You're here because you want to stop drinking alcohol. That's what Science-Based Reasons Why You Should Stop Drinking Alcohol are all about.
There are a lot of reasons you should stop drinking alcohol and we're going to help you understand them. We'll also show you how alcohol negatively impacts your health and give you commonsense ways to stop drinking without going into a severe state of depression.
Table of Contents
1. Science-Based Reasons Why You Should Stop Drinking Alcohol
1.1. Alcohol Can Be a Depressant
1.2. Alcohol Messes With Your Sleep
1.3. Alcohol Can Affect Your Brain Function and Compromise Your Memory
1.5. Alcohol Increases The Risk of Certain Cancers
Science-Based Reasons Why You Should Stop Drinking Alcohol
Alcohol puts a severe, negative impact on your brain function, your heart health, and more. The only way to stop the ill effects of alcohol is to quit drinking altogether. Not being able to control yourself is also reason enough to avoid it. Here are some of the reasons you need:
1. Alcohol Can Be a Depressant
Many people enjoy the taste and social aspects of alcohol, but they don't realize that this drug can be dangerous. Alcohol is a depressant that slows movement and reaction time, affects vision and judgement, and decreases coordination. In addition to being addictive, heavy alcohol consumption can cause long-term health problems such as liver disease, heart disease, and stroke.
Alcohol Can Be Addictive
Alcohol is a highly addictive substance that can cause both physical and psychological dependence with regular use. If you're drinking more than you planned or if you find that it's hard for you to stop despite negative consequences in your life, you may have an alcohol problem.
Alcohol Can Be Dangerous When Mixed With Other Drugs
Many people consume alcohol in combination with other drugs like prescription painkillers or marijuana because they believe it will enhance the effects of these substances. However, mixing different drugs puts your body at risk for serious side effects including overdose and death from respiratory failure.
Drinking alcohol is fun and relaxing for a lot of people. But, it's also a depressant that can make you feel even more tired and depressed than you did before.
"Alcohol is a depressant," says Dr Mark Willenbring, former director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. "It depresses the function of the brain."
A 2015 study published in JAMA Psychiatry found that people who drink heavily are more likely to be depressed than those who don't drink at all or only drink moderately. The researchers looked at data from more than 6,000 individuals who were part of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). They found that those who drank heavily were twice as likely to have depression compared with those who didn't drink at all or consumed just one drink per day.
Other studies have shown similar results: Heavy drinkers are more likely to develop symptoms of depression after they stop drinking (also known as post-acute withdrawal syndrome). What's worse, these symptoms can last for years after someone stops drinking completely. Some research suggests that stopping heavy drinking might increase your risk of developing depression later in life even if you never had a problem before going sober.
Related Topic: 11 Health Risks Associated With Soda And Other Sugary Drinks
2. Alcohol Messes With Your Sleep
If you're someone who drinks alcohol, you've probably heard that it's bad for you. It's linked to several health problems, including cancer and liver disease. Alcohol can also be dangerous in the short term: It impairs your judgment and coordination, makes you more likely to get into car accidents, and increases the risk that you'll get injured or even killed while drinking.
Alcohol is a diuretic, which means that it can cause you to urinate more frequently than usual. This can lead to dehydration and make you feel tired. Alcohol also hurts sleep, which can result in feeling tired the next day.
But there are other reasons why drinking alcohol is bad for us, too — reasons that don't get as much attention as liver disease or alcoholism but are still important to consider.
Alcohol has a sedative effect on the brain, which seems to counteract its stimulatory effect on our bodies. This leads many people who drink before bedtime to experience poor sleep quality and frequent waking during the night. Studies have found that people who drink before bed have poorer sleep quality than those who don't drink at all.
It’s a well-known fact that alcohol affects your sleep. Alcohol is a depressant, which means it slows down brain activity and muscle movement. While this makes you feel relaxed and drowsy, it also delays REM sleep, or rapid eye movement (when you dream).
Alcohol can also cause you to wake up during the night and have trouble falling back asleep — which makes for a fitful night’s sleep overall.
This isn’t just annoying; it can be dangerous as well. Research has shown that people who drink even moderate amounts of alcohol over time are at an increased risk of developing high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes. These conditions all increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease: the number one cause of death in the world.
Also Read: What Are The Healthy Alternatives to Soda And Sugary Drinks?
3. Alcohol Can Affect Your Brain Function and Compromise Your Memory
Alcohol can affect your brain function and compromise your memory, even at low doses.
Alcohol may impair your memory by disrupting the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in forming new memories. The hippocampus also plays a role in learning and emotion.
The more you drink, the more likely you are to experience memory impairment. Heavy drinking may also cause blackouts, which are periods that you cannot recall because they lack any memories recorded during them.
Alcohol impairs both short-term and long-term memory. While some people may be able to remember what happened while they were drinking after a night of heavy drinking, this isn't the same as having a clear memory of something that happened days or months before.
In addition to affecting memory, alcohol causes the hippocampus — an area of the brain that's important for learning new information — to shrink. This makes it harder to learn new things or remember things you once knew well.
Regularly drinking alcohol can also impair your ability to process information quickly, leading to slow reaction times and poor decision-making.
