Alcohol: what's the fun?

It’s claimed that eating fermented pumpkins the squirrel in the video got drunk. Millions have watched this video. Certainly alcohol takes away normalcy from a being. Police and doctors have linked so many accidents around the world to alcohol. In august this year, there was a news from Australia that "Footballers Dwain Whitehurst, 21, and Murray Hill, 38 - the brother of television personality Ernie Dingo - died when their car collided head-on with a road train near Carnarvon.".Here again early investigation incriminated alcohol.
Not only this, researchers have shown it could lead to hepatitis and cirrhosis. Acetaldehyde, a byproduct of alcohol metabolism, inhibits mitochondrial functions. Kids would shout vitamin deficiency as its other harmful effect. Dismissing it as triffle? Wait a minute, the deficiency that it leads to is that of vitamin B1 also k/a thiamine. This could lead to diseases named Wernicke's encephalopathy and Korsakoff's syndrome.Korsakoff's syndrome -caused when Wernickes's is not treated with vitamin B1.The symptoms are confusion, amnesia, disorientation etc.

The interesting part of it is that it leads to brain atrophy. Women take to drinking late. Besides, as against men, they drink less. So that would mean we men harm ourselves more. It is not so. German researchers of the University of Heidelberg showed this. Through the study of brain scans of volunteers in a 6 week study they found evidence of brain damage in heavy drinkers. The damage was the same in both sexes. But the damage in females occurred earlier. Fetal alcohol syndrome, a syndrome of disruption of baby's developing brain, is well known among alcoholic mother.

It was not for nothing that a period of prohibition began in 1920 with the 18th
Amendment of the US constitution. As far as I know it declared that alcohol could not be sold, manufactured, imported, exported etc.In 1933, the 21st amendment repealed it. But still today in most countries there is a legal age of drinking.


Cardio protective effect in moderate amount has been publicized extensively. I think whatever benefit it has is far outweighed by the harm it does. One statistic by the National institute of Alcohol abuse in 2002 held alcohol consumption as responsible for 1400 deaths among college students, not to talk of thousands of injuries.

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