There are many opinions that have been put across regarding alcohol consumption. Some are biased while others are based on either prejudice or beliefs. However the truth is that alcohol has its own merits and demerits. Every drinker has already at least some of the short term alcohol effects like a hangover or a bad night’s sleep. Long term effects are usually experienced when it is quite late. Heavy drinking results to a staggering walk, indistinct words and memory lapses. Upon drinking, one develops difficulties with their stability, judgement and harmonisation. One usually takes a gradual reaction to stimuli, a reason why drinking poses danger to driving. This is a result of the way alcohol alters the functionality of the central …show more content…
This sends a signal to the brain that triggers the secretion of hydrochloric acid which in turn sends another message to the brain. This is recognised as a foreign material in the stomach that ought to be expelled hence vomiting. Researchers have actually associated alcohol with more than 60 illnesses. Alcohol does a lot of things to our bodies that we are not wary of (Garbutt, 2012. Some heavy drinking habits like bingeing causes the clumping together of platelets hence causing heart disease or stroke. It may also lead to cardiomyopathy, a dangerous condition that weakens the heart muscle and eventually failing it. Heart rhythm abnormalities like atrial and ventricular fibrillation are also bound to develop. Addiction is also another problem that comes along with alcohol consumption. Some people have been witnesses to have been unstable until they grabbed a cup of gin. This is a condition that poses danger to the drinker. Such people are not able to control their intake amount once they commence drinking. They are also bound to lose their in inappropriate situations. According to Klatsky, one should consider age, sex, health status, and family history before engaging in alcohol drinking. This should also provide guidelines on what to drink and the amount to drink. Apparently, it is proven that women are more susceptible to the alcohol effects than their male counterparts. This is due to the reason that their bodies have
A man or a woman suffers, they have a distinct physical desire to consume alcohol beyond their capacity to control it, regardless of all rules of common sense. The symtoms of being an alcoholic is having rituals and being irritated/annoyed when these rituals are disturbed or commented on. This could be drinks before/during/after meals or after work. Dropping hobbies and activities the person used to enjoy; losing interest in them. A person who abuses alcohol may have many of these signs and symtoms- but they do not have the withdrawal symtoms like an alcoholic does, nor the same degree of compulsion to drink. Then comes along, binge drinking. When a woman consumes over six units and a man consumes more than eight units of alcohol in one sitting. Sipping wine, beer, or spirits three or four times per week increases the risk of binge drinking. Men who drink 22 or more units of alcohol a week have a 20% higher rate of admissions into acute care hospitals than non-drinkers. Healthy young adults who regularly binge drink may have a higher risk of heart disease later in life. "Underage drinking should not be a normal part of growing up. It's a serious and persistent public health problem that puts our young people and our communities in danger. Even though drinking is often glamorized, the truth is that
The digestive enzymes within your pancreas build up which causes digestive issues with and end state of pancreatitis. Diarrhea and bloating are also common side effects of heavy drinking and people often develop ulcers or hemorrhoids. To add to the digestive system, alcohol can also cause severe damage to the circulatory system. “More than two drinks a day can increase your change of developing high blood pressure.” (Sutton, 2007) This high blood pressure can cause irregular heartbeats, difficulty with the flow of blood through the circulatory system, and can ultimately cause a heart attack or heart failure.
Alcohol use has spanned history. In fact, there is speculation that alcohol use actually preceded the formation of societies (Doweiko, 2015, p. 30). Thus, alcohol has long been a part of mankind’s life. The function of alcohol has unarguably changed throughout the course of history, as it was first used for nutritional purposes and then later on for religious purposes (Doweiko, 2015, p. 32). Today, alcohol serves a social purpose. In the United States, the prevalence of use is quite high, with just over 50% of the population partaking monthly (Doweiko, 2015, p. 34). This statistic is somewhat alarming considering alcohol use comes with a number of potential adverse consequences. Case in point, even
First of all, drinking alcohol can lead to bad things. In the novel ,The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Junior lost his sister, family friend and his grandmother all because of alcohol. For example, Junior’s grandmother was hit by a drunk driver and died. Junior says, “But my family had to bury my grandmother… THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO GET RUN OVER AND KILLED BY A DRUNK DRIVER!” (Alexie, 157). Junior is saying how no one should ever have to see their grandmother be killed by a drunk driver,or anyone for that matter. A grandmother is supposed to die because of natural causes not because a drunk driver had one too many drinks and made the wrong decision to drive.
Over 2.5million people die every year to excessive alcohol use. Furthermore, alcohol is responsible for one in ten deaths of working age adults aged twenty to sixty four. Excessive drinking by the CDC is more than one glass a day for a woman and more than two glasses a day for a man. Also, drinking any while under the age or pregnant is classified as excessive drinking(“Alcohol Use and Your Health”). On top of the benefits becoming negative effects quickly, excessive drinking also comes with many more side effects. Excessive drinking damages the brain, heart, liver, pancreas, and the immune system. Brain cells are lost along with loss of thinking and coordination. Heart beat, heart muscles, and blood pressure can be effected. A variety of liver problems and inflammations. The Pancreas produces unwanted toxins eventually leading to pancreatitis. Lastly the immune system is weakened, making the body a much easier target for disease and slowing the body’s ability to ward off infections – even up to 24 hours after getting drunk(“Alcohol's Effects on the
A woman would be wise to neither drink when alone with people she doesn't already know well and trust deeply, she shouldn't tolerate them drinking any either. Especially since men typically tolerate alcohol better than women, women should absolutely not allow a man to cajole them into having "just one drink." You do not need to have your drink roofied for this to go bad places. Alcohol itself is the single most common date rape drug around.
