Every year more than 75,000 people die from the harmful effects of alcohol only in Russia. Alcoholics are poisoned by a substandard surrogate, freezes in snowdrifts, gets heart attacks, dies of liver diseases and strokes. Attacks of memory loss, which often occur after every booze, cause only grins, but in vain. Such episodes signal the destructive effect of alcoholic beverages on the human brain.
How alcohol affects the brain of a person
It is very easy to suspect a person nearby in alcoholic intoxication: in addition to a pronounced unpleasant smell of fumes, a shaky walk, indistinct speech, and ugly behavior give out. All this is the consequence of the destructive effects of ethanol on the brain.
Getting into the human body, alcohol acts instantly, it affects all organs. The brain is more intense than other organs is saturated with blood, therefore it is in the brain that ethyl alcohol very quickly reaches its maximum concentration. There comes intoxication, and this is nothing but the poisoning effect of alcohol on the brain. There are short-term and long-term effects of ethanol on the most important human organ.
Mechanism of exposure
The structure of the brain is very complicated. The brain itself consists of five sections, which are interconnected by means of billions of nerve cells-neurons. Between the brain and blood there is a special physiological barrier that protects the brain from getting into it bacteria, viruses and metabolic products, sometimes very toxic. That's only from the penetration of ethyl alcohol, this barrier, alas, to protect the brain is not able. Being an excellent solvent, ethanol penetrates well through membranes and barriers and enters the brain. The enzymatic ability of alcohol dehydrogenase in the brain is extremely low, therefore, the cleavage of ethanol to acetic acid is immeasurably longer than in the liver, but the ability to accumulate alcohol in brain nerve cells is very high. The brain is not able to take alcohol even a month after drinking! Let's see how alcohol affects the various structures of the brain.
Cerebellum. This area of the brain is responsible for the balance and coordination of movements. Getting into the body, ethanol mostly accumulates in the cerebellum, causing him serious harm. This explains the shaky gait and imbalance in a drunk person.
Bark of the brain. This part of the brain is responsible for thinking, the ability to plan, to take responsibility for their actions. Alcohol in any concentration disrupts the functioning of the cerebral cortex, thereby causing disturbances in the recognition of objects, memory problems, the ability to concentrate on anything. With prolonged use of ethyl alcohol, the level of intelligence decreases, a person gradually degrades.
What happens after the neurons die? After the splitting of alcohol in the blood, a hangover phase begins, in which the drunkard experiences headache and thirst. These processes are explained by the fact that the wise organism tries to remove the killed nerve cells - increases intracranial pressure and increases the flow of fluid, which causes a headache. The dead nerve cells are excreted in the urine.
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In addition to the detrimental effect on the structure of the brain itself, alcohol has a negative effect on the vessels of the brain. Under the influence of ethyl alcohol and associated intoxication vessels expand, and then sharply narrow, which is fraught with cerebral stroke and severe disability, and in some cases, death.
On the video mechanism of the influence of alcohol on the brain:
Consequences of
Prolonged and systematic consumption of alcohol leads to the death of billions of nerve cells. Already after four years of uncontrolled drinking alcoholic alcoholic decreases in size, which does not have the best effect on the mental abilities of the drinking person. In parallel with this, the mass of the brain also decreases, it seems to dry out.
Organic brain damage to the alcoholic can not help but affect the performance of the most important functions:
- Elementary mental work becomes difficult, the criticality of thinking decreases, the thinking process narrows and worsens.
- Character is corrupting, irritability, aggression prevails.
- Due to the release of a large amount of dopamine with the use of alcoholic beverages, fast addiction forms to ethanol, alcoholization, difficult to treat, arises.
- Long-term use of alcohol leads to almost complete shutdown of highly organized brain structures. Human activity becomes subject to the subcortex, the alcoholic degrades as a person. There are such diseases as senile dementia, Alzheimer's disease, dementia.
There is a natural question - how much alcohol and how long do you need to use to get to the inability to think? In fact, it's not enough to drink 5 liters of beer or 630 grams of vodka a week.
Features of the impact on adolescents
The earlier a teenager begins to consume alcoholic beverages, the faster his brain is destroyed. It is in the adolescent period that the brain completes its development, and the formation of the nervous system ends. Due to high metabolism, alcohol is quickly absorbed into the circulatory system and, strengthening its destructive effect, destroys the child's brain. There comes a delay in the intellectual and emotional development of the teenager. Almost immediately, there is a degradation of personality. There are neurological and mental abnormalities, very quickly formed attachment to alcohol. Dependence is formed literally in the first two to three years of systematic consumption of alcohol.
Brain recovery
Of course, the dead cells of the brain, already excreted from the excretory system, can not be restored. However, recent studies have shown that after completely giving up alcohol, the brain is partially capable of recovery. Literally a year after the absolute refusal of alcohol increases the volume of the brain, restores the intellect and the ability to think more deeply.
What factors contribute to the recovery of the brain:
- complete absolute refusal to drink alcohol;
- reception nootropics - medical drugs that help improve cerebral circulation and nutrition;
- additional use of vitamin complexes.
On the full restoration of brain structures can not count, of course. Even a partial regeneration and preservation of brain activity will have to spend a long time and effort. But if the alcoholic has a sincere desire to stop drinking and restore his health, then it's never too late to do it.