My Fitness Edge

Alcohol abuse affects us in many ways and our social skills; After one or two drinks you begin to feel more relaxed and more chatty as the alcohol gets into the brain and affects your cognitive abilities.
Alcohol causes your heart rate to heighten and you may experience a warm glow. This is caused by alcohol making the small Veins in the skin bigger, allowing blood to flow nearer to the surface and lowers blood pressure.

Alcohol Effects -how can alcohol affect your health?

The effects of drinking excessive amounts of alcohol can be extreme. Alcohol consumption health problems include anxiety, impaired judgment leading to accidents and injuries, loss of consciousness, slowed breathing and heartbeat, suffocation through choking on your own vomit and potentially fatal alcohol poisoning. There are also many mental effects, making you feel guilt or anger for no apparant reason and even making you paranoid. Your words may slurr, often don’t recognise your surroundings and drinking too much alcohol can result in memory loss.

Drinking alcohol increases your calorie intake, giving an indication as to why alcohol is a large part of adult obesity. There are 125 calories in a medium-sized (175ml) glass of wine and in a bottle there are over 500 calories. So thats about one quarter of your guidline daily calorie allowance!

Hangovers – Headaches could be the least of your worries

Alcohol misuse can cause you to get a hangover the next day, often being unpleasant to experience. You may get stomach ache, sickness, nausea and sometimes diarrhea, Drinking alcohol also dehydrates you. Alcohol misuse can also make you feel depressed, guilty

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If you drink over the recommmended daily units often you are putting your health in damger. Consuming larger amounts of alcohol increases blood pressure.

Drinking alcohol is often related with mental health problems. It has been found that people with anxiety and depression were twice as likely to be heavy drinkers.

Extreme levels of drinking may sometimes cause ‘psychosis’, a harsh mental illness where hallucinations and delusions of persecution develop. Heavy drinking might lead to seclusion and sadness.