Friday, July 27, 2012

Alcoholism Can Cause Poor Nutrition

When a person suffers from alcoholism, he may have a nutritional issue because alcohol tends to decrease appetite. As most alcohol abusers consider alcohol as their food substitute, they are likely not to get the necessary nutrients that their body needs. This is the reason why a lot of alcoholics become malnourished.

Alcoholism can disturb the absorption of nutrients and digestion of foods in the body. People who consume alcohol moderately use alcohol in addition to their normal food intake. These people tend to have the "beer belly" or a central obesity. An excessive amount of amount of alcohol will not be metabolized which generates heat to the body. According to alcohol rehab facility experts, malnutrition in heavy drinkers starts when they don't consume regular amount of foods.

Unnecessary Calories

An individual can get about 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate and protein while they get 7 calories for every gram of alcohol. However, calories from alcohol do not contain vitamins and minerals. Generally, when an individual gets more calories from alcohol he will have less amount of calories that he could spend on healthy foods.

Metabolism

Consuming too much amount of alcohol will affect the metabolism of the consumed nutrients. For example, alcoholism may not enable the liver to absorb folate that allows the kidneys to generate more of this B vitamin in the urine. This may cause the development of folate deficiency which damages a person's digestive system. Moreover, alcohol may also impact the function of folate to process homocystine which may cause the development of heart disorders because of an excess level of the substance. Someone who doesn't have a good folate status and has alcoholism can have a colorectal cancer. Also, when a person has thiamin deficiency, he may have an impaired coordination and memory, weakened nerves as well as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, which impacts the muscles of the eyes.

Toxicity

The toxic effects of abusive drinking can result in malnutrition. Many rehabilitation for alcohol specialists say that alcohol can result in the secretion of histamine and gastric acid from the stomach cells. With an excessive amount of gastric acid, the linings of the esophagus and the stomach can be irritated and histamine can cause inflammation. The stomach irritation makes an alcohol addict vulnerable to ulcer formations.

Too much intake of alcohol will affect a person's nutrition as they tend to ingest more alcohol than foods. Heavy drinkers can be recognized because of their apparent weight loss and malnutrition.


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