Alcohol Intolerance in BFS?

Does alcohol worsen your symptoms? I have alcohol yesterday and I felt my backache get worse.In the midnight, my pinky finger started to twitch. Today, my tremor gets worse. Is this common for BFS to have alcohol intolerance?

absolutely and clearly yes.BFS clearly shows that taking alcohol is a poisoning, therefore your more reactive NS goes out. Some fellows report that initially they feel relief of twitches due tosedative action of ethanol, but acetaldehyde forming then in the liver makes all things worse.I can not tell 100% that my own cramp flareup in Porto was not related at least partly to the gorgeous Port wine festival...

Submarine - bottom line here is that you need to start living a perfect lifestyle. Proper diet, proper sleep, and lay off all the vices. For a long, long time .... until symptoms are gone ... and even then, for awhile after that I would think. And even then ... only sparingly at most .... at least that's my plan. And when I say awhile, i mean months, years ...

I have found that alcohol consumption makes absolutely no difference to my symptoms.

How long have you been off the alcohol before running the test with alcohol?

haven't drunk wine for almost one year since the onset of bfs. Before the onset,I didn't have any alcohol intolerance. This makes me wonder what on the earth that makes me alcohol intolerant?

Alcohol has no detectable effect on my symptoms and that of many others I have spoken with in the past.

Anything that tires you out *will* have an effect on your symptoms.If you drink minimally and often, you probably wont be able to differentiate between drinking and not drinking.Unless you've taken weeks and weeks off alcohol, rested up and gotten amazing sleep, and enjoyed the symptom reduction that comes with that ... And THEN gone out one night and had 3-7 Vodka Oranges .... and experienced the sh*t show that ensues in the days after that ... (during what is known as a hang over) ... Unless you've done that test ... you can't say alcohol has no effect.Its just like people who drink coffee every day and claim caffeine has no effect. Try stopping the caffeine for a solid month. Then start up again. See what happens .... Reactions in the positive direction take time. Just like the Gatorade thing. Some people say they tried it but it didn't work. Did you try 40+ ounces a day for 2-3 weeks, religiously? Or did you just try a small bottle of it for a few days and give up.Maybe the proper question here is "Do hangovers worsen symptoms?"A glass of wine one day a week probably wouldn't affect any of us. The point is - it needs to run you down. If it doesn't run you down, and do what serious drinking does (deplete large amounts of vitamins, minerals, and electrolytes) then it probably wont affect your symptoms much.Anyone who thinks anxiety plays a huge role in BFS contradicts themselves when they say alcohol has no effect. If simple things like lack of sleep, an argument, a high stress situation, etc all increase symptoms .... surely a physical beating like a hangover will too.

Totally agree with TwitchBFS.Alcohol itself reduces my symptoms - hangovers and even days after hangovers worsens my symptoms substantially. The question should be does the "after effects" of a lot alcohol worsen symptoms, and I would give a resounding yes to that.

I feel like Alcohol doesn't change my symptoms, but hangovers (ala being dehydrated) makes them much much worse.

The worst I've ever felt with BFS is waking up with a hangover.

It certainly does for me. Drinking (to excess) absolutely calms my symptoms and anxiety (or at least makes me forget about them for the time being), but the next days always bring a flare-up. For me, this has created a very regrettable self-perpetuating cycle of drinking more often to lessen the symptoms which are then made worse by drinking. Wouldn't encourage anyone to look to alcohol as a means to put a lid on BFS.

I thought I'd bump this thread up from nearly 2 years ago just to bring some more discussion to what I think is a worthwhile area. I asked my 2nd neuro about alcohol possibly playing a role in my symptoms (I was a daily drinker - and no small quantity, either). He said he has not seen research into that area, but could imagine a correlation. He advised me to cut down my alcohol consumption and see if anything changed. While I didn't really cut down right away, I did stop drinking entirely on Feburary 7 of this year (for a variety of reasons, muscle twitching being the absolute lowest on the totem pole). So I'm posting to share my results after having gone from a daily binge drinker of 10+ years to a Sober Susan for 6.5 months. Every area of my life has improved with sobriety - marriage, self-confidence, cognition, lost weight, etc - except BFS. Waking up hungover would cause my symptoms to be really intense for several hours, so that part is obviously gone now; but the condition overall persists. Calves have still been twitching constantly for over two years, twitches all over, general fatigue, perceived weakness, etc... the whole gambit of standard BFS symptoms, really.So I'm here to report that, having gone from one extreme to another with my alcohol consumption, there are no changes/improvements to report - aside from eliminating the temporary flare-ups that come with hangovers. Anyone else have any similar experiences?

Hi Pdodge,So you realized that alcohol did worsen the symptoms...but obviously never cured those symptoms!I agree with that. At any case, drinking socially alcohol seems to minimize the anxiety symptoms so at least there is something positive out of it.