The phisiological effects of drinking alcohol on the body.

The phisiological effects of drinking alcohol on the body.

These musings of mine about my family and me and alcohol are personal however, if someone benefits from our experiences this in my mind is a good thing. I remember when an older member of our family (protect their identity), and I were enjoying an evening in the pub celebrating something or other. As we approached the end of the evening we agreed to meet again on the weekend. I said to him, when we meet on Sunday, you will not remember I was here all evening with you tonight! He said ofcourse he will. On Sunday I turned up after confirming our meeting on Saturday midday, (the safest and most reliabe time to talk to him), and on the Sunday morning I asked the infamous question. When was the last time we meet? He said about 3 months ago was it not? I said no it was this Wednesday evening just gone, and I said to him that I had predicted he would not remember my visit on that Wednesday evening and he said really! On this question of reversing alcoholic dementia, it appears that finding someone that recognises they have the condition is one thing, however, finding someone with the condition recognising it and then wanting to do something about it is quite another. This is a work in progress. I think this experience has contributed to my desire to reduce my alcoholic consumption more and more. I am sure that one day I will enjoy a fresh glass of water as much as any other beverage one day.

However, there is one more very serious under rated component to this story. Bill Wilson and Bob Smith began AA (alcoholic anonymous) in June 10, 1935 and later Bill meet Abram Hoffer authour of many books and publications and in his book on in a chance encounter and Bill asked Abbram if there might be something that could help with the on going pain that has resulted from so much damage done to the nervous system by drinking so much alcohol for so long. Bill went onto say that about a third of ex heavy drinkers suffer from this ongoing pain. Abram Hoffer wondered about this. He recommended 3g vitamin C and up to 3g of B3 split into 3 doses after each meal. Bill was grateful and to my knowledge tried it and it alleviated some of the symptoms for himself and most of members that went onto try it for themselves. Bill remained an advocate for nutritional support for ex alcoholics for the rest of his life.

Getting nutritional support after quitting drinking is one thing. At A&E (accident and emergency) it is a well known treatment for acute alcoholics to receive vitamin intervention before they have quite, like with Wernicke encephalopathy. This condition is treated with high doses of B1 (Thiamine), and helps patients with their memories and acute death. What treatments are there for before quitting carbohydrate addiction and what treatments are there for after quitting carbohydrates? Similarly the same can be said for and before and after caffeine and before and after gluten.

So if it turns out you have pre-diabetes than for some, this is incurable, but for others it is possible to reverse this. I managed it, I was one of the lucky ones. I very occasionally get hypoglycaemic due to poor food choices earlier in the day, which sets off a chain reaction and leads to sugar being low. Just in case you are interested this chain of events starts with a meal that is too high in carbs. This results in sugar levels rising temporarily too high followed by a slump in sugar levels. You may ask, but was you not therefore too high in sugar to start with? Fair question. If your sugar levels rise and your pancreas is still working it will pull that sugar level down with insulin thus turning all that sugar to fat and storing it under your skin, but if your pancreas is not working properly than your sugar levels may stay high, which is very dangerous, for that matter the opposite is also not good, sugar levels in your blood stream should also not be too low. At any one time our blood stream can only hold approx a maximum of just 5g of sugar. This is a very tightly controlled mechanism. However, that been said alcohol drinkers are by definition are according the drink aware website