Alcohol consumption affects us in many ways and our social skills; After one or two drinks you usually feel more relaxed and more loud as the alcohol reaches the brain and affects your cognitive abilities.
Alcohol abuse causes your heart rate to speed up and you may feel a warm glow. This is caused by alcohol making the minute blood vessels in the skin expand, allowing blood to flow closer to the surface and lowers blood pressure.
How Alcohol Affects Our Health
The results of drinking extreme amounts of alcohol can be dire. Alcohol consumption health risks include anxiety, slowed breathing and heartbeat, impaired judgment leading to accidents and injuries, loss of consciousness, 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. You slurr your words, often don't recognise your surroundings and drinking too much alcohol can result in memory loss.
Drinking alcohol increases your calorie intake, resulting in it being partially responsible for 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!
The morning after - hangover unpleasantries
Drinking alcohol can cause you to get a hangover the next morning, often being undesirable to experience. You may experience stomach ache, sickness, nausea and sometimes diarrhea, Alcohol misuse also dehydrates you. Alcohol abuse can also make you feel sad, guilty
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If you drink over the guideline units often you are putting your health at risk. Consuming larger amounts of alcohol increases blood pressure.
Alcohol abuse is frequently linked with mental health problems. A recent British survey found that people with depression or anxiety were twice as likely to be alcoholics.
Big levels of drinking can occasionally cause ‘psychosis’, a serious mental illness where the person beleives others are out to get them. Heavy drinking might lead to isolation and unhappiness.
