Alcohol has an unprecedented effect on the human body. Everywhere and everywhere they say that drinking is harmful.
Scientists have recognized alcohol as more dangerous than drugs!
This is already a hackneyed statement that does not make any impression on us. And if you try to ask what exactly alcohol is harmful, most will not be able to give an exhaustive answer.
In our society, the law of moderate drinking is flourishing and it is even believed that alcohol in small doses is useful. Many medical studies have been conducted on this topic to support this theory. Perhaps this is so. But that's not the point. And about the physiology, or rather the physiological processes occurring in our body after drinking alcohol. I promise it will not be boring, I will try to explain it as clearly as possible for any reader.
Red blood cells (red blood cells) carry oxygen throughout the body. Outside, they are covered with a lipid membrane, which does not allow them to stick together. Alcohol that has entered the blood defatts the surface of red blood cells, causing them to clump and form clots that grow like a snowball. Naturally, these clots cannot pass first through thin capillaries, but with an increase in the number of adherent erythrocytes and through larger blood vessels. Moreover, the more alcohol is drunk, the larger these clots reach.
Sooner or later, such clots get stuck in the vessels, completely paralyzing the blood flow. A lack of oxygen begins in the tissues. Moreover, under the influence of alcohol, this process occurs in the tissues of all organs. First of all, the brain suffers when the blood supply to individual groups of its neurons is cut off. Then comes oxygen starvation, leading to the death of individual, albeit very small, areas of the brain. It is this state of hypoxia that is perceived as a harmless state of intoxication.
At a certain stage of oxygen starvation, a state of euphoria and high spirits occurs. If the dose of alcohol consumed increases, then as a result of strong intoxication, the person falls asleep. But we think so. From a physiological point of view, an alcoholic coma occurs, i.e. loss of consciousness due to neurochemical disorders caused by alcoholic hypoxia of the brain. The waking body needs more oxygen, therefore, when it is lacking, the body turns on such a protective reaction to reduce the metabolic rate.
As a result of the blockage of blood vessels in the cerebral cortex, irreversible death of neurons and micro-strokes occur, leading to memory impairments. Because the brain cells responsible for memory are killed first of all. I think everyone knows how, as a result of heavy drinking, people cannot remember anything after they sober up.
And what happens in the body after that? And the next day there is a hangover syndrome ... While a person comes to his senses, a general cleaning is going on in the body at this time. It gets rid of dead cells in the cerebral cortex, increasing the flow of fluid into the disaster area and thereby creating increased pressure there. In a literal sense, brainwashing is taking place. This is the explanation for the headache and the feeling of thirst: after all, the body needs a lot of fluid to eliminate the effects of yesterday. Dead cells are excreted in the urine. You can even say that a person urinates with his brains, or rather, with what he turned them into the day before.
Do you want to know what's going on in the stomach? Let's consider this using an example of an experiment conducted by American scientists. A gastroscopic examination was performed in 19 participants with healthy stomachs. Each subject swallowed a miniature device such as an iconoscope, from which an image of the walls of the stomach was transmitted to the TV screen. Everyone was given a drink on an empty stomach, 200 g of whiskey without soda. Within a few minutes, the mucous membrane was swollen and reddened, after an hour bleeding sores appeared on it, after a few hours strips of pus stretched along the mucous membrane. The picture was the same for all subjects. This is a good example of the effects of alcohol on an empty stomach. It's even scary to imagine what happens among ulcers, who often continue to drink alcohol, despite the prohibitions of doctors.
Thus, in principle, there are no safe doses of alcohol for the body. First of all, the intellect suffers significantly. After all, even a single consumption of alcohol leads to irreversible damage to brain cells, a person becomes a little dumber, in other words. Moreover, this process goes slowly and imperceptibly for oneself, but sooner or later, with the regular use of alcoholic beverages, personality degradation occurs.
The team of scientists found that the vast majority of people have a wrong opinion about the dangers of alcohol and drugs. According to the latest data, alcohol is far more harmful than even heroin. The researchers classified 20 substances according to 16 parameters, assessing the harm that is caused both to the person who uses the harmful substance and to those around him. Factors such as the degree of addiction, harm to mental and physical health, the number of crimes committed under the influence of a particular drug, material damage to the economy and society were taken into account. When adding up points for individual and social harm, alcohol turned out to be the absolute leader (76 points out of 100), ahead of cocaine (27 points) and tobacco (26 points). The expertise of British scientists proved the inconsistency of the classifications of narcotic substances, used by the governments of many countries in assessing potential harm to health and society. "Our findings support past research in Britain and Holland, which has confirmed that current classification systems have little to do with the harm that different types of drugs do," the BBC said.
