In the picture of the unhealthy liver it shows the developed cirrhosis due to the continuous large amounts of alcohol in the system. The liver has become this way since it processes 90% of all alcoholic beverages present in the body.
Treating Alcoholism
Alcoholism is highly treatable. The first thing the alcoholic must do is to stop drinking entirely. During this stage, the individual’s brain must adjust to being without alcohol. This process is referred to as detoxification and often needs hospitalization. Next, the alcoholic must learn how to not pick up another drink. He/She must learn to live one day at a time without drinking. This is the process that can take years and years to battle. The alcoholic’s willpower alone is hardly enough to overcome these stages, for alcoholism is a disease. Knowledgeable doctors, counselors, religion, family and particularly members of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), can provide hope, education, and compassion.
Anyone can develop a tolerance to alcohol. Tolerance means that you must drink more to feel the same effects you used to have with lower amounts. Dependence on alcohol means that drinking takes up much of your thoughts, emotions and activities. Not all people who drink are dependant. Dependent people find it very difficult to stop or reduce drinking. This is because of withdrawal. Some withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, sweating, shaking, vomiting, fits, and hallucinations.
Alcoholism can never be cured. Once alcoholism is treated the only way to prevent it from reoccurring is by abstaining from alcohol consumption, thus concluding in: Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
Binge and Teen Drinking
Many deaths of college students prove that the kind of fun enjoyed in drinking can be deadly. When people think of college, a popular image is of parties with lots of alcohol and wild behavior. Each year, many college students poison themselves with alcohol. The legal drinking age in Canada is 18, but an estimated 10 million people younger than that drink frequently.
Children begin their experimentation with alcohol in the pre-teen years. Boys tend to begin drinking as young as 11, for girls it starts about 13. About half of all car accidents involving teenagers are alcohol related. Nearly two-thirds of all sexual assaults on school campuses too involve alcohol. The binge drinking popular on college campuses, in which students chug five or more drinks in a row, is particularly dangerous and can even be fatal.
The best way to reduce the chances of teens binge drinking is by the parents confronting them about alcohol. Doctors suggest that if the first drunken state happens under supervision of the parents, it will help reduce the amount of drinking later on.
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
When a pregnant woman drinks alcohol, so does her baby. The alcohol enters her blood stream and then, through the placenta, enters the blood supply of the growing baby. Once the alcohol reaches the growing baby’s blood supply, it interferes with the healthy development of the unborn child.
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is completely preventable but once developed, it tragically affects its victims and families. Babies born with FAS tend to weigh less and are shorter than the average baby. They usually suffer from smaller heads, deformed facial features, abnormal joints and limbs, poor coordination, problems with learning and short memories.
The picture to the left compares a “normal” brain of a six-week-old baby (left) to a six-week-old baby’s brain with FAS (right).
People with FAS often experience mental health problems, disrupted school experience, inappropriate sexual behavior, trouble with the law, alcohol and drug problems, homelessness, and difficulty in caring for themselves and any children.
There is absolutely no evidence that light drinking, even on a daily basis, leads to FAS. Most women who are light or moderate drinkers choose not to drink during pregnancy. Frequent heavy drinkers tend to be the real problem. These are the alcoholics consuming heavily on a daily basis throughout their pregnancies.
Women who give birth to FAS children usually smoke, use illegal drugs, are frequently malnourished, and rarely receive proper medical care during pregnancy. Studies show that drinking during pregnancy has not declined among these women over time.
Is there a safe level of alcohol consumption for pregnant women? 400,000 American women were involved in a recent study conducted by The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Each woman had consumed alcohol during pregnancy and not a single case of FAS occurred when consumption was under 8.5 drinks per week. There is clear evidence that no apparent risk is taken when a pregnant woman consumes no more than one drink per day. Even though one drink per day provides a significant margin of safety, doctors do not encourage drinking during pregnancy.
Drinking and Driving
Drinking and driving are two things that should not be combined. According to the National Council on Alcoholism, it is estimated that two out of five Americans will be in an alcohol-related accident in some point during their life. With this conclusion, more than forty thousand deaths are caused each year.