Many people, including alcoholics, are not fully aware of the devastation caused by alcohol abuse. Not only does alcohol have an impact on physical health, it causes a host of problems from a mental and emotional standpoint. This addiction is not only harmful to the body, it tears families apart, leads to job loss, and often causes isolation for the person who drinks.
According to Mayo clinic (2014) alcohol can have some health benefits for ones heart. In 2014, Mayo clinic believes reasonable drinking can decrease the risk for getting heart disease, dying, lessoning risks for strokes, and lessoning the risk for diabetes. This belief is not suggested to everyone because every single person is different and alcohol may affect one person differently from the next. If one does drink they should take into consideration of the
Drinking heavily and binge drinking leads to short-term as well as long-term health consequences in males and females. Both women and men can suffer the short-term
Addiction is a complex disease that is influenced by several factors including: genetic, developmental, experiential and environmental factors (Goldstein & Volkow, 2002). Alcohol dependence, otherwise referred to as alcoholism, is characterized by frequent use of alcohol resulting in intoxication, a preoccupation with alcohol, compulsion to seek and consume alcohol, the inability to limit alcohol intake and the emergence of negative emotional state when the drug is absent (Gilpin & Koob, 2008; Ernst et al., 2012; Kunce, & Newton, 1989; Crews, 2012). There is an estimated 85,000 deaths annually caused by unhealthy alcohol consumption. Medical issues such as liver disease, neurological problems and malignancies, in addition to behavioral and
In Jill Dombrauckas’s (2015) report, she discussed that the Pennsylvania DUI Association made a large amount of researches about alcohol’s effect on body systems. In one research, alcohol affects the central nervous system which means when the individual drink alcohol, the messages that are carried to and from the brain and the body’s muscles can be slowed delivery. For example, the incoming signals from the brain, like the painful sensory that will decrease the injury’s awareness. Also the signals from the brain to the muscles will lead the motor skills becoming insensitive.
The abuse of alcohol over long periods of time may also cause diseases such as cirrhosis, acute alcohol hepatitis, and the most severe liver disease. Cirrhosis is a disease in which the liver becomes so scarred that the patient lacks sufficient healthy tissue to perform the organ?s functions. Once you?ve got it, you are stuck with it. (Gross, 6) The worst thing about these diseases is that you will not know you have them unless you are medically examined on a regular basis. Alcohol consumption is a large contributor to the development of several types of cancer- mostly dealing with the neck and brain. We know that cancer kills and therefore it is safe to say that in some cases, alcohol can be deadly. It is important to realize that alcoholism is a disease. A heavy drinker will experience the effects of withdrawal syndrome (which include hypertension, anxiety, disorientation, hallucinations, and seizures) if he decides to stop drinking. Being addicted to alcohol is similar to being addicted to any other drug in that once one starts using, it is tough to live without. It is also a ?gateway drug? just as marijuana and other sedatives. (Bennett, Woolf, 13-23)
Alcohol has no beneficial attributes on a person’s health. Alcohol can have several harmful effects on human organs. Some organs in the human body that are damaged by alcohol consumption are the brain, kidneys, and liver. The human liver is the one organ that suffers the most damage. As stated in an article published by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “Because the liver is the chief organ responsible for metabolizing alcohol, it is especially vulnerable to alcohol – related injury” (NIAAA, 2005). Regular use of alcohol can lead to alcoholic liver disease (ALD). The severity of ALD can vary based on several different factors. Some of these factors include gender, age, the amount consumed, and how often alcohol is used. “ALD includes three conditions: fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis and cirrhosis” (Alcohol Alert, 2005).
Alcohol is very popular among people who are looking for a good time, but it is also a very addicting and evil thing. Most people try alcohol for the first time in their teen years even though it is against the law. Most of the time people try it because their friends drink. People who are weak minded are easily influenced by their friends to try out bad habits like alcohol, and at the end the only one it affects is that one person. That person will become dependant on alcohol and build a tolerance to it. Every week they drink more and more it will never be enough because they will always need a bigger amount of alcohol to satisfy them every time. That is how people become alcoholics. Alcoholics lose everything they have and own. Alcohol becomes everything they can ever think about, it takes over their life and in some cases it also takes their life.
While drinking might make you feel good now, if you abuse that alcohol it may lead to serious complications later. Heavy drinking is defined as consuming four or more drinks in a day for women and five or more drinks in a day for men (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010). Alcohol is considered a depressant, so it is only seen fit that one of the chief effects of alcohol on the brain is to depress central nervous system functioning. In turn it may be why major depressive disorders occur in those who abuse alcohol. If the alcohol abuse continues over a period it intensifies into an alcohol dependency. Alcohol has effects on the body both mentally and physically. After a certain limit alcohol will slur your speech, increase your reaction time, and make you lose co-ordination. Alcohol consumption, particularly long-term alcohol dependence has many physiological ricks to consider, such as permanent damage to the brain, alcoholic liver disease, pancreatitis, alcohol poisoning