Alcohol and Vitamin Deficiency.

Alcohol drinking can cause vitamin deficiency. This can be a direct result of alcohol effects on body metabolism and absorption of vitamins. Alcohol reduces secretion of digestive enzymes by the pancreas, and impairs food uptake into the blood, through the intestinal walls.

Vitamin deficiency can also occur as a result of reduced nutrition, due to a preference for alcohol drinking.

Reduced availability of vitamins might not show up as a frightening case of beri-beri, scurvy or a bad attack of “the shakes” – simply as a day to day lethargy, lack of energy and “pep”.

Poor diet and problems with absorption of food effectively lead to chronic malnutrition.

Alcoholics might favor charcuterie – smoked, salty, fatty preserved meats, fast foods, snack foods due to alcohol causing lack of an appetite for food that is more bulky, fresh and wholesome.

The preservatives used in charcuterie and all preserved foods include nitrites and other chemicals toxic to the body – with potential toxicity increased by the presence of alcohol.

Some alcoholics eat very little, and then tend to favor “sweet” foods – high in refined starch and.sugar – that provide “empty calories” by way of nutrition, as does alcohol.

Alcohol drinking adversely affects nutrition and uptake of all the health giving vitamins and minerals.

Alcohol drinking puts the liver under stress. Nutrients contained in the liver include carotenoids. This source of vitamins A and E is depleted by alcohol drinking.

Vitamins are classified as A,B,C,D,E and K, with eight sub groups of Vitamin B and  they are essential to enable many of the complex bio chemical processes that support good health in the body. When vitamins are absent due to alcoholism, it leads to deficiency disorders, serious and sometimes irreversible neurological damage – and to the development of classic alcohol related disorders – such as Korsakoff’s syndrome and Wernicke’s disease.

Many people think that the answer to alcohol depletion is to keep on drinking , and increase your vitamin intake. Taking in an overdose of synthetic multivitamins as supplied by a health store or pharmacy will not provide any worthwhile improvement to biological functioning.

Vitamin and mineral supplements can be helpful in recovery from acute alcohol toxicity and addiction – however, they need to be adminstered in measured quantities, with appropriate monitoring, nutritional support – and with alcohol abstinence. Dropping a Berocca into your beer will most likely lead only to indigestion.

Vitamins of the B group in particular are depleted by alcohol, with reduction of thiamine (B1), niacin B3, and B6 associated with nervous debility. Vitamin K deficiency is associated with increased bleeding, and the risk of broken bones.

Alcohol reduces fat absorption and so reduces availability of fat soluble vitamins A, D, and E. Vitamin A when given medicinally in high doses, has the potential to become toxic – more so when combined with alcohol. If you drink alcohol and take high dose vitamin A – you could be causing or contributing to liver damage.

Vitamins are an integral part of fresh and health giving foods – outside of a professional healthcare regime, doses of single or multi vitamins simply should not be used.

Preference needs to be given to getting vitamins directly from good food to provide optimal nutrition. Different food groups will have higher amounts of specific vitamins.

The importance of having enough of the essential vitamins and good nutrition is widely promoted but is rarely put into action. Nutrition in Canada, and most developed countries is good but not the best that it could be.

We pay the price in terms of increased levels of mental and physical disorder, vulnerability to disease, loss of productivity, obesity, diabetes and reduced longevity. Alcohol drinking with inadequate nutrition puts a stress on the body and undermines good health.

In 1996, a Health Canada report:  Nutrition for Health – An Agenda for Action - reveals that adequate nutrition for all Canadians was then a concern. It remains a problem today.

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In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies four primary causes of chronic disease – citing lack of exercise, tobacco use – and poor nutrition and alcohol drinking.

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Alcohol drinking, poor nutrition and inadequate vitamin intake are associated with disease, premature aging and early death.

If you need help, suffer chronic ill health, associated with alcohol drinking – you can be helped to stop drinking and recover good health by using a comprehensive alcohol addiction recovery program at a live-in residential center in Canada.

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Comprehensive alcohol recovery programs include low heat sauna detox to excrete alcohol and its metabolites completely from your system.

The craving for alcohol is reduced with complete detoxification, together with administration of high dose niacin (Vitamin B3), vitamin and mineral supplements.

Also provided is  health giving vegetarian food – based on the world acclaimed mediterranean diet.

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Comprehensive alcohol recovery programs use scientifically proven methods to restore healthy balance to body and mind.

Without a basis of good food and vitamins, we cannot regain good health.

People who want to stop alcohol drinking – and make good health their priority, will get the comprehensive help that they need – by using the Narconon program.