How Does Alcohol Abuse Affect Society?
- Nearly 14 million Americans are dependent on alcohol, and 105,000 died from alcohol abuse in 1995 alone, according to Emory University researchers J. Michael McGinnis and William H. Foege. Not only does alcohol addiction kill, it causes at least 40 million illnesses and injuries each year. When calculating health care costs, lost productivity at work and crime, the economic burden is more than $400 billion annually.
Drinking too much takes a further toll on families, since manychildren whose parents are addicted also become alcoholics, commit crimes and go to prison, abuse their own children and spouses and drive while drunk or have children with fetal alcohol syndrome. The effects of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs do more to wreck our health than any other preventable cause, McGinnis and Foege wrote.
The drunk driving statistics alone are staggering. Two thirds of the deaths seen at hospital trauma centers are due to car accidents, and for over 20 years, alcohol has caused 40 to 50 percent of those wrecks.
Alcohol misuse also causes as many as 70 percent of deaths occurring in occupational and home accidents, fires and drowning; and up to 60 percent of deaths attributed to intentional injuries, wrote Dr. Ronald V. Maier in a 2005 report for the Centers for Disease Control. - What many drinkers may not realize is the harm they are wreaking on their livers. The liver metabolizes alcohol, and as little as three drinks at a time can have toxic effects when combined with over-the-counter medicines, such as acetaminophen, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Alcohol is a harmful toxin that the liver must remove from your body.
Heavy drinking for only a few days can create an excessive buildup of fat inside liver cells, or steatosis. If drinking stops, though, this condition can be reversed.
People drinking for many weeks may get a potentially fatal condition, alcoholic hepatitis, or an inflammation of the liver. Symptoms include nausea, appetite loss, vomiting, fever, abdominal pain and tenderness, jaundice, and, occasionally, mental confusion. Researchers said that if drinking continues, it can lead to alcoholic cirrhosis, and healthy liver cells are replaced by scar tissue, rendering the liver unable to metabolize properly.
Almost 70 percent of all alcoholic hepatitis patients may eventually be diagnosed with cirrhosis. If someone with alcoholic hepatitis quits drinking, she may recover from liver disease or still develop cirrhosis.
In 2000, liver cirrhosis was the 12th leading cause of death, and the fourth leading death factor in people ages 45 to 54. - Women face a higher risk than men for getting cirrhosis because when a woman drinks, the alcohol in her bloodstream reaches a higher level than a man's, even if both consume the same amount. This is partly because women's stomachs may have less of an enzyme, alcohol dehydrogenase, needed to break down alcohol. Thus, a woman metabolizes alcohol at a slower rate, exposing her liver to higher blood alcohol concentrations for longer times, which can be toxic to the liver.
The disparities also may be related to how much and how frequently a woman drinks, the estrogen in her body and her liver's size. - Because many people who drink also smoke, European researchers have found that liver scarring accelerates in liver disease patients who smoked. Obese drinkers may make matters worse, since extra pounds can spur the growth of fatty liver cells.
Frequently, alcoholics are malnourished, eating less than the recommended daily amount of carbohydrates; proteins; fats; vitamins A, B and C, especially B1; and minerals, such as calcium and iron.
Alcoholics with liver disease can be diagnosed with Hepatitis C, which is caused by a virus. Heavy drinkers often rapidly progress from chronic Hepatitis C to cirrhosis and even liver cancer. - Liver disease and cirrhosis may also be traced to immune system deficiencies, which make chronic alcoholics more susceptible to infections, bacterial pneumonia and tuberculosis, wrote Robert T. Cook of the University of Iowa.
An alcoholic often has autoantibodies circulating in his blood, and research shows that liver disease and failure may be linked to autoimmunity. Alcohol creates an altered cytokine balance, which affects how the immune system reacts. Cytokines are regulating proteins, such as interleukins and lymphokines, released by immune system cells; they act as intercellular mediators to produce immune response.
By manipulating the cytokine balance, doctors may be able to improve or restore the immune system.
"Although much remains to be learned, both in the abnormalities produced by alcohol and in the techniques to reverse those abnormalities, current progress reflects a rapidly improving understanding of the basic immune disorders of the alcoholic," Cook wrote.
For more information about alcoholism, visit the third link under "References."