The more you drink the more chance you have of getting into a road accident. This is because alcohol affects the body in many ways such as the following:
Muscles are more difficult to control and coordinate than normal.
Reaction time is slowed thus making it more difficult to deal with something happening on the road that is unexpected.
Speed and distance are unable to be judged.
When someone has been drinking they will think they are fit to drive or are driving much better than they really are.
While intoxicated, the driver will feel more daring and reckless, making them more likely to drive much faster.
The amount of alcohol present in a person’s blood is called the Blood Alcohol Concentration, or the BAC. A Breathalyzer measures the amount of alcohol in a person’s breath and gives an idea of BAC. BAC is determined by how much a person drinks and how long they take to consume it. The legal BAC limit before driving a motorized vehicle in Canada is 0.08%. This means that until 80 mg of alcohol is present in 100 ml of blood, it is legal to drive a vehicle.
It is difficult to figure out how many drinks it will take before a person is over the legal drink-driving limit. Everyone is different and some people reach a higher BAC level more quickly than others, including women, people who are not healthy, people with an empty stomach, people with smaller bodies and people who are overweight. It is well recommended that these people drink less.
Benefits of Drinking
Now that we’ve looked at the many negative effects alcohol has on our families, friends and our bodies, let’s explore positive sides of drinking alcoholic beverages.
An approximated fifty studies have been made that discovered moderate drinkers live longer on average than those who have refrained from drinking. Major health benefits proved by studies done on drinking moderately are reduction in coronary heart disease and the reduction in ischemic stroke, or stroke due to occlusion of the arteries in the brain due to plaque build up. Doctors also determine that people who drank moderately had a lower chance of developing blocked arteries in their legs.
It is particularly red wine that is known for its positive effects on our health. One reason why red wine seems to have beneficial effects is that it contains chemicals called flavonoids, which appear to help prevent heart disease. Californian researchers found that with alcohol removed, people who drink red wine had an increase of flavonoids in their blood.
But the alcohol part of wine also seems to have its good effects too, raising the level of HDL, which is considered the “good” cholesterol, in the blood. Doctors involved in a recent study say that one drink a day can help lower the risk of heart disease, but once consumption reaches past this recommended intake, risks increase for certain kinds of cancer.
Unlike the popular proverb it isn’t an apple a day that keeps the doctor away, but a drink of an alcoholic beverage.
Did You Know…
Mixing alcohol with other drugs, such as sleeping pills, heroin, marijuana, can make it harder to think clearly, to properly control how you move, and stop your breathing and cause death.
The liver can only get rid of one standard drink per hour and nothing can speed this process up. So even if it has been a couple of hours after your last drink, you can still be over the legal limit, even if you feel okay.
10% of alcohol in the body leaves in breath, sweat and urine.
Most students (56.7%) consume alcohol in the course of a year and one third consume alcohol more often than once a month.
More males than females consume alcohol more often than once a month (35.9 vs. 30.0%)
Students are more likely to consume alcohol as they get older and as a greater proportion of their friends use alcohol.
Students with an average of less than 60% on their course work at school are more likely to consume alcohol than are students with a higher average (75.9% vs. 55.3%).
In the course of a month…
One third of students have five or more drinks at a sitting on at least one occasion.
31.2% of students got drunk once or twice.
More males than females consumed five or more drinks in a sitting (36.2% vs. 29.8%).
Males and females are equally likely to be drunk at least once.
Consuming five or more drinks at a sitting and being drunk increases with age.
Alcohol and Driving
7.8% of students drive a motor vehicle within an hour of consuming two or more drinks of alcohol.
Males are twice as likely as females to drive after drinking (10.9% vs. 4.7%)
Students are more likely to drive after drinking as they get older.
27.3% of students are passengers in a motor vehicle with a driver who had too much to drink.
The percentage of students who are passengers with an impaired driver increases with age.
Has claimed 15,000 lives in the course of a year.
Crashes happen more often in the summer than winter.
One person dies every 17 minutes.
