Alcohol Effects On The Body And The Mind Essay

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Alcohol has been around for centuries and has wheedled its way into many cultures. But that might not be a good thing. The way society approaches alcohol does not necessarily express the severity of how alcohol effects the body, the mind or the community.
Serious alcohol consumption has very harmful effects on the body and the mind, but a lot of people might not realize to what extent. The most common knowledge consists of liver and kidney damage, and maybe a few heart problems. But it also includes stomach ailments, stomach and brain cancer, serious brain damage, memory loss, etc. Short term drinking effects can generally be fixed, but when it comes to long term drinking effects, the complete halt in activity within the body and mind have
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A good way to describe it might be to say that the mind physically shrinks. Though that is not the case, it can be illustrated as such. Picture a healthy working mind as a fully lit scan of a brain. Activity is high, full or red and yellows. Now, in a scan of a damaged brain, black areas will be visible in places like the cerebellum and the thalamus/hypothalamus region. On the scan of an alcohol dependant mind, these are the areas no longer active. The brain has stayed the same physical size, but the capacity of potential working space has been diminished. In these cases the renewal of brain cells have been completely halted by the alcohol. Thiamine (vitamin B1), found in foods like meat, whole grains, nuts and beans, is an important nutrient to tissues in the brain and body. Thiamine deficiency shows the most noticeable difference in the cerebellum, the area that regulates coordination and …show more content…
Starting from birth, a child’s perception of alcohol begins to develop. The American Society of Addictions Medicine has done a study showing that genetics count for fifty percent of a child’s likeliness to develop an addiction to alcohol. This does not, of course, mean a child with genetic history in alcohol will exclusively be taken by the grasp of alcohol or that one without ancestral history will never be affected. It also does not take into consideration the environment in which the child was raised in infancy. The first few years in a child’s development is essential to the growth of healthy habits later on. In short, if alcohol or alcohol dependant behaviour is introduced then the child will have a higher chance of falling back on the habit later in life. Parents and friends play a huge part in the likelihood of addiction or substance abuse. Following the social aspect of drinking, adolescent and early adult life revolves heavily around drinking. There is a kind of social fear, a pressure, to take part in communal drinking patterns with friends that may lead to unhealthy habits. For some, it is often where alcohol abuse starts in the first place. Practices like binge drinking are what put adolescents and college students as one of the leaders in alcohol abuse statistics. As mentioned previously, self-medication is common practice and generally the leading cause for abuse and dependence. But

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