It’s no surprise that enjoying several beers or gin and tonics a few times a week isn’t necessarily healthy. But you may not be aware how much it ages you.

As you grow older, you start to metabolize alcohol at a slower rate, according to Elizabeth Trattner, a Miami-based acupuncture physician and nutritionist. The longer the booze stays in your system, the more alcohol builds up in your bloodstream, which puts you at greater risk for damaging effects.

For example, a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health found that people who drank excessively were 33 percent more likely to have age-related gray rings around the corneas of their eyes. That condition, called arcus senilis, doesn’t typically occur until at least age 60.

Curious how else your bar nights might be affecting you? Below is a breakdown of just how alcohol takes a toll on your body and mind, making you look and feel older than you should ― plus some advice on how to cut back but still cut loose.

Just one night out drinking can dehydrate your skin to a point where wrinkles and fine lines become temporarily more noticeable, according to Carol Ann Goodman, a board-certified physician at Bella Vi Spa & Aesthetics in Indiana. It’s even worse for people who have naturally dry skin.

If heavy drinking is a regular thing, you could face some potentially irreversible skin damage.

“Alcohol also causes blood vessels at the skin’s surface to dilate,” Goodman said. “For intermittent drinkers, this causes temporary skin flushing. However, over time, the capillaries can dilate so much that they actually burst, creating visible red and purple veins, especially across the face and cheeks.” 

While your skin can regain its supple and dewy complexion after several days of rehydration, broken blood vessels are a lot harder to fix.

“Once the changes of broken blood vessels have developed, those will not reverse on their own,” Goodman said. “Treatments such as laser therapy and some topical products can help to improve the appearance.”

Thankfully, it’s much easier to keep your skin hydrated in the first place. Kristin Koskinen, a registered dietitian nutritionist based in Washington, recommends drinking at least one glass of water before you take your first sip of wine and then “alternating alcoholic beverages with non-alcoholic ones, including seltzer water, orange juice spritzers or even still water.”

Drinking water between alcoholic beverages “will combat ethanol-induced dehydration, which will help your skin to look better the next day,” Koskinen said.

While those dark circles under your eyes, sometimes referred to as allergic shiners, can be caused by a lot of factors (including, obviously, allergies), your after-work wine isn’t helping. When alcohol dehydrates your body, it’s easier to see the blood vessels on that part of your face.

According to Trattner, the sugar in alcohol can also upset your microbiome ― that is, the bacteria and other microbes in your body. This disruption could make acne, rosacea and conditions like discoid eczema and psoriasis worse post-alcohol consumption.

Alcohol stresses your body, which can manifest in a lot of different ways, including bloating, insomnia, other sleep problems and a lack of concentration the following day. 

Despite how tired alcohol may initially make you feel — the National Sleep Foundation reports that 20 percent of people actually use booze to fall asleep — it can seriously disrupt your rest by reducing rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The more you drink, the worse it will be.

“Alcohol may seem to be helping you to sleep, as it helps induce sleep, but overall it is more disruptive to sleep, particularly in the second half of the night,” Irshaad Ebrahim, medical director at The London Sleep Centre, told WebMD. “Alcohol also suppresses breathing and can precipitate sleep apnea.”

And a lack of Zs can make you look older. A clinical trial conducted by physicians at the University Hospitals Case Medical Center found that people with sleep deprivation showed more signs of aging in their skin, including fine lines, uneven pigmentation and reduced elasticity.

When the liver is working hard to detoxify the body from alcohol, it creates more free radicals than the body’s antioxidants can handle, which leads to something called oxidative stress. Studies have shown that oxidative stress is an important contributing factor in aging.

Although free radicals play their own role in protecting your health, when they’re not kept in balance by antioxidants, they begin to damage your fatty tissue, DNA and proteins. That damage can, in turn, contribute to diabetes, heart disease, neurodegenerative illnesses and other age-related conditions you want to avoid.

Another reason to limit your alcohol intake is that it’s one of the main culprits for those extra pounds you’ve mysteriously put on. Not only are boozy drinks often empty calories with little to no nutrients, but alcohol can cause people to eat more food.  

Miami real estate agent Alina Freyre said she and her husband, Andy Freyre, stopped drinking two years ago. Alina promised Andy that if he got sober, so would she. Not only did they lose weight — 50 pounds for her and 80 pounds for him — but she said it was the “best thing that has ever happened” to them.

“We are different people inside and out, and we feel we are in a new relationship with each other and our kids,” Alina said. “I am huge on taking care of my skin and not only did drinking affect that, but it also affects how you care about how you present yourself. I feel 10 years younger.”

Joy Manning, a Philadelphia-based freelance writer and creator of the Instagram account Better Without Booze, can also attest to the life-changing effects of sobriety. She said she just celebrated her 600th day of not drinking.

