Alcoholic Paralysis Health Article

Definition

Alcohol paralysis, or alcohol-related neurological disease, is an umbrella term for a wide variety of nervous system disorders that are directly caused by the ingestion of toxic amounts of alcohol.

These can be grouped into four categories:

• effects of acute alcohol intoxication
• withdrawl from alcohol
• diseases and neurological damage related to alcoholism
• fetal alcohol syndrome

Effects of acute intoxication

Alcohol, or ethanol, has long-demonstrated direct toxic effects on nerve and muscle cells. Depending on which nerve and muscle pathways are involved, alcohol can have far-reaching effects on different parts of the brain, peripheral nerves, and muscles. When a person drinks alcohol, it is absorbed by blood vessels in the stomach lining and flows rapidly throughout the body and brain. Ethanol freely crosses the blood-brain barrier that ordinarily keeps large molecules from escaping from the blood vessel to the brain tissue. Drunkenness, or intoxication, may occur at blood alcohol concentrations of as low as 50-150 mg per 100 milliliters (0.02-0.05 oz per qt) in what are usually called social drinkers. Sleepiness, stupor, coma, or even death from respiratory depression and low blood pressure occur at progressively higher concentrations.

Although alcohol is broken down by the liver, the toxic effects from a high dose of alcohol are most likely a direct result of alcohol itself rather than of its breakdown products. The fatal dose varies widely because people who drink heavily develop a tolerance to the effects of alcohol with repeated use. In addition, alcohol tolerance results in the need for higher levels of blood alcohol to achieve intoxicating effects, which increases the likelihood that habitual drinkers will be exposed to high and potentially toxic levels of ethanol. This is particularly true when binge drinkers fail to eat, because fasting decreases the rate of alcohol clearance and causes even higher blood alcohol levels.

Recent research indicates that alcohol's toxicity may be a component of violence and aggression. A National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) study showed that an estimated 86 percent of homicide offenders, 37 percent of assault offenders, 60 percent of sexual offenders, and 13 percent of child abusers were drinking at the time of the offense. Forty-two percent of violent crimes reported to police involved alcohol, and 51 percent of victims interviewed believed that the person who had assaulted them had been drinking.

A December 1999 NIAAA study suggests that because they absorb and metabolize alcohol differently than men, women may be more susceptible to its adverse effects. This was based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of the brains of alcoholic women, compared with both non-alcoholic women and alcoholic men. Imaging showed that the brain regions involved in coordinating brain functions were markedly smaller in the alcoholic women than either of the other two groups.

Two separate studies, conducted in February and August of 2000, proposed and showed evidence that even early drinking can seriously affect memory. Researchers at Duke University and the University of California both found that adolescence, especially between the ages of 15 and 16, are important years in brain development, and this development is adversely affected by alcohol and drug use. It is as yet unknown whether such impairment is reversible.

Withdrawal

When a chronic alcoholic suddenly stops drinking, withdrawal of alcohol leads to a syndrome of increased excitability of the central nervous system, called delirium tremens) or "DTs." Symptoms begin six to eight hours after abstinence, and are most pronounced 24-72 hours after abstinence. They include body shaking (tremulousness), insomnia, agitation, confusion, hearing voices or seeing images that are not really there (such as crawling bugs), seizures, rapid heart beat, profuse sweating, high blood pressure, and fever. Alcohol-related seizures are reported in approximately 15 percent of alcoholics, and the chance of having seizures, as well as the severity of the seizures, increases with the number of withdrawal incidences. In structural imaging, it was found that alcoholics that had had seizures showed shrinkage on both sides of the brain behind the frontal lobe.