Alcoholism and Your Body’s Health

Alcoholism and Your Body’s Health

Start Healing Today with Archstone Behavioral Health

If you’re drinking too much, you probably already see the effects alcohol is having on your life. You’ve lost friends, maybe even your spouse or partner. Your work performance has suffered; maybe you’ve even lost your job. You’ve lost interest in things you used to care about. And maybe you’ve experienced some physical effects, too, like hangovers and intense cravings, and you’ve built up a larger and larger tolerance.

Unfortunately, the effects of alcoholism on your health don’t stop here. Alcohol abuse is linked to approximately 1 in 25 deaths worldwide. Long-term alcohol abuse can have an enormously negative effect on almost all your bodily systems.

Deadly Effects of Alcohol Abuse

Most people know that alcoholism can cause cirrhosis of the liver. But did you know it can also lead to neuropathic disorders and stroke? Hepatitis is a major risk, as well as cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, breast, colon, and liver. Cardiovascular issues like myocardial infarction, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation, and hypertension are also commonplace among patients with alcohol dependency. Gastrointestinal problems like gastritis and pancreatitis can also result. The fact is that alcohol abuse means you are poisoning your body, from the inside out.

Here are a few more examples of the deadly effects of alcohol abuse:

Brain: High alcohol levels are linked to increase in the toxic amino acid homocysteine, which damages the nervous system and is linked to brain shrinkage, brain atrophy, tremors, and seizures during withdrawal. Alcohol is also strongly linked to many kinds of mental illness. It also increases the risk of stroke by more than 60%, and in adolescents it can delay the development of the brain.

Liver: Long-term alcohol abuse causes cirrhosis of the liver, fatty liver, and hepatitis and is also linked to liver cancer.

Pancreas: Alcoholism slowly destroys the pancreas, which regulates insulin in the body. This can lead to diabetes and even pancreatic cancer.

Many people also have questions about the impact of alcohol on their sleeping habits. While moderate alcohol usage may have positive health benefits, a new study shows that even a small amount of alcohol can disrupt a person’s sleep.

The study examined three groups of college students the night before an important test. One group consumed no alcohol, another group had a little bit of alcohol, and the third group consumed a vast amount of alcohol.

The results were something you might not expect: the group that had a small amount of alcohol reported having much less sleep, while the group that drank a lot slept the same amount, but still felt fatigued the next day. With fatigue being one of the leading causes of absenteeism at work and school, it’s likely that simple alcohol consumption is causing the US economy, a significant amount of lost productivity, to say nothing of individual losses.

Get Help For Alcoholism

If you have a problem with alcohol, it’s important to get help as soon as possible, before it has serious and irreversible effects on your health. Archstone Behavioral Health can help. Archstone Behavioral Health, located in Lantana, Florida, offers various inpaatient and outpatient alcohol rehabilitation programs, and services combined detox with a twelve-step approach that honors the whole person while creating a path to recovery. If you’re ready to get sober and begin recovering from alcoholism, and live in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania or any other state, contact Archstone Behavioral Health at (561) 475-4237 to get help today.