Beyond a Hangover – Get Help at an Alcohol Treatment Center
Consuming too much alcohol can have many disturbing effects on your body. In particular, it has a significant negative effect on your nerves and muscle cells. This means that when you consume more alcohol than you should, your nervous system is depressed and, while it may feel like stimulation at first, as you go on drinking you will become sedated.
Alcohol also has an influence on your muscles, coordination, speech, and vital centers of your brain. Too much alcohol consumption can even cause seizures, memory loss, headaches, blackouts, dehydration, incoordination, and life-threatening coma or death.
These are some more health problems you can suffer from because of alcohol abuse:
- Digestive problems: excessive alcohol use can cause inflammation of your stomach lining (gastritis), as well as stomach and esophageal ulcers. It can disrupt with the absorption of vitamin B and other important nutrients. Your pancreas can also get damaged and ultimately result in pancreatitis.
- Diabetes complications: Alcohol can obstruct the release of glucose from your liver and boost the risk of low blood sugar (hypoglycemia). If you have diabetes this can be very dangerous.
- Sexual function and menstruation: Over time, erectile dysfunction in men and menstruation disruption in woman can result from alcohol abuse.
- Liver disease: Too much drinking can cause alcoholic hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver. Within a few months or years hepatitis can lead to irreversible destruction and scarring of liver tissue and thus liver failure. Liver failure can lead to other organs shutting down and eventually death.
- Neurological complications: You nervous system is seriously affected by alcohol, often causing numbness and pain in your hands and feet, dementia, disordered thinking, and short-term memory loss.
- Weakened immune system: Your immune system can suffer, making it harder for your body to resist diseases, becoming more vulnerable to illnesses.
- Eye problems: Heavy drinking can be the source of involuntary rapid eye movement as well as weakness and paralysis of your eye muscle due to vitamin B-1 deficiency.
- Birth defects: Alcohol abuse during pregnancy can cause fetal alcohol syndrome – giving birth to a child who has a developmental and physical problem that could last a lifetime.
- Heart problems: High blood pressure, an increased risk of an enlarged heart, heart failure or stroke can be a risk of alcohol abuse.
- Bone loss: Production of new bone can be suppressed leading to thinning bones (osteoporosis) and high risk of fracture.
- Increased risk of cancer: Too much alcohol consumption has been linked to higher risk of many cancers, including throat, liver, mouth, colon, and breast cancer. Even moderate drinking can enhance the risk of breast cancer.
How can these diseases be treated?
If you already suffer from some of these ailments then the damage may be irreversible. Avoiding alcohol is the most appropriate way to treat or prevent these diseases. The earlier you start the quicker you will be able to recover. It’s recommended to search for an alcohol treatment center and possibly be treated as an inpatient where a treatment program will be tailor made to suit your needs and specific diseases.
If you are struggling to curb your drinking or to kick the habit completely, rather contact a professional to help you out. Beachside Rehab is an experienced treatment center – we will show you the way to sobriety and help you no matter how long you have been suffering with alcohol abuse and related diseases. Contact us today to find out more.