Read More: How to Keep Your Brain Fit as You Age
4. Heavy Drinking Can Damage The Heart Muscle, Leading to Serious Problems Like Cardiomyopathy, Arrhythmias, and Stroke
People who drink heavily are more likely to have health problems than people who don't drink at all. Alcohol abuse is linked to an increased risk of developing more than 200 diseases and health conditions, including high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
Heavy drinking can damage the heart muscle, leading to serious problems like cardiomyopathy (irregular heartbeat), arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythm), and stroke.
Heavy alcohol use is also linked to liver damage and other severe medical issues. Alcohol affects every organ system in the body — including the brain, heart, liver, and kidneys — as well as causing birth defects if you drink while pregnant.
Heavy drinkers may experience temporary symptoms such as slurred speech or impaired vision after consuming alcohol on an empty stomach. These effects can be dangerous when operating machinery or driving a motor vehicle.
Heavy drinking can damage the heart muscle, leading to serious problems like cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias, and stroke. Alcohol abuse also increases blood pressure and heart rate, which increases your risk for heart attack or stroke. Excess alcohol consumption is blamed for 2.5 million deaths worldwide each year — that’s 1 in 20 deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Alcohol can cause liver damage that leads to cirrhosis and liver failure. Cirrhosis is scarring of the liver tissue due to chronic alcohol use or other causes such as hepatitis B or C infections. Liver failure occurs when the liver cannot perform its functions properly due to cirrhosis.
Alcohol damages every organ system in your body including your brain and nervous system, which can lead to permanent brain damage or death if it’s not treated quickly enough. Heavy drinking also causes nerve damage that results in a condition called alcoholic neuropathy (also known as peripheral neuropathy), which involves numbness or tingling sensations affecting your hands and feet.
Heavy drinking has been linked with cancer of the mouth, throat, and larynx (voice box)
5. Alcohol Increases The Risk of Certain Cancers
Alcohol is a known carcinogen, which means that it can cause cancer. Alcohol consumption increases the risk of developing many cancers, including cancers of the breast, liver, mouth, throat, oesophagus, and colon.
Alcohol increases your risk of breast cancer in multiple ways:
- It makes estrogen levels higher. Estrogen is associated with fibrocystic breasts, which occur when there is an imbalance between estrogen and progesterone in the body. An increase in estrogen levels causes cells to divide more rapidly than normal and increases the risk of cancerous tumours forming.
- It decreases progesterone levels in a woman’s body, which slows down cell growth and reduces the risk of developing cancerous cells.
- Alcohol affects hormone levels and metabolism by interfering with the production of certain hormones that inhibit tumour formation.
Stomach cancer. Drinking more than three drinks a day increases the risk of gastric cancer by 30 per cent.
Cancer of the oesophagus and liver. Alcohol is thought to increase the risk of cancers in these organs by 30 to 40 per cent.
6. An excessive alcohol intake may damage the pancreas and its ability to produce the digestive enzyme insulin
The way alcohol is metabolized by your body is more complex than many people realize. Alcohol is known to be toxic and can damage the liver, brain, and other vital organs. In addition to this, excessive alcohol intake can also lead to pancreatitis – inflammation of the pancreas – which can cause pancreatic cancer.
Alcohol consumption increases the risk of type 2 diabetes. Studies have shown that people who consume one drink per day or more have a 30% increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared with those who drink less than one drink per day.
Excessive alcohol intake may damage the pancreas and its ability to produce the digestive enzyme insulin. This causes an increase in blood sugar levels which leads to diabetes mellitus type 2.
Alcohol is high in calories and can contribute to weight gain if consumed in excess. A single serving of alcohol contains around 100 calories (depending on the type), so if you drink two or more servings in one sitting, it could be the equivalent of eating a large meal — without all of the nutrients!
When alcohol enters your bloodstream, it disrupts cell communication by blocking receptors that help control cell activity — especially those involved with reproduction.
It also interferes with folate metabolism by reducing levels of this essential vitamin in your cells. Folate helps protect against birth defects like spina bifida (when part of the spinal cord fails to form properly during pregnancy) and cleft lip/palate.
Wrapping Up
So what can you do to kick-start your sobriety? A good place to start is by making a list of reasons why you want to stop drinking alcohol. This could be anything from "I want to save money", to "I want to be healthier". Whatever your motivation, the most important thing is that you develop a clear plan for moving forward.
You can still have fun and be happy without alcohol, but when you drink it, you're depriving yourself of all the positive things that you could instead be doing with your life. And while relieving stress and having fun are great reasons to drink, they don't help you live longer or improve your health, so there's no need to continue consuming alcohol (especially if you don't even enjoy it). Consequently, you should probably just stop drinking alcohol and focus on living a long and healthy life.
As you can see, there are many benefits of giving up alcohol, such as increased brain function, decreased stress levels, better sleep, improved heart health, and more. So what are you waiting for? Start drinking more water, eat more fruits and veggies, get enough sleep and say a polite no to alcohol – and experience the benefits for yourself. With a healthier lifestyle than ever before, there is no stopping you from becoming a better version of yourself.
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