Alcohol
Alcohol is one of the greatest public health threats in North America. Alcohol is a major factor in the death toll on our highways and we're seeing an unprecedented growth in harm related to alcohol abuse. Alcohol does not get a lot of attention in regards to prevention, and the governments and health professionals are not doing enough to curb its deadly potential.
According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, the global burden of disease and injury attributable to alcohol is large and growing. North Americans in general, and Canadians in particular drink more than 50 per cent above the global average, and show a more detrimental drinking pattern than most EU countries, with more bingeing. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, excessive alcohol use is the third-leading preventable cause of death in the United States.
Numerous experiments of chemists and physiologists have shown conclusively that the presence of alcohol in the blood diminishes the amount of oxygen taken up through the air-cells of the lungs; retards the molecular and metabolic changes of both nutrition and waste throughout the system and diminishes the sensibility and action of the nervous structures in direct proportion to the quantity of alcohol present. By its stronger affinity for water and albumen, with which it readily unites in all proportions, it so alters the hemaglobin of the blood as to lessen its power to take the oxygen from the air-cells of the lungs and carry it as oxyhemaglobia to all the tissues of the body; and by the same affinity it retards all atomic or molecular changes in the muscular, secretory and nervous structures; and in the same ratio it diminishes the elimination of carbon-dioxide, phosphates, heat and nerve force. In other words, its presence diminishes all the physical phenomena of life.
Abuse, heavy use, misuse and problem use of alcohol refer to improper use of alcohol, which may cause physical, social, or moral harm to the drinker. Drinking during pregnancy can cause damage to the baby resulting in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Women are generally more sensitive than men to the harmful physical and mental effects of alcohol.
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