Posted on 11/25/2024 5:20:19 AM PST by RandFan
At 31 years old, I was told by doctors that if I didn’t stop drinking alcohol, I could die.
I was shocked because I didn’t drink every day, I never drank alone and I drank because I enjoyed it as a social activity, not because I felt alcohol-dependent.
But by definition, my alcohol consumption from my late teens to late 20s would be considered binge drinking. It felt normal because people around me were doing the same - and now it was catching up with me.
I’d recently become a mum and had gone to the GP because I felt tired all the time. This led to blood tests and a liver function check.
Further tests revealed I had severe alcohol-related liver fibrosis, or extreme scarring on my liver, most likely because of my drinking habits.
I trundled home from the hospital in a daze, with my daughter in her pram. This might have happened to me, I thought, but I could not be the only one.
I wanted to know what this said about the UK’s drinking culture and began looking into it for BBC Panorama.
Alcohol-specific deaths are at their highest levels in the UK, since records began in 2001.
While the problem is undoubtedly bigger in men - particularly older men - more women under the age of 45 are dying due to alcohol-related liver disease, or ARLD, than ever before, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures from 2001-22.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty confident “social drinking” does not damage your liver this badly by age 31.
Great, another abbreviation. There are new ones popping up in commercials all the time. Everybody seems to want one.
When I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself.
Well, the Brits are *very* social...
This woman engaged in binge drinking, but called it social.
She says she is a social drinker, then says this: “But by definition, my alcohol consumption from my late teens to late 20s would be considered binge drinking.”
Ten years of regularly getting schnockered will kill your liver.
>I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty confident “social drinking” does not damage your liver this badly by age 31.
Yeah, there was probably illicit drug use or long-term pharma use that exacerbated it. That said, if you start drinking like this during puberty, it does heavily affect your liver. I had a friend who, in middle school, would drink his dads beer secretly and later had liver problems.
It depends on one’s tolerance to alcohol, which is often genetic. But the same genetic factor that produce tolerance to alcohol can often result in alcoholism, so don’t think of it as a blessing.
If your social circle consists of like-minded heavy drinkers, you may get early-onset liver problems.
Stick to poop beer, you’ll be fine.
Liver is genetic. Blood Pressure may not be. What kills more drunks than anything?
Accidents. Wrecks, falls, stupid stuff.
Binge drinking in the UK is very ugly—and common.
“When I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself.”
One day I was in a local liquor store and another George Thorogood song was playing:
One bourbon, one scotch and one beer...
Sorta surreal...
I know a doctor who told me if it is almost impossible to drink yourself to death over time. But if you tie one on and wake up with a hangover, pop 2 Tylenol every day and your liver will eventually go. Tylenol and alcohol will do kill you.
Show me a drunk who has stopped eating and I can accurately predict when they will die. If your pet stops eating, many times it is liver failure.
When Sharia comes to Britain, it won’t be a problem anymore.
Well, even those of us who consider ourselves to have good health oft wonder about how much better it could have been if not damaged by activities from wayward and misspent youth...
From AASLD (American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases):
New MASLD Nomenclature
No more NAFLD! Steatotic Liver Disease is the overarching term; NAFLD is now MASLD
and…
Fatty liver disease gets a new name
Gone is the long-used, problematic term “nonalcoholic fatty liver disease,” (NAFLD) which most members of a 236-person multinational panel of clinicians, patients, public health and regulatory representatives agreed could create stigma.
I think in the UK a lot of people believe getting blackout drunk is just a typical way to hang out with friends. Pass out in the street. Everyone does that ... right? Just being social.
But by definition, my alcohol consumption from my late teens to late 20s would be considered binge drinking. It felt normal because people around me were doing the same - and now it was catching up with me.
If it was “binge drinking” it wasn’t “social drinking.”
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