answer, but apparently it’s important.
A follow up question: is one drink the night before really a problem? iirc your body processes all the alcohol from a single drink to the point it’s not noticeable in blood tests/breathalyzers in about 3-4 hours. if it isn’t affecting behavior or cannot be picked up physiologically, is the blanket ban just a “better safe than sorry” order?
Because it’s the anesthesiologists job to sedate you. If you pull up to your surgery lit already then he or she is redundant.
Stop stealing their work!
This is ELI5!
Animals like human beings have evolved over millions of years to stay alive.
This is an elaborate and complicated dance. Air goes in and out. Blood goes round and round. A gazillion other things are happening to keep you alive at any second.
When you have surgery, someone is doing things that would ordinarily kill you. They stop your ability to move air in and out and blood round and round. They cut big holes in your body. This is all very bad.
Fortunately, due to our scientific knowledge and experience, we are pretty good at keeping people alive who otherwise would be dead. But it’s hard! And doing things that change the body, like alcohol or drugs, make it harder.
So doctors will tell you things, because we know that that will help us keep you alive. Do not eat or drink after midnight. Do not take certain medicines or alcohol or drugs.
Alcohol is a vasodilator, basically all your blood vessels are lined with tissue that contracts or expands as needed to move blood to where it needs to go. When you exercise your blood vessels dilate to let more blood move around to get oxygen to where it needs to be, that dilation allows more blood closer to the surface of your skin which is why you turn red when you’re exercising. And when you’re really cold your blood vessels in your extremities (like your fingers and toes) contract and don’t let very much blood in as a self-protective measure to keep your core body temperature warmer by not letting the blood go to your limbs and get cold. Alcohol forces your blood vessels to dilate (and is why some people get red-faced when drunk) and this is a bad thing when you’re going to get cut open and don’t want to lose a lot of blood.
Plus if you’ve had something to drink recently before being anesthetized you might vomit and aspirate (breathe in) that vomit which is why they tell you not to eat for hours and hours before surgery.
I’m just gonna say that if you’re asking this question it probably means you’re drinking too much.
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