On the dangers of alcoholism. Useful information for schoolchildren and adolescents
Why you shouldn't drink alcoholic beverages
Already at the dawn of his development, man became acquainted with the properties of certain drinks. Milk, as well as honey and juice of some fruits, after standing for some time in the sunlight, changed not only their appearance, color and smell, but also acquired the ability to improve mood, general well-being, and allowed a person to feel lightness and carelessness in himself. However, people were not immediately able to correlate this positive property with what happens to a person the next day, since for such a good state they had to pay with a headache, disgusting health and generally a bad mood.
The basis of any such drink is alcohol, which is wine, or ethyl alcohol. A few minutes after it enters the body, it spreads to all tissues. It has long been found that this substance is destructive to living cells. When it enters the human body, it upsets the smooth functioning of tissues, organs and cells in general.
Alcohol leaves the body with water and oxygen, causing the cells to shrink. It becomes extremely difficult for them to work as usual. If alcohol enters the body regularly and in a decent amount, then this can generally lead to cell death. Under the influence of this substance, absolutely all processes occurring in the body and regulating its activity can be disrupted. This can eventually lead to diseases of the liver, kidneys, heart and blood vessels.
The fastest and strongest alcohol affects the brain cells, primarily affecting the higher sections. Alcohol very quickly enters the nerve cells, disrupting their work. In this case, some of the cells die, as a result of which there is a simultaneous violation of the interaction between the parts of the brain.
In addition, alcohol has an extremely negative effect on blood vessels. First, they expand. Because of this, the blood, along with the alcohol contained in it, rushes to the brain. As a result, the centers of activity of the brain are overexcited.
It is for this reason that a person who has taken an alcoholic drink becomes agitated and cheeky.
Due to alcohol in the human brain, the inhibition processes are significantly weakened. The cerebral cortex ceases to control what happens in other departments. For this reason, the drunk person does not control himself, and is also unable to be critical of his behavior.
A drunken person is not able to keep himself modest and restrained and can say or do something that he would never do or would not say in a sober state. The next portion of the alcoholic drink more and more binds the nerve centers of the brain and blocks common sense. These centers are unable to contain what the lower parts of the brain begin to do.
The state of intoxication was well described by the well-known Russian psychiatrist S. S. Korsakov: "The intoxicated one does not think about the consequences of his words and actions and treats them extremely frivolously ... Passions and bad motives appear without any cover and induce more or less wild actions." ...
It is noticed that in an intoxicated state, a person can blur out any secret, he loses vigilance and ceases to be careful. What is called intoxication in everyday life is actually a serious alcohol poisoning with all the ensuing consequences.
By the way, it was found out that alcohol that has already entered the body does not come out immediately. For two to three days, alcohol continues to be in the body, exerting its destructive effect on it. Due to the fact that it can lead a person to an elated state, improve their mood, people want to experience this feeling again and drink alcoholic beverages over and over again.
During intoxication, the will and self-control of a person practically disappear to zero. However, alcoholic beverages are the most dangerous for a young and growing body, since during the growth period the body is most susceptible to the effects of all those harmful substances contained in alcohol.
By the way, note that alcohol has an extremely negative effect on future offspring. Incidentally, it is worth distinguishing between concepts such as drunkenness and alcoholism. If the first is the result of improper upbringing or a weak will that could not resist external negative influences, then alcoholism is already a serious illness that needs to be treated. However, coping with it is not so easy. It will take a huge amount of effort to heal a person from this. Moreover, it is far from the fact that this will work. It may happen that all efforts are in vain.
You are already quite an adult in order to independently choose the right friends for yourself. If you see that the company you are in does not represent a rest or a walk without a can of beer or some other similar nasty thing, then, first of all, you should think about whether you need such communication. You should not appear at parties that gather only to have another drink of something strong.
Juvenile alcoholism is many times more frightening than an adult, in addition, it is practically not amenable to treatment. Juvenile alcoholism develops many times faster than that of an adult. Moreover, alcohol is even more dangerous for girls than for boys. And the personality of drunkenness is destroyed very quickly.
