Investigating reduced tolerance to alcohol in ME?

[Milo]

Same. Straight after I got EBV, I noticed alcohol made me feel sick

So EBV was my trigger as well. It was not fun. I couldn’t get out of bed. I felt so horrible. 3 weeks into it my liver enzymes were elevated, i had pain to my liver requiring prescription and the ultrasound showed ‘sludge’ in the gallbladder. Would I think to drink alcohol at that particular time? Hell, no.
2 months into it, i tried to return to work, it did not go well. I still had sludge in my gallbladder.

The gist of it is, viral infections are known to be hard on the liver
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1606546/
And liver inflammation and alcohol don’t mix well.

The other concept that is well established is alcohol tolerance. If you are a drinker, chances are you can tolerate more than a non-drinker. How much you weigh will also affect tolerance, so a 6’5’ 250 lb guy will be able to easily tolerate 2 beers while a 5’2” 105 lbs woman would not.

Lastly, what we all mean by intolerance matters. We may all have different explanations and individual responses depending on dose, whether you have an empty stomach, whether you are ingesting fast or slow, and whether there are drug interactions, just to name a few.

 

[Art Vandelay]

The gist of it is, viral infections are known to be hard on the liver

I was told testing showed that my liver was back to normal two weeks after my EBV infection.

Moreover I am still intolerant to alcohol twenty years later and I am not on any drugs that would interact with alcohol. The times I have tried alcohol, I have taken it very slowly and done so with food.

Alcohol makes me feel ill. It is nothing like the feeling that a healthy person would get if they consumed too much too quickly.

 

[oldtimer]

Yet another reason to wonder if I really do have ME....
Overall, my tolerance of alcohol has decreased exactly in line with my age. There have always been times when I wouldn't know I've had a drink and other times when one standard drink wipes me out. I suspect this is quite normal and explainable. I never feel sick from it, well not for 50 years anyway!

 

[Milo]

Yet another reason to wonder if I really do have ME....
Overall, my tolerance of alcohol has decreased exactly in line with my age. There have always been times when I wouldn't know I've had a drink and other times when one standard drink wipes me out. I suspect this is quite normal and explainable. I never feel sick from it, well not for 50 years anyway!

I would not think that "alcohol intolerance" by itself, whatever that means for people (the definition by itself is never given when mentioned), is precise enough to be diagnostic of ME. If so, it would be one criteria in the case definition and it is not. I think it's more like an incidental piece of information about people's experience with alcohol. I personally never felt sick following one drink over the 12 years I have been sick. I just don't have the desire or the need to drink on a regular basis-and the occasional drink (once a season?). Maybe it's just that I feel sick every single day and have no desire to make it even worse for myself. The pleasant effects are short lived (minutes) and not worth the expense of money. (I would go for a small glass of wine, with meal, or a cider, low alcohol)

 

[Wyva]

The other concept that is well established is alcohol tolerance. If you are a drinker, chances are you can tolerate more than a non-drinker. How much you weigh will also affect tolerance, so a 6’5’ 250 lb guy will be able to easily tolerate 2 beers while a 5’2” 105 lbs woman would not.

I actually tried to get used to alcohol again because I was thinking maybe I'm just not used to it anymore. And since I am still relatively young, with time, I could probably retrain my body to tolerate alcohol better. But it didn't work, it was always the same sick feeling even from one glass.

Lastly, what we all mean by intolerance matters. We may all have different explanations and individual responses depending on dose, whether you have an empty stomach, whether you are ingesting fast or slow, and whether there are drug interactions, just to name a few.

Yes, and it was like this indeed before. But now it is quite different, there was definitely a change and now it is a very consistent experience (which is indeed not just getting drunk too quickly but actually feeling ill from it). (Since the healthcare system didn't bother with me first, I took no drugs at all in the first 4-5 years, only now, so that also didn't affect it.)

Yet another reason to wonder if I really do have ME....
Overall, my tolerance of alcohol has decreased exactly in line with my age. There have always been times when I wouldn't know I've had a drink and other times when one standard drink wipes me out. I suspect this is quite normal and explainable. I never feel sick from it, well not for 50 years anyway!

I think you can still have ME if you don't have every possible symptom. I also don't have some that are quite characteristic for many people (POTS, pain apart from headaches and painful lymph nodes).

 

[arewenearlythereyet]

My n=1 experience is that my limits have definitely reduced but I can comfortably consume 2-3 125ml (I use a measure) glasses of wine in one sitting. More than that and I get heart palpitations and flushed quite quickly (say 1-2 hrs after). I can’t say that drinking gives me more symptoms than that, and certainly a sip would be fine.

I suspect this is just age but there may be a circulation thing going on as well or a mild histamine reaction (it feels similar to eating too much cheese). I used to have IBS symptoms and wine would aggravate that, but I’ve not had those symptoms for quite a while now (1-2 years free)? I just keep within 2-3 glasses twice a week (weekend treat).

I only really drink wine by preference since my hobby before getting sick was wine and food pairing and it feels wrong not to drink wine with certain foods now (wine bore etc). Beer definitely no longer agrees with me (almost certainly age related).

of course my perceptions are almost certainly clouded by the fact that I only drink wine with large meals that I probably should limit anyway and I’m 8 years in, so my capacity in my early to mid 40’s is probably a bit different to what it is now due to ageing?

I didn’t have glandular fever or a viral onset (was gradual). And I wouldn’t call my mild symptoms with alcohol unusual or an intolerance.

thought I had better contribute a personal account rather than a scientific appraisal of methodology.