Drinking alcohol every day leads to alcoholism. The severity of complications from this serious illness depends on the alcohol dose, strength, quality parameters, as well as the patient's comorbidities, body weight, age and eveneven gender. Today you will learn how harmful alcohol is, how long an alcoholic patient can live, how sick and then dead.
When is a stop necessary?
Regular drinking harms all systems of the body, but there is a misconception that drinking alcohol in moderation is beneficial. So let's say patients every day justify themselves in front of everyone. It is clear that if alcohol is taken daily in large doses, the patient will die in the near future.
How often can you drink alcohol? An alcohol content of 6 ‰ is lethal to a person. It is achieved by drinking several bottles of 500 ml vodka in a short time. There will be a state of intoxication, dysfunction of the entire organ, even if the person has not been sick before. It is forbidden to drink alcoholic beverages for patients with dysfunction of the liver, heart and blood vessels.
What if you drink a lot of alcohol every day, can you regularly drink alcohol? Signs of alcoholism that need immediate treatment are:
- Drink a bottle of vodka or more or a pint of beer daily.
- Continuous gatherings for any reason with drinking buddies with an alcoholic.
- Dysfunction of all body systems, beer belly increases.
- Patients use alcohol to relax.
- Every morning, a patient who drinks alcohol will worry about a hangover syndrome, a hangover that lasts for weeks.
About the complications caused by vodka
Drinking vodka daily will cause alcohol addiction. Pathological processes will arise in the body that will become irreversible:
- Kidney, liver, and cardiovascular dysfunction will begin, and the digestive system will also be affected.
- There will be malfunctions of the central nervous system, mental problems.
- A person's appearance will change, he will become exhausted, his body will age faster.
Consequences of daily strong alcohol consumption will appear to damage the brain structure, leading to mental disorders, delirium.
Such patients will not even notice they will quickly begin to forget things, become inattentive and their intellect will deteriorate. They will become closed, socially degraded. Large doses of vodka will lead to the fact that a person will be paralyzed, his peripheral nerve fibers, his spine will become inflamed, and the patient develops.
The stomach lining will burn continuously, then become inflamed. Inflammation will also occur throughout the intestinal tract. The liver will not be able to completely neutralize the toxic compounds of alcohol, its cellular structures will die, cirrhosis or cancerous processes will appear.
Heart diseases will appear, it will contract less, dystrophy will appear in its tissues, and cardiac obesity will appear. This will lead to heart muscle pain, chest discomfort, tachycardia, and impaired respiratory function. Patients will experience edema, poor blood flow, high blood pressure. Violation of metabolism will lead to atherosclerotic changes, cerebral hemorrhage, myocardial infarction.
If you are addicted to beer every day
Unlike vodka, beer is a less potent alcoholic beverage. So it is used by many people in large numbers. There are also many complications with daily beer drinking. The stomach will be chronically inflamed, manifested as severe pain and tenderness in the abdomen, atrophy of the pancreas.
This will lead to digestive system disorders. Drinking a lot of beer will lead to chronic hepatitis without significant symptoms, eventually leading to cirrhosis. Because beer has a diuretic effect, the kidneys will work harder, leading to leaching of magnesium and potassium.
Vitamin C will also be washed away, leading to cardiac dysfunction, bone and joint structures will be affected and the immune system will be impaired. The person will become less resistant to stress, more aggressive, irritable or whiny. Drinking beer in large doses will lead to renal sclerosis, hemorrhage and kidney necrosis.
There will be problems with the cardiovascular system. Patients with alcohol abuse will have varicose veins and an obese heart. Shortness of breath will appear with the slightest exertion, high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, ischemia occurs. Death from cerebral circulatory insufficiency when alcohol abuse will double.
Drinking too much beer will lead to impotence in men, endocrine dysfunction due to the hormone progesterone. A man becomes more like a woman, his hair falls out and does not grow, his voice changes. Such dependence on beer develops 4 times faster than vodka, and is more difficult to respond to therapeutic measures.