Always when drinking alcoholic beverages, the internal organs are affected, and the nervous system is most affected. Because of this, disturbances in memory occur, and also control over their actions is significantly lost.
Where does drunkenness begin?
In most cases, the reasons for a teenager joining alcohol are very different, but among them it is still possible to distinguish the most typical, depending on the age of the teenager.
Until the age of 11, alcohol is taken as part of medicines. If the child tries it on his own, then it happens, as a rule, by accident. Sometimes a child may specifically taste alcohol out of a healthy child's curiosity.
If a teenager has not yet reached the age of 15, then his parents may deliberately begin to give him small doses of alcohol, for example, on holidays - at some family feast, the arrival of guests, etc.
From the moment a teenager drank with his parents for the first time, he feels entitled to a drink with his friends. Several other reasons are already operating here, for example, from a teenager you can hear the following phrases: “my friends persuaded me” or “it was inconvenient for me to lag behind friends”. Most often, at this age, a teenager does not drink too much - usually it is rarely more than one glass for any holiday.
Acquaintance with alcoholic beverages in a normal teenager takes place in the bosom of the family, however, even such a development of events is fraught with serious danger, since alcohol is the same drug, and addiction to it occurs very quickly.
Always the motives for drinking alcoholic beverages come down, as a rule, to the following: the inability to deviate from tradition, as well as a strong desire to try something new, so to speak, out of curiosity. These motives appear due to some characteristics of the adolescent psyche. The desire to follow adults in absolutely everything in order to grow up yourself as soon as possible gradually awakens in you.
Another reason can be called so - "a drink for courage." This can also be attributed to age characteristics. Drinking alcoholic beverages on this occasion usually correlates with the fact that you do not have enough life experience or some kind of knowledge in order to solve this or that problem, for example, when communicating with older people or with girls. Teenagers are often very shy, and alcohol is the way to deal with this shyness successfully. After drinking, guys begin to overestimate their capabilities, both physically and in terms of communication. From the outside it will not look the way it will seem to the drunk himself, and you can simply go into elementary looseness. This behavior will definitely not look good.
Even before you try any alcoholic beverage for the first time in your life, you will already have a theoretical idea of how it affects the human body. You will probably think that he is pleasant and exciting. In practice, however, this is unlikely to be the case.
For example, the taste of vodka can make you bitter in your mouth, burning, nausea, and even dizzy. And this is not all the unpleasant consequences that may follow after your first acquaintance with alcoholic beverages. Such an acquaintance almost always leads to the fact that adolescents begin to avoid alcoholic beverages for a long time. When you are 13-16 years old, the temptation to drink something like this will greatly increase. And there will be enough reasons, for example, with your classmates, you will probably want to celebrate the end of the ninth grade, the transition to another school, all sorts of holidays.
Over time, the desire to use something intoxicating will be filled with new psychological content. In the first place there are already such motives that gradually form drunkenness as a type of behavior. The main motive for this use is usually boredom.
According to psychologists, boredom is a state of a person in which he experiences a strong emotional hunger. If a teenager is bored, it means that he has largely or completely lost interest in educational activities. If at this age teenagers consume alcoholic beverages, then most likely they are not engaged in socially useful work at all.
The manifestation of boredom in leisure is very noticeable. Children stop reading books, do not participate in any events at all, do not go to theaters and museums, do not listen to good music. Such bored teenagers love cinema, but they are attracted not so much by the film itself as a work of art, but by the usual entertainment. Such adolescents are not able to assert themselves in the team of their peers due to their personal qualities, which is why they turn their attention to alcoholic beverages.
Often teenagers worry a lot. This can be associated with anything, since at this age a person is very susceptible to emotional external and internal influences. And alcohol here acts as an antidepressant, which allows you to relieve the accumulated stress. A similar condition can appear in a teenager if he has problems in the family or at school. Nevertheless, this behavior is typical for this age, but whether it is worth drinking alcoholic beverages for the sake of relieving stress is still a big question.
Often teenage groups are formed spontaneously, however, there are still certain principles of their organization, since teenagers, as a rule, begin to communicate according to the similarity of interests. However, if a group of teenagers does not have any hobby or association under the banner of some useful activity, then just bored guys will gather in it. It is this group that is most favorable for starting alcohol consumption.