Long-Term Effects of Alcohol: Dangers, Risks & Effects

Regular drinking can also affect overall mental health and well-being, in part because alcohol may worsen symptoms of certain mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. There’s also evidence that regular drinking at high-risk levels can make your mental health worse. Drinking large amounts of alcohol for many years will take its toll on many of the body’s organs and may cause organ damage. Organs known to be damaged by long-term alcohol misuse include the brain and nervous system, heart, liver and pancreas.

Packing your hurricane go bag? Make provisions for your health

Ethanol (alcohol) causes cancer through biological mechanisms as the compound breaks down in the body, which means that any beverage containing alcohol, regardless of its price and quality, poses a risk of developing cancer. The Global status report on alcohol and health and treatment of substance use disorders presents a comprehensive overview of alcohol consumption, alcohol-related… During pregnancy, drinking may cause the unborn baby to have brain damage and other problems. For women, more than three drinks on any day or more than seven drinks a week is heavy drinking.

Mental Effects of Alcohol: Effects of Alcohol on the Brain

• The severity of a person’s withdrawal symptoms may get worse each time they stop drinking, and can cause symptoms such as tremors, agitation and convulsions (seizures).
• The risks increase largely in a dose-dependent manner with the volume of alcohol consumed and with frequency of drinking, and exponentially with the amount consumed on a single occasion.
• Depending on how often you drink and how much, you may need support from a healthcare professional if you want to stop drinking.
• Knowing your personal risk based on your habits can help you make the best decision for you.

This means a person’s alcohol withdrawal programme needs to be carefully planned, with close monitoring of its effects. Monitoring of alcohol consumption and policy responses might be required to address age-specific vulnerabilities, including the potential for alcohol and medication interactions in older people. High proportions of both Māori and European participants reported EDI (55.7% and 51.0%, respectively). HED was most frequently reported by Pasifika (33.9%) and Māori (32.5%) participants. Over half of those who identified as European (51%) reported EDI, and Europeans also had the highest proportion of frequent drinking (26.3%). If a person consumes large amounts of alcohol regularly, their tolerance can increase, and the body requires more alcohol to achieve the desired effect.

Risks

These effects might not last very long, but that doesn’t make them insignificant. Impulsiveness, loss of coordination, and changes in mood can affect your judgment and behavior and contribute to more far-reaching effects, including accidents, injuries, and decisions you later regret. Some of these effects, like a relaxed mood or lowered inhibitions, might show up quickly after just one drink. Others, like loss of consciousness or slurred speech, may develop after a few drinks. Alcohol poisoning can cause a person to fall into a coma and could lead to their death.

• It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage.
• Levels of alcohol in the blood can continue rising for 30 to 40 minutes after the last drink, and symptoms can worsen.
• Depending on the country, current guidelines (including those in the US) could allow levels of drinking high enough to shorten life expectancy.
• Alcohol-related problems were defined as self-reported problems “related to your drinking” (in the past 12 months).

On the one hand, moderate amounts have been linked to health benefits. Excess alcohol use can also impair nutrient absorption in the small intestine and increase the risk of malnutrition. When consequences of drinking it comes to the brain, alcohol acts as a depressant to the CNS.

Deaths from excessive alcohol use‎

Those who had higher socioeconomic status (i.e., earned an income more than NZD 50K, lived in areas with low deprivation, and those classified as food secure) reported higher proportions of EDI, frequent drinking, and substance abuse disorder. Those classified as food insecure reported higher proportions of HED and alcohol-related problems, compared with those classified as food secure. Light to moderate drinking is linked to a reduced risk of heart disease, while heavy drinking appears to increase the risk (37, 38, 39, 40). The lower recommendation for women isn’t just because they are, on average, smaller than men. They produce less of the enzyme (called alcohol dehydrogenase, or ADH) that breaks down alcohol.

Inflammatory damage

If the person stops drinking, they will experience withdrawal symptoms. Moderate drinking is defined as at most one standard drink per day for women and at most two for men, while heavy drinking is defined as more than three drinks per day for women and four for men (80). From a glass of wine with dinner to a night out with friends or a celebratory toast, alcohol consumption is deeply ingrained in many social practices and cultural traditions worldwide. In the United States, over 84% of adults report drinking alcohol at least once in their lifetime. The study described above examined how much alcohol consumption might be too much.

Explanations for gender differences in alcohol consumption include biological differences in alcohol metabolism between men and women and higher exposure opportunities among men due to psychological, family, and social factors 27. https://ecosoberhouse.com/ Evidence of the gender differences found in this study echoes the need for policies and services related to women’s and men’s alcohol consumption to have a gendered focus. Moderate alcohol consumption may increase life expectancy, while alcohol abuse is a strong risk factor for premature death.

Primary sampling units (PSU) based on meshblock boundaries were used to conduct random sampling. These units are the smallest geographical units used by Statistics New Zealand 17. Within each meshblock, a random starting point was identified, and every second and sixth house within the meshblock was selected. Non-residential and short-term residential properties, rest homes, and retirement villages were excluded. Specific meshblocks were allocated to each gender for safety reasons. Only one randomly selected person per household could participate in the study.