Too much alcohol may cause breathing problems: study

Excessive alcohol consumption may disrupt the healthy balance in the lungs and impact your breathing, a new study has warned.

Adults who drink excessively were found to have less nitric oxide in their exhaled breath than adults who do not drink.

The finding is significant because nitric oxide helps protect against certain harmful bacteria, researchers said.

"Alcohol appears to disrupt the healthy balance in the lung," said lead author Majid Afshar, from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine in the US.

This is the first study to report such a link between excessive alcohol consumption and nitric oxide.

Researchers analysed the molecular, cellular and physiological responses to acute, binge and chronic alcohol consumption.

The researchers examined data from 12,059 adults who participated in US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2007 and 2012.

NHANES conducts interviews and physical examinations to assess the health and nutritional status of Americans.

Excessive drinkers were defined as heavy drinkers (more than one drink per day on average for women and more than two drinks per day for men) and people who binge drink at least once per month (four or more drinks per occasion for women and five or more drinks for men).

In the sample population researchers examined, 26.9 per cent of the participants were excessive drinkers.

After controlling for asthma, smoking, diet, demographics and other factors, researchers found that exhaled nitric oxide levels were lower in excessive drinkers than in adults who never drink, and the more alcohol an excessive drinker consumed, the lower the level of nitric oxide.

Nitric oxide is a colorless gas produced by the body during respiration. Nitric oxide and similar molecules play an important role in killing bacteria that cause respiratory infections.

In an asthma patient, the amount of exhaled nitric oxide in a breath test provides a good indication of how well the patient's medication is working.

Excessive alcohol consumption might complicate the results of such tests.

"Lung doctors may need to take this into consideration," Afshar said.

"Accounting for alcohol use in the interpretation of [exhaled nitric oxide] levels should be an additional consideration, and further investigations are warranted to explore the complex interaction between alcohol and nitric oxide in the airways," researchers said.

The study was published in the journal Chest.