The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that over 10 million males and females over the age of 12 had Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) in the past year. That is 1 kid using for 10 of every preteen and teenager. An average of 775,000 adolescents from the ages of 12 to 17 had this disorder in the last year. For adults ages 18 and older, that was over 10% of the entire age group having AUD. On average, 141,000 “Americans die from the effects of alcohol” every year. The same study stated that 14.8 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with AUD.
Clearly, alcohol is a problem in our country and is starting very young in our children, but what exactly are the effects alcohol has on the brain and body? The NIAAA reports that alcohol messes with the brain’s communication pathways and can change the way it looks. Alcohol affects the way the brain does its job in certain areas such as balance, speech, judgment and memory. Using alcohol in adolescence can change the way the brain develops as a person ages, causing long-term differences in its form and function. When drinking alcohol after already being impaired by it, an alcohol overdose can happen. An alcohol overdose is caused by too much alcohol being present in the bloodstream that causes breathing and heart rate to slow down, eventually shutting down body systems.
Alcohol in moderation is ok and actually has a benefit in regards to heart health. Studies recorded that drinking alcohol in moderation increased high-density lipoprotein, which is essentially the good kind of cholesterol. It helps carry away and break down the extra cholesterol in your blood that would just block your arteries otherwise. Alcohol can also thin your blood so it is not as thick. This helps to make sure arteries don’t get any blood clots. However, drinking alcohol excessively has a negative impact on liver health. Drinking a lot can result in inflammation and extra fat in the liver, which can cause cirrhosis over time. Excessive alcohol use has also been linked to increasing the risk of certain cancers in the mouth, colon, liver, throat, etc. It also can weaken your immune system, which means you could catch a cold more often or something worse than a cold.
I think it’s important that we know the statistics and studies on alcohol use because it’s so prevalent today. For college students, I feel like it’s everywhere we turn. We either see people using it or hear of that happening. Knowledge of the effects and people’s desire to live a long time could have an impact on whether or not someone takes a drink.
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