Drink Less Alcohol
Kamverdeep Deol
Introduction
Drinking alcohol has many severe short term and long term effects on the body. It's absorbed into the bloodstream therefore it affects many parts of the body, as blood flows through the whole body.
Parts of the body affected by alcohol
Excretory System
- Pancreas: The pancreas can start to create toxins that affect the function. This can cause pancreatitis which can destroy the pancreas.
- Liver: Can cause alcohol hepatitis and jaundice which can lead to cirrhosis. When the liver cannot perform, this means it fails to clean toxins out of the body and lead to eventual death.
Nervous System
Drinking can Cause pain or numbness in various body parts and vitamin B1 deficiency, which can lead to rapid eye movement, weakness or paralysis of the eye muscles.
- Brain: Overtime drinking can cause the shrinking of the frontal lobe, and a severe alcoholic can even get dementia.
Digestive System
- Mouth: Drinking can lead to tooth decay, damage of salivary glands, irritation in mouth and gum disease.
- Pancreas: damage to the pancreas interferes with its ability in helping to digest food.
Circulatory System
- Heart: the heart can be poisoned and user can get cardiomyopathy, heart attack, heart Failure and high blood pressure
Reproductive System
- Erectile dysfunction can occur
- Women can lose their period which means they can no longer have children
Skeletal System
- The long term effects of alcohol also include little to none bone regeneration.
- Chronic drinkers can also be subjected to osteoporosis.
Benefits of reducing alcohol intake
Benefits of Reducing Alcohol Intake
- Reduce calories: Alcohol has a lot of calories. Cutting down your alcohol intake reduces your empty calorie intake. There's an average of 600 calories in a bottle of wine.
- Less alcohol means more sleep!: Reducing the amount of alcohol consumed means a better quality of sleep and feeling more rested when you wake up. Alcohol messes with your sleep schedule and quality of sleep.
- Reduce stress: Many people drink alcohol to relax and feel better, but contrary to belief, alcohol is a depressant and drinking it actually makes someone feel more depressed and sad. Drinking less could actually promote positivity.
- Effects on the heart: Alcohol has the long term effect of heart enlargement. It weakens the heart muscle and could possibly cause cardiomyopathy, which is when the heart is unable to pump blood efficiently. Drinking also increases exposure to heart disease. Drinking can cause high blood pressure (hypertension) because of the excessive calories being consumed which can lead to heart attacks. Cutting alcohol out of a daily diet can reduce these risks and diseases and further prevent enlargement of the heart.
- Lower risk to an immune disease: Frequent drinkers can get diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia easier. Drinking causes your body's ability to prevent infections because alcohol staggers the innate and adaptive immune systems. Alcohol reduces the ability of the white blood cells to surround foreign bacteria. It also negatively affects production of cytokines, it either increases the rate of production or decreases it, both resulting in negative outcomes. In addition to those, it also reduces subdues T-Lymphocyte cell production, this results in the inability to destroy cancerous cells. Drinking alcohol exposes the user to a weaker immune system and drinking less could reduce this.
10 pints per week = more than 2,000 extra calories per week.
10 standard (175ml) glasses of wine per week = more than 1,200 extra calories per week.
Tips for Weaning off of Alcohol
Plan out what steps you're going to take to slowly reduce alcohol intake using these simple steps:
- Set a limit on how much to drink.
- Budget your spendings on alcohol. Go to the liquor store with a limited amount of money.
- Let people around you know so they can help you.
- Drink less and less a day. Slowly decrease the size of your drink so you don't have severe withdrawals.
- Drink smaller sizes of beer cans, bottles, wine glasses.
- Have drinks with a lower ABV percentage. (ABV: Alcohol by volume)
- Drink water before drinking alcohol so you don't drink to quench thirst and fill your stomach.
- Keep a record of how much you drink. Perhaps create a diary on a notes app on your phone.
Who it Affects:
- Teens: They will see less people drinking, they won't be tempted to drink in the future and present. If drinking is limited, this may even reduce availability to teenagers. If their parents don't drink as much they will realize the effects and perhaps stop allowing their kids to drink as well.
- The families of the drinkers: They won't have to deal with the problems that come along with drinking.
- Consumer: There are many health benefits, which have been previously listed, and social relationships may get better as well. Since alcohol is a depressant, it makes the consumer constantly sad and depressed, drinking less will improve their mood and as a result they will be more open with their friends and family, resolving any strains with their friends and family they may have had before.
- Everyone around the consumer: Drunk driving has devastating effects on many people and it damages a lot of property. Drinking less means less drunk drivers on the road as a result there will be safer streets, less money in hospitals spent towards all the negative effects of alcohol.
Cost Effective
Drinking less means that you will spend less money on alcohol. This means more money in your pockets, less alcohol in your systems and a healthier lifestyle.
- The average drinker could spend around $10,000 a year on alcohol.
- If you budget your alcohol spending, you can reduce the amount you spend.
- Ordering water in between drinks will fill you up which means you'd spend less money on drinks.
- To be more cost effective, if you go out with friends order pitchers of alcohol because it costs less and many people can share the pitcher.