Everyone knows alcohol, and everyone knows that if you take too much of it, it is not good for your body. But how much is too much, and what does alcohol really do to your body, which organs does it affect and how can you reduce the risks? And when are you addicted to alcohol, and what can you do about it?
What is alcohol?
Alcohol is a natural product that is created by natural fermentation. Products used to make alcohol are grapes and barley. With these natural products, the fermentation process stops at approximately 15% alcohol, which means that it is a weakly alcoholic drink. To get a strong alcoholic drink you have to distill a weakly alcoholic drink.
There are many different alcoholic drinks on the market with different alcohol percentages.
There is also another type of alcohol, a type of alcohol that cannot be drunk but is used in the medical world. In this article we only talk about the type of alcohol that is consumed.
What does alcohol do?
Drinking two glasses of alcoholic beverages often gives you a pleasant feeling, you loosen up and if you are shy you notice that you talk more. If you drink more than two glasses of alcoholic beverages, this will have consequences for your organs and brain, but also for your behavior. The reaction to alcohol is of course different for each person.
1 to 3 glasses: relaxing and happy feeling
- Faster pulse
- Hungry feeling
- Pee a lot
- Happier
3 to 7 glasses: tipsy
- Different behavior
- Reaction speed decreases
- Memory decreases
- Eyesight decreases
7 to 15 drinks: drunk
- Emotional
- Aggressive
- Nauseous
- Heat
- No control over muscles
15 or more glasses: intoxication
- No control
- Losing consciousness
- Painless feeling
- Amnesia
Alcohol fattens your liver, this can happen after just a few days of heavy drinking. Fatty liver disease causes an accumulation of fat in the liver cells. This causes the liver to swell and this can cause complaints such as pain, nausea and jaundice. A fatty liver disease can develop into a liver infection, which is accompanied by severe abdominal pain, fever and nausea. In the worst case, the person with a liver infection dies.
Diseases due to excessive alcohol use
There are several known diseases caused by excessive alcohol use, the most dangerous being Korsakov’s syndrome. Korsakov’s is a permanent memory disorder. There are many patients with Korsakov’s syndrome in the Netherlands, the youngest patients being around 30 years old.
Nowadays everything is carcinogenic, so people tend to make light of this. It has actually been proven that drinking three or more glasses of alcohol per day increases the risk of cancer. Heavy drinkers also have a greater risk of liver cancer or colon cancer.
When are you addicted and how do you know the addiction?
An addiction exists if you drink 6 to 7 glasses of alcohol per day. Of course, it doesn’t matter what you drink, as the glasses are adapted to this. When you can no longer function in daily life without alcohol, you are addicted.
Alcoholics do not easily admit that they are addicted, because they do not think they are doing anything wrong or simply do not see it because they are not capable of doing so. It is difficult for an outsider to recognize an addiction, but there are some symptoms that indicate an addiction.
- Can’t have fun without drinks
- Drinking in response to emotion
- Absenteeism from work
- Failure to fulfill agreements and obligations
- Drink all day
- Smelling of alcohol
- Show different behavior
What you can do if you think that someone has an alcohol problem is to contact an addiction institution such as Tactus. You can try to make the person aware of his or her problem, but nine times out of ten this does not work and you suffer. himself under its consequences.