This person refused to admit that he was addicted to beer. He believes that beer is beneficial to the body and links impotence with other reasons.
If you rarely drink alcohol, only on holidays
Alcohol has different effects on everyday drinkers and on rare occasions drinkers. The effects of alcohol poisoning on an alcoholic patient and a drinker in rare cases are very different. The dose of alcohol for a normal person in the amount of 100 g is equivalent to ½ liter of vodka for an alcohol dependent patient. An alcoholic is always very sensitive to alcohol, even when he stops using it.
After three decades of living sober, he won't be able to drink at all. After one glass of wine, the next will continue, and so without stopping, a person simply cannot stop. The reason for this is as follows. First, alcohol is oxidized in the liver cells to the compound acetaldehyde, so the liver suffers most of the daily alcohol consumption.
What are the effects of regular drinking?
Here's how the drink affects internal organs and systems with regular use.
What happens to the liver?
The acetaldehyde compound is highly toxic. Daily drunkenness puts a strain on the liver, it cannot neutralize this toxic substance. An alcoholic has a rapid accumulation of alcohol metabolites, compared with a healthy person. The process of neutralization of these metabolites is slow, they persist in the body for a long time.
Such intoxication causes hangover syndrome, the patient is accustomed to ethanol. These changes in a person will always be the same, the more alcohol he drinks, the worse his general condition will be.
The large accumulation of acetaldehyde compounds in the body of an alcoholic will persist for a long time compared to a non-drinker. Acetaldehyde is not only deposited in liver tissue but also in other organs.
This will lead to a persistent desire to drink alcohol in an ethanol-dependent patient. Ordinary people do not have this desire. If you continue to drink heavily, you will develop cirrhosis. The organs become impaired, the vessels constrict in the liver, and the pressure increases, blood stagnation occurs. This results in the organ walls being ruptured, bleeding leading to death.
People who do not drink alcohol get drunk in rare cases, they also rarely feel hangover syndrome, because their liver is working properly, it neutralizes the toxins in alcohol well.
How is brain structure affected?
When a person is drunk, the cortex is destroyed, paralyzing and dying individual brain segments. In an alcoholic, edema, scarred sores, and dilated vessels are observed in brain tissue. Multiple ruptures are also manifested, cysts form on necrotic segments.
Effects of ethanol on the central nervous system
If you drink to excess, then a person behaves differently, that person degrades mentally and morally. The patient's perception of reality is inadequate, the ability to focus attention is poor. In addition, the nerve tissue conducts less impulses, polyneuritis is formed, movements are poorly coordinated, the patient does not sleep well, irritability, aggression, fever.
He is delusional, he is disturbed by hallucinatory states, the person does not feel temperature, pain, manifests hyperhidrosis. Pain is often intense, a person feels ants crawling on his skin, and muscle spasms are also disturbed. Absent treatment leads to altered encephalopathy, alcoholic delirium, mental retardation, Korsakov psychosis and epileptic seizures.
Heart and blood vessels
The systematic use of alcohol causes the heart to enlarge, its work is interrupted, the rhythm fails, ischemia, atherosclerotic processes, hypertension accompanied by infarctionheart muscle.
What happens to the kidneys?
If you drink vodka every day, the kidneys will wear out faster, and also quickly lose their ability to work. The metabolism is interrupted, the blood will not be able to eliminate toxic compounds that lead to poisoning. There is a high probability of the formation of renal-renal changes, inflammatory processes of the urinary system. Then kidney failure, stones and cancer appear.
How is the gastrointestinal tract affected with the spleen?
Ethanol compounds are toxic to the digestive system. They will hit the wall of the esophagus, heartburn occurs, the feeling of wanting to vomit will increase, leading to the vascular walls of the esophagus begin to thin and expand. This will rupture the vein walls, causing bleeding.
The stomach lining will also be damaged, it will age faster, inflammatory processes, ulcers, cancer will form. Dysfunction of the spleen will use the destroyed blood cells. The spleen will be enlarged, with crushing and necrosis.
