EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL ON THE HUMAN BODY

Introduction:

Humanity has always yielded to the pressure of different chemical

substances that eventually caused it irreparable damage. Finding the
“cure” from the damage obtained was the next step. And it seems that only
now, when the number of the diseases caused by different substances has
reached its peak, people have finally understood that the best “cure” is the
prevention of any forms of substance abuse.

Alcohol is not the last one in the list of these destructive substances. It is
the “companion” of any significant event occurring in the life of modern
people or even an everyday way to relax and get away from all the
difficulties. People relax and forget that they are supposed to think not only
about their health but also about the health of the people around them.
This especially concerns women, as they are the ones to deliver the next
generation into the world. A woman’s organism is a lot more influenced by
any external chemical influences and alcohol becoming woman’s frequent
“companion” becomes a real threat for the health of the nation.

The contemporary medical world is very much concerned with the female
alcohol abuse phenomenon and the appearance of a group of inclinations
that both female and male abusers experience. Alcohol abuse is the giant
problem, which needs to be fixed desperately. It is very important to
understand its nature and the possible effects that it can make to the
human body.

Alcohol abuse and possible outcomes:

The “disabilities” caused by alcohol last a lifetime and therefore completely

change the life of any person and those people who will take care of him.
Some people start being exposed to alcohol during their fetal development
and therefore suffer throughout their whole lives sometimes not even
having a small hope to find their places in the world and not being even
“comparatively” independent. They cannot concentrate, talk too much and
are not capable of making proper decisions. Such people are completely
helpless and unprotected. The outcomes of alcohol abuse for the body are
severe.

Alcohol or sometimes called ethanol is a volatile liquid can easily burn

oxidizes and is composed of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, having the
formula of C2H5OH. Alcohol influenced the whole human body, even
including the central nervous system and the brain of a man.

After the process of drinking alcohol people start feeling pleasure and more
open to the outer world. Nevertheless, even though the person feels
comfortable and more self-confident the most dangerous thing is often
forgotten – alcohol’s side effects. If a person drinks large amounts of alcohol
in a very small period of time it may result in the person’s brain being
suppressed by the chemicals and lead to a fatality. If the amount of alcohol
in a human body is exceeding a person can die in his sleep, because the
body will not have enough resources to cope with the suppression. It is also
extremely dangerous to combine alcohol with other chemical substances.

Changes in the human organism:

The changes that occur in the human organism for the reason of alcohol
abuse are terrible. The whole body is damaged and the person stops being
able to either move and think properly.

The effect of alcohol throughout the period of human’s life is immense and
even the lesser amount of alcohol may cause some changes. These
destructive processes, which occur inside the organism, cause irreparable
damage that it made on the genetic level. Even “social drinking” causes
changes in intellectual and behavior activity of children . Heavy abuse,
causing disorders has nowadays become unbelievably widespread. All this
changes throughout the period the development of the alcohol dependency
cause mental disabilities and severe changes in the human body.

 Physical changes

Very often it is said that alcohol heavy drinkers look the same. This
happens because in the first place all of them experience problems
with their skin. As the vessels of the skin widen, the blood flow to
the person’s face become more intensive. This is the reason people
who drink alcohol have a flushed skin color and constantly feel that
they are hot. Alcohol also often causes serious weight problem.

As a fact, alcohol prevents people from consuming healthy food on

a regular basis and it direct influences the heart of a drinker. This is
one of the primary reasons why people who prefer to drink alcohol
can experience a heart failure. Another part of the body that is
directly damaged by alcohol is the liver. This is primarily due to the
fact that it is liver that works the most to “clean” the organism
from the chemicals in alcohol. When alcohol get to the blood of a
 person rather often, the blood in its turn damages the process of
functioning of the liver cells and some of them start dying. The
majority of people do not keep in mind the fact that even a one-
time alcohol abuse makes the liver cells die, but it is the body of
the person, who is not an alcohol heavy drinker, still has time to
recuperate from the damage. In case the person drinks alcohol on a
regular base the liver becomes weaker and weaker from day to
day.

One other important physical sphere that is seriously damaged is

the reproductive system of a human body. The reason of this type
of dysfunction is that alcohol deprives the impulses that the nerves
pass, and especially those that cause ability to erect, as for men.
Women alcohol abuse it on of the first to be prevented as the fetus
changes negatively and a lot of disabled children are born into to
the world. Females metabolize alcohol very quickly and this is the
primary cause of their necessity to abstain from alcohol. The fetus
is already in high danger of obtaining FAS if the pregnant female
consumes around 3 ounces of pure alcohol per day1[1]. Alcohol
does not need to make much efforts to cross the placenta and
therefore to enter the fetus’s organism. Alcohol may cause spasm
of placenta vessels and the umbilical cord. This leads to the oxygen
“starvation” of the fetus. As the amount of zinc in the cells is
rapidly reduced their growth and development is damaged.
Through these effects alcohol causes changes called “mutations” in
the DNA of the fetus cells. In its turn, the mutation of DNA in the
fetus cells leads to pathologies of the development of different
organs and tissues [6].

Alcohol also influences the person’s ability to perceive sounds and

the direction they are coming out from. The taste and smell are lost
and the speech becomes unclear. As alcohol constantly burns the
throat of the drinker in may result in severe pain, vomiting and
even cancer. The body itself starts being very weak, the muscles
suffer from atrophy, pain and spasms.

 Mental changes

If a person constantly abuses alcohol it will eventually lead to a set

of permanent transformations in the brain morphology. One of the
most significant transformations concerns the reduction of the total
amount of brain tissue and the growing size of the ventricles. The
basic reason the body stops being able to produce brain tissue to
cope with the chemical is because it lacks natural vitamins that a
healthy body produces. Another reason because the body is
deprived of vitamins is that alcohol abusers often experience a
 problem of systematic eating and do not consume food at the
required time, making the body weak and unable to resist the
alcohol effects. As the brain of a person under alcohol dependency
does not have enough vitamins it turns out to be the first step to
the beginning of mental retardation.

What happens to a person is that he completely losses the ability to

control his behavior, his judgments become illogical and his ability
to concentrate decreases tremendously. It is common fact that
alcohol very often is a “companion” of crimes for the listed reason,
as the inability to control the behavior results in extreme mood
swings and emotional outbursts.

Alcohol does not let the brain properly control the manifestations of
the body, as the central nervous system becomes damaged
through the depression of the nerve cells in the brain. The cells
cannot respond to the impulses and a group of body function
failures appear: anesthesia, respiratory failure, coma and death.

As alcohol destroys the central nervous system the drinker

experiences impaired visual abilities, loss of pain perception, slow
reactions, impaired motor skills, altered perception of time and
space and many others.

Conclusion:

The consumption of alcohol beverages has strongly entered the tradition of

celebration any significant events in the life of people. Anybody can hardly
imagine celebrating Christmas or a birthday without a gulp of champagne.
Seemingly, there is nothing bad in that and nothing bad can happen after a
gulp of champagne or a gulp during a routine “social drinking”. But the
reality is cruel… Therefore even small doses of alcohol can do harm to a the
human body. Most people do not understand the consequences alcohol
abuse can have of their health nevertheless the abuse occurs primarily
because people do not know the destructive power of alcohol. The
consequences of the alcohol abuse do not decrease with time, though
specific manifestations change when doses of drinking become smaller.
These factors prevent people from proper social adaptation and therefore
make their life incomplete. Social impracticability of people suffering from
the alcohol abuse is one of major problems of the contemporary medical
society. And the only way to solve this problem is to prevent people from
drinking alcohol in any amounts. There is no cure a better than alcohol
abstention!