Christmas and New Year's Day, plus the days surrounding them, are a time of festivity, of work vacations, parties, and often more alcohol than you're used to drinking the rest of the year. While many of the drawbacks of overindulging are well-known, such as falling, hangovers, weight gain, and the inability to look witnesses in the eye the next day, there are other concerns.
Your digestive system depends on about a trillion microbes to work properly. Your gut biome consists of fungi, bacteria, parasites, and viruses that not only aid in digestion, but also affect our immune systems and our personalities. Alcohol is well-known germ killer. Killing off an indiscriminate swath of your gut biome can lead to an imbalance, in which bad bacteria can begin to outnumber the good bacteria that keeps it in check. Alcohol also irritates the lining of the digestive system, which can allow bacteria to enter the rest of the body. There's also the poor, overworked liver and the byproducts of breaking down alcohol it produces. Read the details of how excessive alcohol consumption can affect your gut biome, and what you can do about it, at Inverse.