Most people associate heavy alcohol use with causing health problems. If you drink too much for too long, you could end up with liver disease, high blood pressure, or diabetes. If alcohol use doesn’t cause these health problems, it is bound to make them far worse. As true as this may be, it doesn’t tell the whole story of the effects of excessive alcohol consumption.
Not many people consider how alcohol can make you less attractive. Like many things that are bad for us, alcohol changes how we look, as well as how we’re perceived by others. Both of these are key factors in attractiveness. Too much alcohol can make you unattractive to the opposite sex, as well as to friends, acquaintances, family, and employers. Here are 8 ways alcohol can affect your attractiveness.
1. Excessive alcohol calories add weight
Alcohol consists of empty calories. This can be translated as dead weight. Since it provides no nutritional value, these calories do nothing to provide for your body’s needs. As a result, you still need to eat your regular diet on top of the alcohol. Since alcohol has almost twice the calories as fat, this means packing on a ton of extra calories. A beer belly never made anyone more attractive.
2. Hangover foods add to the love handles
Alcohol decreases your blood sugar, which results in hunger. Now, on top of normal calories and the excessive alcohol calories, you add low blood sugar craving calories to your midsection. Hangovers tend to cause cravings for fatty, high-carb, greasy food. That’s why a juicy hamburger, wings, and onion rings make the perfect bar food. Food cravings and hangover food can add just as many calories as the alcohol itself, leaving you with a solid pair of love handles.
3. Dehydrated skin
Anyone who imbibes knows how quickly alcohol drains the water from your system. It’s easy to think a little extra water will cure the problem, but the truth is alcohol dries out more than your mouth. The skin itself becomes dehydrated, which is not a good thing for attractiveness. There is a reason why people use skin moisturizers. Well-hydrated skin creates an attractive, vital appearance. Dehydrated skin makes a person look wilted and tired.
4. Ghostly pallor
A healthy pallor also makes a person look vital and healthy. Too much alcohol use causes the skin to appear whiter than it should. This makes a person look like they may have a cold or be coming down with the flu. This definitely doesn’t help attractiveness.
5. Excessive sweating
Another effect of too much drinking is a tendency to sweat. This can be especially true the day after a night of hard partying. While sweating while your working out may be okay, you don’t want to be sweating while you’re sitting in class or at the office. Alcohol stresses your body, and this stress causes sweat.
6. Red eyes
A night of heavy drinking can leave your eyes as red as an all-night flight. Alcohol dries out your eyes and interrupts a healthy sleep pattern. The effect is often red eyes that you would probably rather keep closed. Unfortunately, if you have to face the world, reddened eyes make you look older and tired.
7. Inattentiveness, lack of focus
Attractiveness is about more than physical appearance. Heavy drinking makes it tough to stay focused, an effect that can last all day or several days after a rough night, depending on how rough. People are attracted to people that pay attention to them. Lots of alcohol makes it tough to pay attention to anything. This does little for one’s popularity.
8. A tired voice, slurred speech
Shortly after alcohol consumption, your words may become slurred and your voice may waver out of control. Though you may not realize it at the time, this isn’t an attractive quality. As the drinking winds down, your voice usually grows tired. This tired voice may last into the next day, which doesn’t win any points on the attractiveness scale.
It’s easy, while enjoying the party, to think alcohol makes you more attractive. Remembering the party later, it’s often easy to realize alcohol wasn’t doing anything to help. The physical and mental effects of alcohol serve to reduce attractiveness because they harm health and well-being. Though a moderate amount of alcohol on a weekend won’t harm your appearance, consistent, alcohol abuse causes weight gain, skin damage, and impedes our ability to relate to others.
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