Soon after giving up alcohol, Manning said her skin seemed softer and more glowing. She also lost 30 pounds and discovered that other healthy habits she had been chasing for years were finally sticking.

“I think that’s because drinking is a spiral,” she said. “Now I sleep well every night and work out vigorously, while before a couple of glasses of wine would make me want to eat pizza. Being alcohol-free really laid the foundation of a supportive lifestyle for being what I want my body to be.”

A 2017 study published in JAMA Psychiatry found the number of adults in the United States who regularly consumed alcohol went from 65 percent in 2002 to 73 percent in 2013. Additionally, high-risk drinking — which is considered four or more drinks for women and five or more for men on a single occasion — went up 30 percent in the same time frame. So not only are more of us drinking, but we’re drinking more.

If you’re questioning your relationship with alcohol, Manning suggested that you first try to go 30 days without it and see how you feel. But that doesn’t mean you should also give up your social life. She said the worst thing you can do during this process is isolate yourself.

Instead, Manning encouraged people to go out with their friends, even if they’re all going to a bar. Socializing without a beer in your own hand will help to break the mental link between having fun and consuming alcohol.

“Try to find some fun, nonalcoholic beverages that taste good,” she said. “It helps to have something in your hand ― that goes a long way. The first time might feel weird but the more you do it, the less weird it is.” (Try one of these satisfying mocktails instead.)

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism also suggests keeping track of how much you’re drinking, which you can do on a piece of paper in your wallet or an app on your phone. Identify your triggers — what’s giving you the urge to drink — and find ways to avoid them.

The more you cut down on the booze, the more your body will thank you for it.

Ann Brenoff’s “On The Fly” is a column about navigating growing older ― and a few other things.

One of my closest friends at college in New Jersey was a woman from a large and loving Italian family. Her ancient Sicilian grandma had lived with my friend and her family for my friend’s entire life ― all 20 years or so of it. Grandma, who moved in after Grandpa died decades earlier, wasn’t exactly a happy camper as she crept into her 90s. Many of her body parts had already betrayed her, and she was living with fairly constant pain. Grandma was never shy about letting anyone within earshot know that if she had her druthers, she’d have dropped dead long ago.

“I want to die,” was her oft-repeated refrain, to which she would add the uncomfortable finish, “but I don’t know how.” Her words stuck with me for decades. There are certain natural progressions in life that we are just never taught how to do.

With no disrespect toward the gravity of Grandma’s situation, that’s how I’ve been seeing my retirement. I’ll be 69 in a couple of months, and until just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t figure out how to pull the plug on my work life.

How do you know when it’s time to retire, especially from a great job you love? I tested out various theories, including the one that says retirement doesn’t need to be such an abrupt life transition. Make it gradual, work part-time, ease off the fast track and test out the waters of redefining who you are. Hell, even parents get a nine-month gestation period to get used to the idea of a child before the big day arrives.

I worried about how I would stay current without my posse of millennial co-workers to turn to. Who would teach me the secret handshake that allowed me to connect to people younger than me, which at this point is probably most of the planet? 

And then, of course, there was my ego and identity. “I-am-what-I-do syndrome,” prevalent among baby boomers, has kept many a therapist in business and I stand guilty as charged. Truth is, I love telling the stranger in the plane seat next to me that I’m a staff writer for HuffPost (and before that, the Los Angeles Times). Would the eyes of these strangers, whom I will never see again, still widen slightly? And will it bother Shallow Ann if they don’t? Or the more serious version of this: Will all my accomplishments get sent to the garage in a box marked “memorabilia” when I retire, waiting for my kids to hopefully discover later?

Anyway, I suspect that not unlike Grandma had done, I’ve been quietly waiting and hoping for a cataclysmic sign from the universe, a trigger event outside my control that would set in motion my retirement. In both our cases ― mine and Grandma’s ― that event just didn’t happen fast enough, and no matter how or where we looked for guidance, we mostly found platitudes. I remember how Grandma once threw a plate of food to the ground when a dinner guest dismissed her for saying that she wished her life would end already. 

“Oh, you don’t really mean that!” the naive guest said, learning very quickly that indeed, Grandma did. 

Me? I’m a journalist who loves being one. While pretty much everything else in my life has been fluid and ever-changing ― single woman to married lady, East Coaster to West Coaster, childless to parent, wife to widow ― the one constant has been that I’m a journalist. A proud and happy one at that. It’s been the rare day in more than 45 years of writing and reporting that I wasn’t eager to go to work.

So why stop now? Why stop at all?

The short answer is this: Because I can. And that doesn’t come from winning the lottery, but from changing my perspective. While I may not have enough money saved to last me for the rest of my years, there is something much more important that I’m afraid of running out of.

It’s time ― at least, healthy time. 

