Posted by
jackspar on Wednesday, August 06, 2008 12:00:00 AM
Alcohol may appear to be a pleasure but, taken in excess is a curse. The price of over-indulgence is a hangover the next morning. But that is only the start. Our bodies are sophisticated mechanisms, and pain is the body’s way of warning us that something is not right and that we should look to see it right. So the hangover symptoms - headache, thirst, dizziness and nausea - occur because the body’s systems have been disturbed. The body can deal with the occasional hangover and recover from it. Heavy drinking over a long period of time is another matter, causing long-term damage.
For a start the liver is overburdened with alcohol as it tries to convert the alcohol into energy. An impaired liver function can bring an imbalance to the body generally; a large proportion of heavy drinkers go on to develop cirrhosis, which deforms the liver due to massive scarring and dead liver tissue, which can be fatal. Alcoholic hepatitis (inflammation of the liver) and jaundice (a disease which causes yellowness of the skin) due to liver failure are also consequences of heavy drinking. The brain is affected by heavy drinking since brain cells are literally destroyed by alcohol.
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jackspar.
Mississippi Treatment Centers