Alcohol and its Effects on the Human Body Research (Research Paper Sample)

Alcohol and its Effects on the Human Body
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Introduction
When the term alcohol is mentioned where people are, there is a high probability that most if not all of the audience have an idea what it is or what it is about. Since time immemorial, alcohol has been a drink in most of the human societies for centuries. According to Smart (2007), alcohol has in the current world become an accepted as well as a common way people use to unwind or manage the pressures of life they are experiencing from their day to day activities. Alcohol has quite a long history of civilization as asserted by Stainback (1997). The inception of alcohol has not been agreed upon by historians, and there is still a debate as to what exact period it was incepted in the history of human beings. He goes ahead and points out that alcohol as a beverage probably may have come to be in existence at around 8,000 B.C and since then people have continued to use and consume it and made it very popular in the process. This report seeks to examine and unravel the issues around the conception of alcohol, how it is made and its composition and the effects it has on the body of human beings who consumed it.
In real sense alcohol is a drug, and it is in actual sense the widely used psychoactive drug in almost all the societies in the world. The production of alcohol comes in various forms, for example, liquors, wines, distilled spirits as well as beers. The listed beverages above contain different percentages of pure alcohol in them with beers having the least percentage in the list while distilled spirits were containing the highest percentage of pure alcohol. To those who drink, a standard alcoholic drink contains about .5 oz of pure alcohol. In a research carried out by Stinson et al. (1995), in the United States of America, the annual per capita consumption of alcohol was 2.25 gallons of pure alcohol in the year 1993. Ethanol is the predominant component that is found in alcoholic drinks, and it is a naturally occurring byproduct of the metabolic process that takes place in yeast. In this sense, it means that in any habitat of yeast, ethanol is present. Concerning the initiation of the use of alcohol among the people, it varies from one community to the other. For example, when parents consume alcohol in a family, it will almost definitely make the children of that family drink in future. Another factor that determines whether one will drink is the attitudes of the peer groups especially is one progresses into adolescence.
Quite some those who consume alcohol tend to think that it does not pose a threat to their health as Stainback (1997) points out. Smart, on the other hand, asserts that people have the knowledge that there are dangers associated with the drinking of alcohol. The consumption of alcohol has adverse effects on the human body ranging from the brain, heart, liver, pancreas to the immune system of and individual. These effects in most cases come about due to the excessive consumption of health that is not good for the health of those who consume it. Solomon (1982) points out that the direct effects of the use of alcohol concerning emotional as well as physical well-being or in some cases the combination of the two may be a real cause of suicide in the society. Those who consume alcohol in most cases have a manifestation of their intentions to take their lives intentionally through various ways. This concept is referred to as chronic suicide.
Cook (2008) suggests that one of the least complications of alcohol consumption that is appreciated in the medical fraternity is the alteration of the immune regulation that consequently results in autoimmunity as well as immunodeficiency. Immunodeficiency on the bad side has negative effects on the body of a human being, for example, the increasing of the susceptibility of tuberculosis, bacterial pneumonia as well as other infectious illnesses and infections. There are a...