On top of that, alcohol plays a part in many social interactions — meeting someone for drinks, having wine with dinner, celebrating with champagne, drinking beer at a baseball game. So how can you know when someone — and that someone may be YOU —has gone beyond enjoyable social drinking and has crossed over into the more problematic areas of drinking—abuse, dependence, and addiction? Luckily, the science of addiction recovery has progressed enough to be able to produce a list of recognizable symptoms and behaviors to watch for when you think that you or someone close to you may be misusing alcohol.
Chronic, heavy drinking causes such changes as:. Most of these signs have to do with how a person drinks or how they go about acquiring their alcohol. Often, an alcoholic will try to hide the evidence of their drinking. But as the disease progresses, even that becomes of secondary importance to their real priority — getting more alcohol.
Most of these warning signs are not, in and of themselves, definitive proof of alcohol abuse. However, when several of these signs exist, then that is a strong suggestion that the person may have a drinking problem.
Numerous studies have shown a destructive, codependent link between alcohol and depression, suggesting that more than one in three people struggling with alcohol abuse also struggle with depression. One of the contributing factors in alcohol's profound effect on depressed people is the fact that alcohol can block the effects of anti-depressants, creating a one-two punch of feeling awful.
Add in alcohol's effects on inhibition and long term thinking and it's sad but not surprising to learn that people suffering with both are at a higher risk for self-harm and suicide. A host of other secondary factors and social effects can contribute to this perfect storm of sadness. Lack of sleep and energy, depressed immune systems, legal and financial issues can all play into it as well - plus you're getting fatter, your skin looks terrible, your stomach feels like crap, your penis doesn't work, and your hair's falling out, which I'm sure doesn't help either.
It's also easier not to be depressed when you aren't doing dumb stuff that you'll be embarrassed about later. Studies have yet to confirm the linkage between depression and morning-after apology texts, but I can tell you from first hand experience that starting your day by having to say "I'm sorry" sure doesn't feel real good. Drinking too much won't just make you sick in the short term, it actually compromises your immune system's ability to fight disease off in general. Researchers have shown that chronic alcoholics have vitamin deficiencies across the board, especially when it comes to the necessary nutrients calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, folic acid, and vitamins B1, B2, B6, C, D, E, and K.
The result of this is not just that it makes you puny and weak without your precious vitamins although it does - alcohol inhibits muscle growth and retention , it's that without them you have decreased metabolic function and cellular generation and a depressed immune system that puts you at risk for a slew of secondary disease. Alcoholics show increased susceptibility to pneumonia, tuberculosis, hepatitis, cancer and AIDs, amongst other big-name awful diseases.
Nutritional deficiencies affect both the innate immune system, which is responsible for fighting off diseases in the first place, and your adaptive immune system, which is supposed to recognize and more efficiently combat diseases that the body has faced before. It suppresses the growth of disease fighters like white blood cells, T-cells and antibodies, and throws off the production and management of other critical components like cytokines, interferon , and Natural Killer NK cells - the cells responsible for destroying viruses and cancers.
NK cells can no longer effectively detect or bond to dangerous cells allowing diseases to grow unchecked and increasing the chances of cellular metastasis aka cancer growth. It can get so bad that your immune system finally says " I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more " and turns on your own body.
Doctors believe that a major factor in liver failure is an autoimmune component brought on by the body's inability to tell good cells from bad. Lymphocytes and white blood cells that were previously focused on warding off outside intruders begin turning on the scarred, deformed liver itself, now unrecognizable to them in their drunken haze.
At a certain point alcoholics literally are destroying themselves. So yes, at a certain point you can drink so much that your liver decides it would rather kill itself than continue to live with you.
But how does it get to that point? Here's a blow-by-blow of what you put it through :. First, it has to metabolize the alcohol you poured into it. The liver uses the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase ADH to break the alcohol molecules down into more basic components. Unfortuantely, one of those components is the nasty, irritating acetaldehyde. The liver just has to live with this toxic carcinogen inside of it until it's done breaking it down, resulting in cellular damage, necrosis, scarring, and the possible growth of cancerous cells.
Aldehyde dehydrogenase ALDH , another helper enzyme, then breaks down the acetaldehyde into the still-dangerous acetate.
Acetate isn't quite as bad as it's evolved form acetaldehyde but it can have all the same nasty effects, and again, the liver just has to take the acetate's abuse until the ALDH is done breaking it down into water and carbon dioxide. Then come the sugars. Alcohol is basically just decomposing sugar, often mixed with other sugars, and guess what put-upon organ is in charge of processing sugars too? Since the liver has too much to deal with at once, the sugars also just have to wait their turn.
This causes triglycerols to accumulate in the liver , leading to the cleverly-named condition " fatty liver disease. The longer you drink, the more fat accumulates on the liver obstructing its critical processes, and the more healthy tissue gets irritated and damaged, eventually being replaced by scar tissue. People will feel fatigue, nausea, and abdominal discomfort; then abdominal pain, vomiting, fever and jaundice; and the final result is kidney failure, stroke, coma, and, ultimately, death.
Turns out drinking can also lead to cancer of the, well, everything. Pretty much every organ we've mentioned so far - the liver , stomach , lungs , skin , colon, rectum , intestines , gall bladder , breasts , mouth, throat , ovaries , and prostate are all at increased risk of developing cancer with booze habits of as little as one drink a day. The World Health Organization has classified alcohol as a Group 1 Carcinogen , meaning that it is not probably is linked to increased cancer risk in humans.
One of the multiple reasons for the linkage is that acetaldehyde is highly, highly carcinogenic. Your body can only process small amounts of acetaldehyde at a time and the excess just sits in all those body parts listed above as it waits to be processed.
In the short term it's just irritating to your body scientists have linked acetaldehyde to hangovers as well but with long term exposure, to it can kill. Acetaldehyde is really just one of the carcino-conspirators though; all those alcohol-related nutritional deficiencies, chemical and hormonal irregularities, and your compromised immune system may also be factors in why alcohol so aggressively ups your odds of developing cancer at some point in your life.
Not only that, but studies have shown that alcohol can help turn benign cancers malignant and help spread them. Thanks again for everything, alcohol! Full disclosure before we start: I am an alcoholic. The mix in your Margarita? The Red Bull in your Jaeger Bomb? More sugar. Fructose further screws you over by making your brain resistant to the hormone leptin , which is what tells your body that it's got enough fat.
When individual fat cells reach a certain size, they secrete leptin telling the brain, in essence, "I'm good. Fructose, dirty rat that it is, raises triglyceride levels in your blood, and those triglycerides in turn block your brain's ability to detect the leptin.
Alcoholism Can Lead to Diabetes. Alcoholism Makes Your Heart Hurt. Alcohol Makes You Stink. Chronic Boozing Breaks Your Brain. Alcoholism Destroys Your Stomach. You're bummed out, so you have a couple drinks. The problem is, alcohol is a depressant that has both short and long term effects. So you feel bummed out. So you have a couple drinks. Facebook Pinterest Twitter Youtube Instagram. Related Stories. Tags: Fitness Tips , Healthy Drinks.
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