Health Effects of Alcoholism
Apr 28, 2012 Alcoholic Partners
Consuming excessive amounts of alcohol over time can lead to any number of health problems. Not everyone who consumes large amounts of alcohol will experience the same health problems, but no one who continues heavy consumption of alcohol over time escapes unaffected.
Overconsumption of alcohol can lead to alcoholic hepatitis. This is a type of inflammation of your liver. Its symptoms can include nausea, vomiting, abdominal tenderness, and loss of appetite. This may then progress to cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is a condition wherein liver tissue can sustain extensive damage. This damage is irreversible.
A healthy liver usually transforms nutrients into forms that your body can use, produces bile to aid in digestion of fat, and regulates the amount of sugar in your bloodstream. These and other tasks carried out by the liver cannot be carried out as well or possibly at all when your liver tissue has sustained enough damage due to alcohol abuse.
Alcoholism can also create gastrointestinal problems. This may include an inflammation in your stomach lining or actual tears in the upper portion of your stomach as well as the lower portion of your esophageal tissue. You may have difficult absorbing b vitamins into your bloodstream.
Excessive drinking may also be destructive to your pancreas. Ordinarily, your pancreas serves the functions of making insulin and glucagon to keep your metabolism within a normal range, and produces enzymes that help you to digest protein, fat and, carbohydrates. As your pancreas is damaged, your body loses the ability to complete these tasks. You cannot digest protein, fat, and carbohydrates as efficiently and consequently have more trouble receiving the nutrition you need to maintain normative bodily functions.
Excessive drinking can also contribute to high blood pressure and damage your heart. These circumstances can increase your risk for heart failure or stroke.
Alcohol is especially problematic if you have diabetes. Alcohol interferes with the release of insulin form your liver and may increase your chances of experiencing hypoglycemia. If you are already taking medications to lower your blood sugar level then this side effect may cause serious health complications.
As you continue to consume large amounts of alcohol over an extended period of time you may come to experience neurological problems. You may damage your nervous system to the length that your hands and feet become numb. The damage could go so far as to cause you to experience disordered thinking and even dementia as a result of your drinking.
Finally, you may have an increased chance of contracting certain types of cancers. Cancer of the esophagus, larynx, colon, and liver have been linked to overconsumption of alcohol.
Of course, you may not actually be the one with the drinking problem. You may be on the outside looking in. Being in this position can leave you feeling helpless. Knowing that these health problems are the natural results of excessive consumption of alcohol can leave you feeling powerless as you know that the alcoholic in your life is marching steadily toward a future rife with medical problems.
These medical problems can disrupt your life even if the alcoholic becomes sober. They are the consequences of all the years spent drinking. Even after the alcoholism has been dealt with, assuming you are lucky enough to see the alcoholic in your life maintain sobriety, then these after effects will still have to be handled. Even if the drinking is halted, the damage may already have been done.
The effects of alcohol are far-reaching. The health consequences may be more quantifiable, but the social effects are just as devastating. Alcoholism leaves in its trail broken promises, shattered relationships, and a life empty of everything but alcohol. In time, it leaves an alcoholic with nothing.
Alcoholism does not happen in a bubble. It is not only the alcoholic who must deal with the ramifications of this single-minded focus. Family, friends, and co-workers are all affected. There as no such thing as an alcoholic who keeps all the effects of alcoholism to himself or herself.