C & P information on alcohol.


What is alcohol?

Alcohol is derived from the fermentation of sugar by yeast. It is a drug. The main psychoactive ingredient in alcoholic drinks is ethanol, or ethyl alcohol.

Ethanol dissolves quickly in water and is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream. In the short term, in small doses, it acts on receptors in the brain to make people feel uninhibited and provides a general sense of well-being. Drinking more alcohol starts to affect the balance and the speech centre of the brain. If you drink regularly, the brain’s receptors adapt to the alcohol and higher doses are needed to cause the same effect.

Alcohol is a depressant. Rather than acting as a stimulant, alcohol is likely to have the opposite effect on people who drink heavily.

What happens when you drink alcohol?

Alcohol is quickly soaked up through the lining of the stomach and the upper part of the gut (intestine) and into your blood stream. The higher the concentration of alcohol, the faster it will be absorbed (whisky will be faster than beer, for example).

From there, the alcohol is carried to your liver as well as other organs and body tissue. Your brain will be affected by the flow of alcohol which acts on the central nervous system to alter your physical coordination and mental judgement.

Your liver cannot store alcohol. It metabolises (processes) about 90 per cent of the alcohol you drink to eliminate it from your body. It breaks down the alcohol into water, gas (carbon dioxide) and fat.

What happens to the liver if you drink too much?

Along with the central nervous system, the liver suffers the most from alcohol consumption.

Your liver can only handle a certain amount of alcohol in any given time (one unit an hour). If you are drinking quickly, your liver cells will have to work overtime to process the alcohol. When this is more than the liver can deal with, the excess is transported to the rest of your organs.

Your liver needs water to do its job. As alcohol acts as a diuretic (makes you pass urine), it dehydrates you and forces the liver to divert water from elsewhere.

When the liver is processing alcohol it produces a substance called acetaldehyde. This has a toxic effect on the liver itself, as well as the brain and stomach lining. This is what causes your hangover.

Acetaldehyde is subsequently broken down into a chemical called acetate, which is broken down further into carbon dioxide and water outside the liver.

Regular and heavy drinking over time can strain or disrupt this process, leading to alcoholic liver disease.

The first stage of disease may not seem all that significant but must be acted upon. The later

stages are very serious and can threaten your life.

Fatty liver

When the liver breaks down alcohol, it stores the fat in your liver. There should be little or no fat in a healthy liver. Too much of this fat can build up if you drink more than the liver can cope with, leading to fatty liver disease. You can get a fatty liver without drinking. This is called, perhaps unoriginally, ‘non-alcoholic fatty liver disease’ (NAFLD).

It is thought that if you are overweight and drinking too much, you will be increasing the chances of damaging your liver, as it receives fat from both food and alcohol.

Fatty livers return to normal if you drink within the sensible limit. If you carry on drinking above that limit you are running the risk of more serious damage.

Alcoholic hepatitis

If you have a fatty liver and continue to drink, you have up to a one in three chance of getting alcoholic hepatitis. This is a condition where your liver becomes puffy, swollen and tender. It can affect you suddenly – after a weekend of binge drinking, for example – and if your liver fails, it can kill you. Alcoholic hepatitis can happen to you at an early stage or after many years of excessive drinking.

Fibrosis

Scar tissue, which is generated to protect injured tissue from further damage and will disappear in a healthy liver, may keep building up. This scarring is known as fibrosis.

Cirrhosis

The final stage of alcoholic liver disease is cirrhosis. This is usually the result of long-term, continuous damage to the liver.

Irregular bumps, known as nodules, replace the smooth liver tissue and the liver becomes harder. The effect of this, together with continued scarring from fibrosis, means that the liver will run out of healthy cells to support normal functions. This can lead to complete liver failure.

By the time you discover you have cirrhosis your quality of life may be severely damaged as your liver will have stopped working efficiently. If you carry on drinking at this stage you will speed up the damage to your liver and rapidly increase your chances of dying.

The odds are one in ten that you will develop cirrhosis if you drink too much over a long period of time. In the UK, the number of people dying from cirrhosis each year is increasing.

As well as all the problems related to the liver not doing its job, people with cirrhosis also have a much higher chance of getting liver cancer. Each year, three to five per cent of people with cirrhosis will develop liver cancer.

Something about this post isnt sitting well with me....well maybe its just me.

Anyway, if i were you @F&F i would fight for it, yes money cant buy life but it can surely prolong it if its God's will. You have indicated that you have turned to God, that's great, you also need to get human help not "us" virtual friends as a support system to get through this.

Wish you well.

Come on FF, you have, most importantly, family and friends . Very sincere friends. you don't even need to look hard to see them. just lie back, think of a few years, months and days back and you might just realise there are people out there who have your back... 3 months is a long time my friend. There are those in ICU who do not know about tomorrow. Live your life to the best you can.... start by counting your blessings, like the many years you have lived already, people who have touched your life, family, friends and even that stranger who smiled when you almost made him/her stumble, that chance to see the world and touch its people, and the 3 months you were given will not be a big deal...

Concentrate on living a full happy life for the time you have, appreciate every little thing, like talking to wazuans, the gloomy day out there, the sun that hits you on your way out etc and you will be surprised, it might end up being a year, 3years, 10 years, who knows? If i were you, i wouldn't worry about dying in 3 months.... we will all die anyway, some will even die before the 3 months and probably think they have 40 more years to go..... i would concentrate on making the remaining days of my life, the happiest days i ever lived! The most appreciative days of my life..... the 3 months that i laughed most.. the 3 months i cared less for any earthly problems.. the 3 months i complained and pitied myself less.. etc. After all, who'll live for ever?

If you really do not have anyone to leave your money for - which i doubt - why not take a holiday with a friend who makes you crack up.... do what you have always wanted to do "before you die"... this is the time...

writing a will is just simple, you have two independent witnesses, you write what you wish to have done with your property and how the liabilities will be settled and appoint someone who will be in charge then you sign and date the document and have two independent witnesses sign the document stating they say you sign the same(they should not the beneficiaries)

Having said that i belong to the eastern philosophy and one thing i have realized it's best to let the things of the world go, do not cling to the things of the world the property, we are only in this world so that our souls can learn lessons it needs to learn and you move on. There is something that your soul need to learn and once it's done the soul must move on. Everything you have done in your life has brought to this stage of your life and the most important thing now is to leave your past behind, seek to be at peace, stop worrying what will happen to your wealth and who will cry at your grave, such thoughts just bring you pain and sorrow. I do hope that you can allow yourself to let go and enjoy every day

Wendz,am not sure if this is true or its meant to be a lesson to all of us. Just out of curiosity, is this the same fastn furious at one of the mbuzi's ? Somethin just wont add up...

Reading this thread makes me have a tinge, somewhere in myself i feel this is not true but then it also sounds very true.
I do not drink or even smoke though i want to believe F&F has taken this step to advice on the downside of drinking and placed it on the singular "I" and this makes the message so loud to any of us reading it.

If it's true, then my brother do not give up on your life as God the great physician is present and will heal you and when time comes will give you peace. Am glad you have come to know God i beseech you to know him in person as we can only share and give advices here en that is just that.

Yah, where is the alligator. Since early in the year, I have not seen the reptile prowling this site. He is MIA.

wazua admin can you take this mbuzi for ff to another level? wazuans can contribute say 500/- per person to make it succeed

Me thinks its the right thing to do.... seconded...

@Magigi, you can be sure i will show up for this one... i hope that makes you "thirded", no?!

@Wendz
..And the two of you will sit next to each other... Trust me,@Magigi will make your day/afternoon with his totally hilarious stories