Overview
Good nutrition is, of course, essential for providing energy and maintaining structure and performance. Many alcoholics, however, tend to eat but the quantity of food necessary to supply sufficient carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals.
On top of that, alcohol itself can interfere with the nutrition process by affecting digestion, storage, utilization, and excretion of nutrients. Consequently, chronic heavy drinkers are hit with a double health whammy—they don't consume enough nutrients, and therefore the nutrients they are doing consume aren't utilized well.
As a result, many drinkers with alcohol use disorders are a minimum of mildly malnourished and if their disorder is severe enough for them to be hospitalized, they're usually severely malnourished.
Restored nutrition is one among the foremost important features of a 28-day inpatient program. Improving diet also helps brain function, which may be important for improving willpower needed for recovery.
How Nutrition is meant to figure?
The gastrointestinal system is meant to figure this way: The body begins to breakdown food into usable molecules within the mouth and continues the method within the stomach and intestines, with help from the pancreas.
Nutrients from digested food are absorbed into the blood from the intestines and carried to the liver where they're prepared for immediate use or for storage for later use.
Alcohol Interferes With Digestion
Alcohol inhibits the natural breakdown of nutrients in several ways:
Ø Decreasing secretion of digestive enzymes from the pancreas.2
Ø Impairing nutrient absorption by damaging the cells lining the stomach and intestines.
Ø Disabling transport of some nutrients into the blood.
Ø Alcohol also interferes with the body's microbiome.
If the one that is drinking to excess is additionally not eating well, their nutritional deficiencies alone can impair the absorption of nutrients by altering the cells lining the tiny intestine.
Alcohol and Energy Supply
Eating a diet provides the body with the required calories to be used for energy, but some alcoholics will ingest tons of their total daily calories from alcohol.4 As a result, fewer calories are obtained from nutritious food sources, which suggests that there'll be fewer vitamins and minerals ingested. Alcohol does provide calories, but the body processes and uses the energy from alcohol differently than it does the calories from food.
Alcohol and Hypoglycemia
If alcohol is substituted for carbohydrates, calorie for calorie, the person will reduce rather than gain weight. This suggests they're getting less energy from alcohol calories than from food calories.
In alcoholics who are malnourished, consuming alcohol can cause a decrease in blood glucose , which may cause serious injury. The hypoglycemia, albeit short-lived, can cause the brain and other body tissue to be bereft of the glucose needed to function.
Proteins, vitamins, and minerals are essential for maintaining proper body function. Alcohol can affect proper body functioning by causing nutrient deficiencies and by disrupting the "machinery" the body uses to metabolize nutrients.
Vitamins: Vitamins help regulate many physiological processes within the body essential to maintaining growth and normal metabolism. By impairing absorption, metabolism, and utilization of vitamins, chronic heavy drinking can cause vitamin deficiencies.
Alcohol consumption can cause deficiencies in vitamin A , C, D, E, K, and B vitamins. These deficiencies can cause nyctalopia , softening of the bones, slow healing of wounds, decreased the power of the blood to clot and, within the brain, severe neurological damage.
Minerals: Alcoholics are found to possess deficiencies in calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc. Research shows that drinking alcohol itself doesn't limit the absorption of minerals, but alcohol-related problems do.
Mineral deficiencies could also be caused by other alcohol-related conditions:
Ø Decreased calcium absorption caused by fat malabsorption.
Ø Magnesium deficiency thanks to poor diet.
Ø Magnesium loss thanks to excretion, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Ø Iron deficiency thanks to gastrointestinal bleeding.
Ø Zinc losses associated with other nutrient deficiencies.
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