Did You Know That Alcoholics Die 7 Years Earlier
“Alcohol-dependent patients in general hospitals live significantly shorter than patients without alcohol dependency. According to a German-British study published in “European Psychiatry”, they die 7.6 years earlier on average. In addition, they suffer from several concomitant diseases.
We often get question on if alcohol can cause hair loss. While alcoholism do not cause balding, it seems it causes an earlier death.
This was the result of analyzing 23,371 patients over 1.5 years with know alcohol dependency along with 233,710 patients without alcohol dependency. This, they said, can be reversed with appropriate treatment and cessation of the problem.
I was quite surprised that this study, which is abstracted here
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Schoepf+++Heun+2015), showed
that alcohol-dependent persons in hospitals died only 7.6 years
earlier on average given all the diseases associated with alcoholism.
Alcoholism increases the risk of liver disease (hepatitis, cirrhosis),
gastrointestinal disease (gastritis, ulcer, pancreatitis), nutritional
(vitamin) deficiencies, cardiovascular disease (hypertension,
cardiomyopathy, arrhythmia), sexual dysfunction, metabolic disease
(diabetes, gout), birth defects (fetal alcohol syndrome), bone loss
(osteoporosis), neurological disease (stoke, dementia, confusion, mild
cognitive impairment, peripheral neuropathy), psychological illness
(depression, suicide, concomitant use of other drugs), overdose,
decreased immunity, and cancer (especially mouth, throat, liver, colon
and breast). Of course, most alcoholics have multiple “co-morbidities”
and the above does not include the impact of violent death of others
from drunk drivers, the social and psychological toll of alcoholism on
disrupted families, lost time from work, and direct/indirect cost to
our health care system.