Immune system problems
Immunity will become weakened causing the body's defenses to be weakened. The synthesis of lysozyme proteins present in saliva and tears is reduced, as a result of which pathogenic microorganisms are neutralized. A person will become susceptible to many infectious diseases, his condition will deteriorate.
What happens to muscles and joints?
If you drink alcohol systematically, calcium will be washed away, bone tissue will become fragile, it often breaks down, and osteoporosis changes will appear. The joints will also start to hurt. 75% of alcoholics develop arthritis, subsequent binge drinking only increases the pain. There is also a pronounced negative effect on the muscles. Muscle growth slows or stops, muscle tissue is destroyed. In them will appear flabby, atrophy of the skin, but there will be more fat.
Fluid will be removed from the body slowly, edema changes will occur. Uric acid will build up as hydrochloric acid, and begin to accumulate in the joints. This will lead to inflammation, gout will appear. The more the patient drinks, the more painful sensations will manifest. Excess fluid that penetrates the joint sac puts pressure on the cavity wall, and the nerve tissue becomes irritated. After a while, the joints become deformed.
Endocrine system damage
Alcoholism leads to endocrine dysfunction. In a woman's body, the synthesis of testosterone will increase, and the amount of estrogen and progesterone will decrease. In addition, the ovaries will be painful, excessive weight gain.
A woman's appearance will change with behavior, sleep will be disturbed, become aggressive, her muscle mass will increase, and hair follicles will become more visible.
How are the respiratory organs affected?
About 2% of alcohol is released as a vapor that passes through lung tissue. This leads to damage to the respiratory mucosa, the development of inflammatory processes in the pharynx, larynx, bronchi, and lungs. Pneumonia can be a complication of pulmonary fibrosis. Ethanol in the blood dilates lung tissue and develops emphysema.
What happens to eyesight?
As a result of exposure to ethanol, this type of intracranial pressure will increase, which can cause minor bleeding and damage to the blood vessels in the eye. Hypoxia of overactive eye muscles will occur, and visual function will be impaired. The eye muscles gradually atrophy, the optic nerve works less efficiently, and the patient can go completely blind.
About appearance
Alcoholism damages a person's appearance:
- There is swelling under the eyeball.
- Messy hair.
- The nose is bluish in color.
- Facial swelling, bleeding from the blows are observed.
- Clothes torn, dirty, smelly.
The increased blood flow to the tissue structures overloads the vessels, they are damaged. Small capillaries are broken. Red dots can be observed on the face. Blue color of the skin appears due to damage to blood vessels, lack of oxygen. To excrete ethanol, the body needs a lot of fluid, which is manifested by the feeling of thirst in alcoholics. After he drinks water, it accumulates.
This is how the body responds to possible dehydration. The result is swelling in the face, on the hands and feet.
Longevity for alcoholism
Obviously, it is difficult to say how long the life expectancy of such patients will be. After all, every living being is individual. The life expectancy of such people is affected by different circumstances, for example, dosage, quality of alcohol.
According to statistics, the time the patient is addicted to alcohol is from 48 to 55 years old. With binge alcoholism, the use of alcoholic beverages in youth, such a person will die even earlier. Patients with end-stage alcoholism are at high risk of developing the disease. They live no more than 6 years from the onset of the disease, death occurs due to serious diseases.
Alcoholics often die:
- from oncology, perforated gastric ulcer or duodenal ulcer;
- hepatitis, cirrhosis, fibrous changes in the liver due to alcohol;
- bowel obstruction;
- acute disorders of cerebral circulation due to ischemia or hemorrhage;
- myocardial changes, myocardial infarction, sudden coronary death;
- acute or chronic pancreatitis;
- sudden death while sleeping;
- drunken suicide.
Intoxication with ethanol compounds can lead to death in people aged 35 to 45 years. All organs and internal systems will be damaged, and a person's lifespan will be rapidly shortened. In order not to have such a severe addiction, it is better to give up alcohol completely, then people will avoid many problems and preserve their health.