The "May Day" holiday is coming, everyone is indispensable for family reunions, friends dinner, and a drink, but drunkenness hurts the body! Xiaobian will send you holiday blessings at the same time, but also introduce you to some health knowledge about drunkenness.
Acute alcoholism, commonly known as drunkenness, refers to a state of first excitement and then inhibition caused by excessive drinking or alcoholic beverages. The clinical manifestations of drunkenness vary from person to person, and the timing of intoxication varies depending on the speed of drinking, the amount of alcohol consumed, the concentration of alcohol in the blood, and the tolerance of the individual. Drunkenness here medically refers to simple drunkenness, excluding pathological drunkenness. Its onset is acute and critical, and drunk people are often complicated by cerebral edema, asphyxia, upper gastrointestinal bleeding and other life-threatening diseases.
1 Characteristics of drunkenness
The general drunken state can be divided into three stages according to the manifestations, namely the excitatory phase, the ataxia phase, and the inhibitory phase, and there is a long period of discomfort after acute intoxication, which is called the continuation effect.
► Excitement period
Drunken people are excited, red-faced, comfortable, sociable, talkative, and emotionally unstable, happy or angry, sad or worried, sometimes hostile or aggressive, and have abnormal behavior, such as changes in personality, impaired judgment, and increased self-confidence. The blood alcohol concentration at this stage is generally 500~1000mg/L.
► Ataxia phase
Drunk people may have clumsy movements, staggering gait, slurred speech, incoherent speech, and may be accompanied by nystagmus, diplopia, blurred vision, nausea, vomiting, etc. The blood alcohol concentration at this stage is generally 1500~2000mg/L.
► Inhibition period
When the blood alcohol concentration of a drunk person reaches 2500~4000mg/L, it enters the inhibition period. Clinical features include lethargy, pallor, clammy skin, purplish lips, dilated or normal pupils, slow breathing with snoring, rapid pulse, and stupor, and coma. If the medullary center is suppressed, it can cause respiratory paralysis and death.
2 How to deal with drunkenness
☐ Stop drinking.
☐ Drink plenty of water, or drink some fruit juice, mung bean soup, or eat raw fruits such as pears, watermelon, water chestnuts, and oranges.
☐ This method should not be used for vomiting, vomiting, lethargy, or coma.
☐ Stay in bed and keep warm. When a drunk person is asleep, they should be put to sleep on their side with their head tilted to one side to avoid obstruction of the airway by vomit, and relatives and friends should also observe their breathing.
☐ Severe acute alcoholism should be seen in a hospital.
When you need professional help
Patients with severe acute alcohol poisoning will have symptoms such as rapid pulse, slow and weak breathing, clammy skin, irritability, lethargy, dehydration, convulsions, shock, etc., and should be sent to the hospital for emergency treatment immediately.
Tips
1. Drink alcohol responsibly and avoid excessive drinking.
2. Don't drink alcohol on an empty stomach, eating something before drinking can help slow down the absorption of alcohol. In addition, drinking alcohol on an empty stomach can easily cause hypoglycemia. At this time, you should drink some sugar water, but do not drink vinegar or soft drink, because this will not only aggravate the irritation of the gastrointestinal mucosa by alcohol, but also easily induce digestive diseases such as gastric ulcer, duodenal ulcer or acute pancreatitis.
3. Drink a moderate amount of milk or yogurt half an hour before drinking alcohol to reduce the amount of alcohol entering the bloodstream and reaching the liver.
4. Try not to drink alcohol while taking the drug, otherwise it may bring fatal consequences.
5. Don't drink strong tea or coffee to decant the wine. Tea and coffee do have diuretic effects, but this may prematurely allow acetaldehyde (which is converted from ethanol) that has not yet been broken down into acetic acid to enter the kidneys prematurely, and acetaldehyde has a greater stimulating effect on the kidneys.
6. Do not take a bath immediately after drinking, whether it is a cold shower or a hot bath, it will cause the alcohol to not be released in time, which is more likely to cause drunkenness, and in severe cases, alcohol poisoning and even coma.
7. Do not exercise vigorously after drinking. After drinking, a large amount of blood flows to the internal organs for the "detoxification" of the alcohol, when the amount of blood allocated in the muscles is very small. At this time, the heart needs to continuously pump blood to the corresponding organs, and the load is very large. If you exercise at this time, the muscles will also need a lot of blood, which will lead to a further increase in the burden on the heart, and cerebrovascular accidents and even sudden cardiac death may occur.
Source: Human Health Care
Editor: Pi Anqi (intern)