Are you making those subtle, but important, steps towards your wellness goals, but your progress has slowed or even come to a halt? You're thinking, "Is there something I'm missing?" Have you thought about your alcohol consumption?
Many people don't think about how their alcohol consumption affects their health and wellness goals because it seems like such an average thing to consume. Consuming alcohol, in any given amount, affects the body in a negative way. A "heavy" drinking amount, defined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, is "5 or more alcoholic beverages on one occasion, or 1 a day in the last 30 days". Being aware of how much alcohol you actually consume may be an extra tool in your wellness toolbelt to help get to your desired health and wellness goa. Did you know, that in their report on carcinogens, the National Toxicology Program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services lists the consumption of alcoholic beverages as a known carcinogen? Alcohol affects a number of tissues in our bodies, from our brain, digestive system, circulatory system, bones and muscles, just to name a few. Let's go over how alcohol affects these systems and the tissues that are involved with them.
1. Central Nervous System:
This system is comprised of your brain and spinal cord, and is how we respond, react and interpret sensory information, and consuming alcohol affects the way this system works and even affecting the way your brain looks. When consuming alcohol, the signals to your brain are disrupted, often resulting in symptoms like slurred speech, lack of coordination, lack/loss of memory, change in mood and behavior, numbness or paralysis. Long-term use can even shrink the frontal lobes of the brain, which is the "action" portion of our brain, controlling our mental and physical actions.
2. Circulatory System:
This system includes your heart and blood vessels, pumping a fresh supply of blood throughout your body. When consuming alcohol your arteries tighten which forces your heart to work harder than it is used to, which can lead to high blood pressure, stroke and irregular heart rhythms and even cardiomyopathy (drooping of the heart muscles).
3. Skeletal System:
This system includes all the bones in your body from your skull to the small bones in your feet. Consuming alcohol, over time, reduces your body's ability to produce new bone and lowers your bone density, increasing your likelihood of fractures or osteoporosis.
4. Muscular System:
This system is comprised of all the muscles throughout your body and is responsible for our bodies movement, from lifting heavy weight to itching our noses. Alcohol slows down the process of building new muscle and slowly breaks down existing muscle releasing toxins into the body.
If you are in the process of trying to build new muscle or maintain the muscle you currently have, decreasing or eliminating alcohol would be beneficial for your wellness goal.
5. Organ Systems:
Alcohol affects each of our organ systems in a different way, neither of them for the better. By limiting or eliminating your consumption of alcohol you can significantly decrease these negative effects on these vital systems.
A. Digestive System:
The function of this system is to break down the calories we consume into their simplest form for us to use as energy and consists of your mouth, pharynx (throat), esophagus, stomach, large intestine, small intestine, pancreas, rectum and anus. When too much alcohol is consumed it makes it difficult for our digestive system to absorb nutrients from our food and can lead to malnutrition as well as salivary gland damage, gum disease, tooth decay, acid reflux and stomach ulcers. The pancreas can also lose its ability to produce insulin normally and cause it to produce toxic substances into the body.
B. Excretory System:
This system is responsible for filtering out toxins and excreting them from our bodies, but do not work all together like most organ systems in our bodies. It is made up of your kidneys, bladder, skin, sweat glands, liver, urinary system, large intestine, lungs. Over consumption of alcohol can damage the liver, whose job is to break down harmful substances in the body. This can lead to a buildup of scar tissue that eventually will destroy the organ.
C. Reproductive System:
It is this system that is responsible for the reproduction of our species as well as hormone production. In women, it consists of the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, cervix and vagina, and in men, the prostate, testis and penis. Alcohol affects these systems differently in men and women. In women, it heightens the chance of breast cancer and inhibits hormone production and may even cause fertility. In men, the over consumption of alcohol can lead to erectile disfunction.
D. Immune System:
The tissues that make up this system are your bone marrow, skin, thymus, tonsils and your mucus membrane. This system is designed to fight off infection and disease, even within your own cells. With the overconsumption of alcohol, your immune system is slowed, effecting the potency of your white blood cells and their ability to fight off infection and even forms of cancer. Drinking too much alcohol can even affect your immune system for up to 24 hours.
Whether you are an occasional drinker or only drink on special occasions, try and be more mindful of how much and how often you are consuming alcohol. It could be the missing piece to your wellness puzzle and help you to live a longer healthier life.
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