Do you like a drink? The effects can be dire

As shown in research published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, in people with alcohol problems, the severity of depression is often the result of drinking. Many people blame depression for their excessive drinking. However, research has not shown that those who have had it in the past are at greater risk of developing alcoholism in the future. Dr. Marc A. Schuckit, a psychiatrist associated with the University of California, who leads the study, says that while many people explain their drinking to depression, it is sometimes caused by excessive drinking. In his opinion, psychiatrists should pay special attention to such patients, because in their case, discontinuation of percentage drinks may be much more effective than pharmacological therapy.

When counting calories in the diet, we often ignore those derived from drinks. This is not a big mistake with tea, but with alcohol it gets worse. “Percentages” are almost as caloric as fat (fat: 9 kcal / gram, pure ethyl alcohol: 7 kcal / gram), and thus may be the reason for faster weight gain. As reported by the World Cancer Research Fund, for people who regularly consume alcohol, the calories supplied with alcohol can account for about 10 percent of total alcohol consumption. In addition, drinking alcohol is conducive to binge eating – drinking three large glasses of wine can make you binge and make you lazy. According to a UK study, people who drank this amount of alcohol also consumed an additional 6300 calories over the next 24 hours. And this can lead to a rapid weight gain (approx. 1 kg per week).

High blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for stroke and heart attack, may be due to the increase in blood pressure caused by long-term alcohol consumption. Frequent drinking can also lead to cardiomyopathy, a disease caused by a weakening of the contractility of the heart muscle. Its symptoms include enlargement of the heart, degenerative changes in the fibers of the heart muscle and a significant weakening of the strength of its contractions.

One of the best known and most drastic effects of alcohol on our body is its destructive effect on the liver. It must metabolize about 95 percent of its volume after each consumption. Too much alcohol can lead to steatosis, inflammation and cirrhosis. The liver, which has to break down alcohol, loses its other important function of storing fatty acids. Disruption of this function leads to steatosis. It is manifested by enlargement and sometimes also pain associated with the pressure on the surrounding organs of the liver. This process, although very dangerous, is reversible up to a point. In order to restore the liver’s former properties, it is only necessary to stop drinking alcohol before its cirrhosis occurs.

Pancreatic cancer is still one of the deadliest cancers as it is generally asymptomatic for a long time and is detected at a late stage, when it is too late for effective treatment. It turns out that alcohol consumption and smoking can significantly influence its development. Alcoholics and smokers develop this cancer about 10 years earlier than others. It may be a consolation that after 10 years of quitting the addiction, the risk is already the same as for a person who has never drunk alcohol. Another cancer that gets us, incl. due to alcohol, and more and more often, it is a cancer of the head and neck (mouth, tongue, lip, throat or nose). Oncologists claim that HPV infections in combination with the love of oral sex and alcohol are responsible for the dynamic increase in the incidence in Poland. Most of us know that excessive sunbathing is the biggest contributor to melanoma. It turns out, however, that it is not the only cause of this cancer. Italian researchers’ publications in the Journal of Dermatology show that excessive alcohol consumption increases the susceptibility to skin cancer. According to a study by Dr. Eva Negri at the University of Milan, just one drink a day in the sun increases the risk of developing melanoma by 20 percent.

As US scientists discovered, drinking alcohol has a negative impact on the mechanisms responsible for bone regeneration after fracture. Researchers from Loyola University in Chicago, conducting experiments on mice, concluded that alcohol consumption is accompanied by a low mineralization of bone tissue, which is formed at the fracture site, and thus the bone formed after the fracture is weaker than in abstainers. In addition, alcohol-drinking animals showed signs of oxidative stress, impairing normal cell function, and had significantly lower levels of osteopontin – a protein involved in the process of obtaining stem cells and directing them to the site of damage so that they can transform into bone cells there. Scientists say the same applies to the effects of alcohol on bone fusion in humans.

Dr. Majid Afshar from the Loyola University Health System in Chicago conducted a study on the effects of alcohol on the immune system. Volunteers who participated in the research were to drink 20 to 4 glasses of vodka within 5 minutes, thus putting themselves in a state that made it impossible to drive a car legally. Their blood was sampled over the next few hours. Scientists, after isolating immune cells from them and examining their response to proteins characteristic of potentially harmful bacteria, found that a moment after consuming alcohol, the body’s resistance increased, but decreased within a few hours. The immune system changes into the so-called the anti-inflammatory mode and its responses are then greatly diminished.

Drinking alcohol disturbs the balance of sleep and reduces the quality of rest. In addition, it can cause you to wake up frequently during the night, and withdrawal lead to insomnia. It is true that alcohol makes it easier to fall asleep, but it interferes with sleep and wake processes. Thus, it causes an increase in the level of adenosine in the blood (a chemical compound that inhibits the activity of areas of the brain responsible for maintaining wakefulness). This causes a feeling of drowsiness, but falling asleep too quickly leads to disrupting the rhythm of sleep, and thus to frequent waking up at night and getting up too early. In addition, one researcher, Mahesh Thakkar, says, “Sudden withdrawal from alcohol goes hand in hand with an increased likelihood of premature morning wake-ups and a shorter duration of REM sleep.

Dr.Iain Lang of the University of Exeter Medical School explained in a recent BBC interview that alcohol is generally harmful to the brain. And I don’t think he surprised anyone. And the fact that we have a “hangover” worse memory does not need to be explained to anyone. Unfortunately, not everyone knows that forgetting and worse association of facts are also distant consequences of drinking alcohol. According to The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, people aged 50-60 who have a problem with alcohol later in life are twice as likely to have memory problems than non-drinking peers.

The theory about the possible impotence of James Bond is not the pure malice of scientists who envy the agent of an exciting life. Spanish researchers have hard evidence for this and published the conclusions of their experiments in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Alcohol greatly interferes with your ability to get an erection. Moreover, the deterioration of sexual performance in men addicted to alcohol or drugs persists long after quitting the addiction. Even after a year of abstinence, greater problems in the area of ​​sexual life were found in pre-drinkers than in non-drinkers.

Alcohol also affects a person before birth. Babies whose mothers drink during pregnancy may be born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), which involves a range of congenital somatic and neurological defects that have a lifetime impact. In addition, drinking mothers can contribute to the development of an alcohol problem for up to the next three generations. And although more importance is attached to the mother’s lifestyle, recent studies show that the fathers are also responsible for possible disorders in a child resulting from alcohol exposure in utero. Scientists believe that alcohol consumption by men damages the DNA of their sperm. When a defective sperm fertilizes an egg, the developing embryo may have genetic defects.