The experts tell us that consuming small amounts of alcohol, the equivalent to just 2 standard drinks per day for men and 1 drink for women, is safe and may even offer protection to your heart. In 2001 the National Health and Medical Research Council published Australian Alcohol Guideline: Health Risks and Benefits in order to educate people about what risks they were taking by drinking any more than that.<\/p>\n
The physical, personal, and social costs of drinking alcohol far outweigh any good it will do your heart. And the authorities believe that for Aboriginals there is no good to be gained from drinking, because they have worse health status to begin with. In general, due to frequently being malnourished and at risk for premature death at tragically young ages already, adding alcohol to the mix is very serious indeed.<\/p>\n
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that about 3000 Australians per year die of drinking excessive alcohol, and that 3 times as many men die as women. The top 4 causes of death from risky alcohol consumption were alcoholic liver cirrhosis, road crash injuries, hemorrhagic stroke and suicide.<\/p>\n
The Australian Bureau of Statistics analysed hospital admissions statistics of all concurrent diagnoses involving alcohol, drugs, mental illness, physical illness or injury of Indigenous Australian patients and discovered that nearly 80% had mental health disorders with alcohol and other drug involvement. These facts are very disturbing.<\/p>\n
Regular drinking affects the brain, pancreas, liver and heart in particular, but may go completely unnoticed until the person becomes very ill and the damage is irreversible. The initial effects most noticeable are some of the main reasons that people drink alcohol: there is a reduction in tension and inhibitions, making the drinker feel more confident and relaxed. But as more and more is taken into the body the alcohol affects the brain, making the person respond more slowly.<\/p>\n
The adverse effects of alcohol on brain function can include unpredictable mood swings, short-term memory loss, inability to learn new skills or solve problems, blackouts and dizziness, seizures, hallucinations and dementia. Movement and coordination can become difficult. And without the ability to understand what is going on and the inability to communicate there is a tendency to react with confusion, anger and violence.<\/p>\n
Most surveys show that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are less likely than the general population to drink, but injury and disease due to alcohol are particularly high among those who do drink. The rate of death from alcohol consumption among Indigenous Australians is about twice that for the non-Indigenous population, with a particularly strong association found between alcohol use and suicide. Aboriginal men as young as 23 are now being reported with a form of dementia called Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, which is alcohol induced.<\/p>\n
Treatment is possible, but without aggressive medical and nutritional intervention there will be ongoing difficulty with personal and social interaction, falls, permanent brain damage with loss of thinking skills, permanent loss of memory and a shortened life span. Studies conducted by the University of Sydney have shown that the incidence and prevalence of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome in this country may be the highest in the world with many homeless men in our urban areas suffering from it.<\/p>\n
Clearly something needs to be done to address this dire problem in both the Indigenous Aboriginal and the homeless community. Mission Australia’s Michael Project, in conjunction with the University of NSW<\/span> and Murdoch University, is one ambitious local program examining what can be done for better outcomes for homeless people with mental illness and alcohol induced dementia. Their evidence-based results will eventually mean more effective treatment for this population who are often so mired in their situation and seeing no way out. For more information please see the following:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.nhmrc.gov.au\/your_health\/healthy\/alcohol\/burden.htm <\/a> The experts tell us that consuming small amounts of alcohol, the equivalent to just 2 standard drinks per day for men and 1 drink for women, is safe and may even offer protection to your heart. In 2001 the National Health and Medical Research Council published Australian Alcohol Guideline: Health Risks and Benefits in order […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhttp:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/2136519 <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"