Alcoholism

is a chronic disease in which your body becomes dependent on alcohol. When you have alcoholism, you lose control over your drinking. You may not be able to control when you drink, how much you drink, or how long you drink on each occasion. If you have alcoholism, you continue to drink even though you know it's causing problems with your relationships, health, work or finances.

What is alcohol?
When referring to alcohol as a drink, it means a liquid made by fermenting sugar and plant materials to form an intoxicating drink. It belongs to the group of drugs called 'depressants'. Depressant drugs do not necessarily make you feel 'depressed'. Rather, they slow down the activity of the central nervous system. They slow down the messages going to and from the brain and the body.

Who are at risk?

Effects of Alcohol
How Alcohol Travels Through the Body Alcohol is metabolized extremely quickly by the body. Unlike foods, treatment in the body ? absorbing and metabolizing before most other nutrients. About 20 percent is absorbed directly across the walls of an empty stomach which require time for digestion, alcohol needs no digestion and is quickly absorbed. Alcohol gets ?VIP? and can reach the brain within one minute. Once alcohol reaches the stomach, it begins to break down with the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme. This process reduces the amount of alcohol entering the blood by approximately 20%. (Women produce less of this enzyme, which may help to partially explain why women become more intoxicated on less alcohol than men.). In addition, about 10% of the alcohol is expelled in the breath and urine.

Alcohol is rapidly absorbed in the upper portion of the small intestine. The alcohol-laden blood then travels to the liver via the veins and capillaries of the digestive tract, which affects nearly every liver cell. The liver cells are the only cells in our body that can produce enough of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase to oxidize alcohol at an appreciable rate.
Though alcohol affects every organ of the body, it?s most dramatic impact is upon the liver. The liver cells normally prefer fatty acids as fuel, and package excess fatty acids as triglycerides, which they then route to other tissues of the body. However, when alcohol is present, the liver cells are forced to first metabolize the alcohol, letting the fatty acids accumulate, sometimes in huge amounts. Alcohol metabolism permanently changes liver cell structure, which impairs the liver?s ability to metabolize fats. This explains why heavy drinkers tend to develop fatty livers. The liver is able to metabolize about ounce of ethanol per hour (approximately one drink, depending on a person?s body size, food intake, etc.). If more alcohol arrives in the liver than the enzymes can handle, the excess alcohol travels to all parts of the body, circulating until the liver enzymes are finally able to process it. (Which is another good reason not to consume more than one drink per hour.). Alcohol and Malnutrition For moderate drinkers, alcohol does not suppress food intake, and may actually increase appetite. Chronic alcohol consumption appears to have the opposite effect. Alcohol causes euphoria, which depresses appetite, so that heavy drinkers tend to eat poorly and become malnourished. Alcohol is very rich in energy, packing 7 calories per gram. But like pure sugar or fat, the calories are void of nutrients. The more calories an individual consumes in alcohol, the less likely it is that they will eat enough food to obtain adequate nutrients. To make matters worse, chronic alcohol abuse not only displaces calories from needed nutrients, but also interferes with the body?s metabolism of nutrients, leading to damage of the liver, digestive system, and nearly every bodily organ.

Renal failure
How does alcohol affect kidney function? Youve heard before that alcohol in moderation (in moderation!) may be good for your heart, but what can it do to your kidneys? Acute and chronic alcohol consumption does alter renal function and other physiological processes such as blood flow and fluid and electrolyte balances, glomerular filtration rate

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Another consequence of alcohol use is Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). Inside the mother, a fetus is fed through the placenta. Because alcohol passes easily through the placenta, every time the mother drinks alcohol, the developing fetus gets a dose of alcohol. Alcohol disrupts normal brain development - THAT IS A FACT!!! Fetal exposure to alcohol can impair the development of the corpus callosum (the main connection between the right and left hemispheres of the brain), reduce the size of the basal ganglia and damage the cerebellum and cerebral cortex.

 No "safe" level of alcohol use during pregnancy has been established