Truth is, I can’t think of a greater kick in the ass than to have been my husband’s caregiver for a painful and relentlessly miserable 18 months, only to lose him to death in January of 2017. My take-away from the experience ― besides that caregiving sucks big-time and family caregivers are getting royally screwed ― is that life is short and a healthy life even shorter. 

I don’t want to miss out on what’s left of mine. I’ve learned much in my journey to get to this point of being ready to retire, including the fact that I pretty much hate it when people refer to their lives as journeys. Lives are more important than journeys because everyone gets better-served when we stop focusing on ourselves. Take that advice and apply it liberally.

Which is what I plan to do as well. I will write a funny/sad/irreverent book and hope you will read it. I will travel to all those places I want to see before my body becomes disinterested in joining me. I will play loud music every day, dance around the kitchen while I cook and only drink good wine because, as the T-shirt preaches, “Life is too short for bad wine.” I have fallen in love again with both life and a terrific guy I plan to share mine with. My kids are (almost) solidly on their paths to improve the world, and my dark tunnel is now filled with light. I’m happy.

So yes, I am retiring. I’ve been pushed over the edge as a caregiver, buried alive in the grief of loss, and found my bearings again through forces of nature I may never fully understand. And I’ve had the therapeutic gift of being able to share it all with others through HuffPost. Readers have thanked me for putting into words what they felt, but I always thought that the gratitude should flow in the other direction. Thank you for reading. Thank you for making me feel relevant. Thank you for letting me share my life with you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And to the friend who asked me recently if I had any regrets or things I would do over, I can only say I wish Grandma had better aim when she sent that dinner plate my way. Maybe I would have woken up sooner.

Chances are hangovers feel worse and recovery after a long night gets to be a difficult process the more birthdays you have under your belt. It’s no surprise from a biological standpoint: When your body changes as you age, its ability to process alcohol also changes.

“When you’re young, you have a lot of plasticity in how you respond to things that are toxic,” said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. “You lose some of that as you get older.”

As you age, a long night of imbibing can get riskier. In recent years, alcohol abuse and dependence have more than doubled among older people. Your body also just can’t keep up in the moment.

“What used to be a normal amount of alcohol you could drink and not get overly intoxicated now changes,” explained James Galligan, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University. “Because your system doesn’t work as well [when you’re older], you’re likely to end up with higher blood alcohol levels than you would’ve when you were much younger.”

So how exactly does your body respond to alcohol when you’re no longer in your 20s?

Alcohol is neutralized in a two-step process that takes place in the liver, according to David Sack, the chief medical officer of Elements Behavioral Health. 

“Alcohol is converted to acetaldehyde, which is responsible for a lot of the negative effects of alcohol like headaches, flushing and dizziness,” he said. It’s then converted to acetic acid, which is excreted in urine.

The system works well in younger people, Galligan said.

“But just like anything else, when you get older, things don’t work like they used to,” he added. “As people begin to get into their 60s or 70s, the enzymes that metabolize alcohol don’t work as well.”

“Some of that may be the result of the normal aging process, but part of it may be due to illness,” Sack said. “Moderate to heavy drinkers can cause injury to their liver. They have changes in the efficiency in which their liver processes alcohol.”

A recent study found that both the brain and the liver are more sensitive to the toxicity of alcohol as you age, affecting your response to liquor. In turn, what you normally drank when you were younger will have a greater effect when you get older, Galligan noted.

Your proportion of body fat as you get older is one factor in how your body processes alcohol, Sack said.

“Alcohol, unlike most other drugs, is only distributed in the water parts of the body. So if you have less water to body fat, more of the alcohol reaches the organ,” he said. 

Other illnesses can also contribute to the inefficient metabolism of alcohol. Hepatitis C, for instance, can affect the liver’s ability to clear alcohol and other drugs, Sack noted.

Using more medications can also play an enormous role in how you process alcohol, according to Koob. “The elderly tend to take a lot of medications, and some can interact in a bad way with alcohol like Xanax or Valium, for instance,” he said.

If you ever drank while underage, that may also play a role in how you metabolize alcohol, Koob said. In fact, underage drinking is even associated with impairment of cognitive function.

“Excess drinking can affect the frontal cortex, which is the slowest part of the brain to mature and why they advocate against underage drinking,” he added.

And over time, heavy drinking itself can affect how you process alcohol in the future, Sack noted.

“There are people who started drinking in their 20s and 30s and are now in their 60s that tend to have more emotional problems like depression, drink more continuously and have more treatment for alcohol-related problems,” Sack said. “And there are those who start drinking when they’re older, as in their 50s and 60s, who tend to be healthier and have fewer consequences.”

While the health benefits of drinking a glass of red wine or two have made headlines recently, the studies are mixed and moderation is ultimately key to your health, Sack said. And surprisingly, hangovers don’t always worsen with age, as one study found ― but it truly depends on your lifestyle.

“The liver has a lot of excess capacity if you don’t keep injuring it,” Sack said. “It’s an amazing organ.”