Everyone knows the short-term effects of alcohol use, but many lesser-known long-term effects can set in through heavy alcohol use, such as weight gain and liver, heart or brain damage.
Persistently heavy drinking can cause body hair to shed and sperm count to diminish.
University of Wisconsin associate nutritional science professor Susan Smith said excessive drinking can cause liver and heart damage, as well as a loss of neurons and support cells in the brain. She said women have a greater risk of experiencing negative effects from alcohol.
“Liver damage is a higher risk for women because they concentrate the alcohol more,” Smith said.
According to Smith, women’s stomachs do not break down alcohol well, so most of the alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream. Men, however, can metabolize up to 25 percent of alcohol. Because the body views alcohol as a poison, it concentrates on ridding the body of alcohol before processing any other calories. It takes about one hour for the liver to absorb one drink of alcohol, so any other food eaten while drinking likely ends up absorbed into the body as fat.
Consequently, alcohol can easily cause weight gain. The average 12-ounce beer has 145 calories, and the average 12-ounce light beer has 100 calories. The average person needs between 2,000 and 3,000 calories a day, and two regular-calorie beers equal approximately one Snickers bar.
“Where normally you could burn off calories, the alcohol prohibits it,” Smith said. “Alcohol suppresses the body’s ability to burn energy, so calories will have a larger impact.”
Additionally, an alcohol binge can disrupt normal sleeping patterns, so the body can’t produce enough growth hormone. Growth hormones signal the body to convert fat into energy, and the body releases the greatest amount of growth hormone at night. Consistently low levels of growth hormone in the body can also lead to weight gain.
Some medical studies have indicated that one alcoholic drink per day is good for the heart, but Smith said there are no benefits of one drink a day for students. She said light regular drinking could be helpful for people in their 40s, but the decision must be made with a physician because it can lead to high blood pressure.
Smith said students should know their limits when it comes to drinking.
“Drinking is a social lubricant; it loosens inhibitions. The problem is, people go past that,” Smith said. “People need to understand that it is OK to say ‘No, I’m happy where I am.'”
Smith said that while individuals are drinking, they should ask themselves questions to see how they feel in order to tell if they have had too much.
The blood alcohol content is the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream. According to Outside the Classroom’s BAC chart, a BAC of between .02 and.04 is when most people begin to feel relaxed or “buzzed.” A person is considered legally drunk in most states if he or she has a BAC in a range of between .08 and .10. Alcohol poisoning occurs when a person has a BAC of between .25 and .40.
The legal drinking limit in Wisconsin is a BAC of .10. Smith said this level of alcohol content can be achieved by men drinking about three drinks in an hour and women drinking about two drinks in an hour.
According to Smith, students in college have more drinking problems than most people realize.
“College drinking is a much larger problem than most people grasp,” Smith said.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “Each year 1,400 college students from ages 18-24 die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes.” The NIAAA also said multiple injuries, assaults and health problems occur each year because of alcohol.
Smith said students should learn more about alcohol.
“It’s important for people to be really well educated about alcohol so they can know facts and make intelligent decisions about alcohol,” Smith said. “It is good to know limits and respect people when they say they’ve reached their limit.”
