Alcohol is a Poor Lifestyle
Drinking too much alcohol is a poor lifestyle decision, and it will certainly have adverse affects on your health. If it doesn’t damage your health first, then it will cause you grief in a multitude of other ways, such as ruin your financial situation, mess with your employment prospects, wreck your relationships, or get you into trouble with the law.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) have also been researching this subject over a long period of time, and conclude that there is a direct link between health and social status, and guess what – one of the key indicators is diminished health in correlation with increased addiction to substances such as alcohol and nicotine.
“Poorer people live shorter lives and get sick more often than the rich.
This disparity has drawn attention to the correlation between health and social standing”
Furthermore, the WHO goes on to explain how social and psychological factors influence the health of individuals and how health outcomes have a direct impact on life expectancy. This is no longer a debate about how much alcohol is healthy, WHO have announced that drinking alcohol is directly associated with poor health and reduced life expectancy.
We know that there are many aspects of the determinants of health in our society, such as:
- social status
- employment (or lack of employment)
- stress levels
- food and diet options
- addictions (or alcohol abuse), and
- family upbringing.
Studies have proven a link between alcohol and poor health
There have been many studies and a huge body of evidence that support the understanding that health outcomes decline as a person’s social status reduces. In other words, life expectancy is shorter and many diseases are more common further down the social ladder of modern society.
Whilst this concept is widely acknowledged and fairly simple to understand and predict, there is the potential for a chicken or the egg scenario. What is the impact of individual lifestyle choices and how do these lifestyle choices influence an individual’s position on the social ladder. For example, there are many examples of substance abuse being the cause of homelessness, but was poverty a problem from the outset, or was poverty a result of the lifestyle choices?
So why do we choose to drink alcohol?
We tend to choose to drink alcohol because of many of the social preferences that influence and permeate our whole society. Such as media promotion of drinking alcohol, family acceptance of drinking within the household environment, peer pressure on young people to win acceptance of their friends, and because of the perception that alcohol can relieve our stress, help to overcome pressures at work, or to help us to forget about our financial issues.
Now there is a worrying assimilation between the reasons that we choose to drink alcohol and the list of determinants of poor health that were listed by the WHO report (see above).
In fact, it is a big concern that the very same factors that encourage us to choose to drink alcohol are the very same issues that result in reduced health of people all around the world – no matter who, what or where you come from, alcohol has been proven to be a poor lifestyle choice.
Drinking alcohol is a vicious cycle and results in reduced life expectancy!
So now we know that alcohol is a poor lifestyle choice that will directly result in reduced health and life expectancy, and also have a large effect on your finances, employment and relationships.
And the poorer you are, then the more likely that you will have adverse affects from drinking alcohol.
That is a vicious cycle, and no matter which way you look at it, alcohol is at the center of poor lifestyle choices, is one of the main determinants of poor health, and also one of the serious indicators of reduced life expectancy.
Do you want your children to avoid the vicious cycle caused by drinking Alcohol?
So good health can be encouraged by giving our children a good education, which encourages them to find safe and secure employment, live a life of reduced stress levels, find financial security, live in a high standard, and generally find their purpose in life and society. We don’t need to educate them in how to drink alcohol to achieve this, and we should focus our attention on creating the opposite of a vicious cycle in their lives!
Drinking too much Alcohol does not provide relief from stress
Long term stress is a known causal factor for anxiety, insecurity, low self esteem, and long term health issues. Whilst short term stress is natural and probably a useful survival mechanism, the body’s inability to deal with stress and tension for long periods of time can lead to serious health implications. An urban myth is that alcohol can help to relieve the symptoms of stress, but this is not true, and only delays the stress until the next day, when it will inevitably get worse. Alcohol is a poor lifestyle choice and the compounding effects of extreme stress and drinking too much alcohol are extremely bad for your health.
Drinking too much alcohol will not solve your issues at work
In general, having a job is better for your health, than being unemployed, but issues at work can also increase your stress levels. Strangely, the WHO found that there were two types of stress in the workplace. The lack of control over your work or being too busy or underpaid is the best understood stress in the work place. However, some people suffer elevated stress over lack of security in their employment, and in some cases, this can be far worse than other types of stress at work.
This is another example where we might choose to drink alcohol to relieve the stress that we feel at work, but again, alcohol is a poor lifestyle choice when it could increase our job insecurity, and therefore increase stress levels even higher. Drinking alcohol is a vicious cycle that does nothing to help the situation, but only makes it worse.
Diet is important for health – but alcohol is a poor lifestyle choice
We all know that we need to eat healthy food, and that we need to prepare our meals in a way so as to increase our health and lifestyle. So why do we choose alcohol at the same time as we are making our important chooses of healthy food? No – alcohol is not a healthy food, and if buying alcohol takes priority over buying healthy food, then there is a big problem that alcohol is a poor lifestyle choice, which can lead to a direct impact on our health and life expectancy.
Alcohol Dependence (or worse – addiction to alcohol)
Alcohol dependence can be both a response to breakdown of social bonds, or it could be the critical factor in causing the breakdown. Drinking too much alcohol is known to be a direct determinant of poor health, and at them same time, can result in the social isolation that we know can result in a downward spiral of mental and physical health. Alcoholism and drinking too much alcohol is directly linked to increases fatality rates such as violence, poisoning, injury, suicide and early death due to organ failure.
Drinking alcohol is a vicious cycle
Poorer people turn to alcohol to numb the pain of financial pressure, but dependence on alcohol leads directly down the social ladder, thereby making the problem worse! The irony is that alcohol only provides a short term relief from the harsh reality of life, but actually makes the issues far worse than the original problem that started the drinking habit.
So how can avoid the vicious cycle of alcohol?
We need to understand that people do not always have control over their lifestyle choices, and that shifting the blame onto the individual does not address the vicious cycle that is caused by drinking alcohol.
If you are concerned that you or a friend or family member might be caught up in the vicious cycle caused by alcohol, then we welcome you to read more about our program at www.lovebeingalcoholfree.com and we can show you a pain free, shame free and drug free way to escape from the vicious cycle of drinking too much alcohol.