Excessive alcohol consumption can also have detrimental social and psychological consequences, depression, emotional disorders and suicide.
The risks to the persons family:
Violence, accidents (perhaps influenced by you); less to spend on food; poor role model for children; increased risk of divorce. If you are pregnant you can damage your baby by drinking alcohol.
-
Binge drinking
Binge drinking can lead to serious health problems. For adult males, this means more than seven standard drinks at a time and for adult females more than five standard drinks at a time. Just over 10 per cent of teenagers binge drink every week.
Teenage brains are still developing and the areas of the brain that are undergoing the most dramatic changes during the teenage years are the frontal lobe and hippocampus. These areas are associated with motivation, impulse control and addiction.
Alcohol is a neurotoxin, which means it can poison the brain. One of the effects of excessive alcohol use is that it interferes with vitamin B absorption; this prevents the brain from working properly. Long-term binge drinking can lead to a range of disorders, collectively known as alcohol-related brain damage. Symptoms can include learning and memory problems, and difficulties with balance.
Other risks
Alcohol is a significant factor in other risky situations, including:
- Fighting or brawling
- Drowning
A cigarette contains about 4000 chemicals, many of which are poisonous. Some of the worst ones are:
- Nicotine: a deadly poison
- Arsenic: used in rat poison
- Methane: a component of rocket fuel
- Ammonia: found in floor cleaner
- Cadmium: used in batteries
- Carbon Monoxide: part of car exhaust
- Formaldehyde: used to preserve body tissue
- Butane: lighter fluid
-
Hydrogen Cyanide: the poison used in gas chambers
Every time you inhale smoke from a cigarette, small amounts of these chemicals get into your blood through your lungs. They travel to all the parts of your body and cause harm.
As you might imagine, even small amounts of the poisonous chemicals in cigarettes can do bad things to your body.
Here are some facts about what smoking cigarette does to you:
- Smoking makes you smell bad, gives you wrinkles, stains your teeth, and gives you bad breath.
- Smokers get 3 times more cavities than non-smokers.
- Smoking lowers your hormone levels.
- When smokers catch a cold, they are more likely than non-smokers to have a cough that lasts a long time. They are also more likely than non-smokers to get bronchitis and pneumonia.
- Teen smokers have smaller lungs and a weaker heart than teen non-smokers. They also get sick more often than teens that don't smoke.
Every time you inhale smoke from a cigarette, you kill some of the air sacks in your lungs, called alveoli. These air sacks are where the oxygen that you breathe in is transferred into your blood. Alveoli don't grow back, so when you destroy them, you have permanently destroyed part of your lungs. This means that you won't do as well in activities where breathing is important, like sports, dancing, or singing.
Smoking paralyses the cilia that line your lungs. Cilia are little hair like structures that move back and forth to sweep particles out of your lungs. When you smoke, the cilia can't move and can't do their job. So dust, pollen, and other things that you inhale sit in your lungs and build up. Also, there are a lot of particles in smoke that get into your lungs. Since your cilia are paralysed because of the smoke and can't clean them out, the particles sit in your lungs and form tar.
Addiction
Nicotine is more addictive than cocaine and heroin. Nicotine can alter brain activity including mood swings and poor concentration.
- I think the local health promotion council concentrate on the alcohol situation. As drunk teenagers would be a much worse problem than smoking. They could cause a lot more problems for the community. Therefore it is there best interests to sort it.
- Why it is not a good idea. What it does to your body (inside and out), what will happen in the future.
- speakers in schools, posters, websites, pens, leaflets.
