Posts Tagged ‘Alcoholism Treatment’

Home Remedies for Alcoholism, Treatment at Home

Friday, January 1st, 2010

Alcoholism is a condition in which a person has irresistible urge to consume alcohol. When a person consumes more alcohol than his body limits is often termed as alcohol abuse. This behavior soon takes a shape of a painful disease that kills both his physical as well as the mental health. If he continues drinking for long, he will not be able to resist alcohol and will become totally addicted to it. This situation is called as alcoholism. Alcoholism is a chronic and it often progressive disease. In which, the person drink alcohol until drinking hurt his or her life. Alcoholics find that, drink those people who have problems with people close to them, with school or work, and with other parts of their lives. If you do not used any treatment during alcoholism disease, it may destroy both emotional and physical health and may lead to death. In alcoholism, mostly it affects the digestive system, pancreas, nerves, and heart.Grapes contain pure form of alcohol, so a person who wishes to quit alcohol drinking, should have a meal of grapes every 4-5 hours for about a month.Alcoholism treatment using Dates Dates are considered beneficial in the treatment of alcoholism. The patient should drink half a glass of water in which four or five dates have been rubbed together. This remedy should be taken twice daily for a month. It will bring definite relief.The juice of Bitter gourd leaves is very good for clearing intoxication. 3 tspns of juice mixed in a glass of buttermilk is very good as it helps to heal the damaged liver also.Add 1/2 glass of celery juice to a glass of water. Patient can take this drink 1-2 times a day. It helps in cleaning off the toxic materials within the stomach, and lowers the carving for alcoholWild thyme waterbased extract combined with alcohol causes nausea and vomiting and help to get out of the habit of drinking. For this take 3 tablespoons of wild thyme, add 1 cup of boiling water and let it sit for 1 hour. An alcoholic should take 1 tablespoon of the extract 3-4 times a day. Or you can add just a little bit of the extract to alcohol without telling an alcoholic about it.Take a glass of carrot juice, whenever you feel an urge to consume alcohol. Having carrot juice helps reduce the temptation.Apples is one of the beneficial remedy for alcoholism. A generous intake of apples helps remove intoxication and reduces the craving for wines and other intoxicating liquors.

Causes and Risk Factors of Alcoholism

Friday, December 25th, 2009

Alcohol addiction and physical reliance on alcohol occurs slowly. Over time, drinking alcohol changes the balance of a few chemicals in your mind, like gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA), which reduces impulsiveness, as well as glutamate, which excites nervous system. Alcohol even raises the level of dopamine in the mind, which is linked with the agreeable features of drinking alcohol. Extreme, long-term drinking could increase or deplete the levels of a few of these chemicals, making your body to desire for alcohol to reinstate good feelings or to keep away from the negative feelings.

Other factors could lead to unnecessary drinking which adds to the addiction procedure. These comprise:

Risk factors

Stable drinking over time could produce a physical reliance on alcohol. Drinking over 15 drinks per week for men or 12 drinks in a week for women augments the risk of rising confidence on alcohol. Though, drinking by itself is only one of the peril factors that add to alcoholism. Additional risk factors comprise:

Although a lot of people imagine otherwise, alcoholism is treatable disease. Medications, self-help and counseling groups are amongst the therapies which can give continuing support to facilitate you improve from alcoholism.

Alcoholism, Threat to the Society

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Alcoholism is an extremely complex dilemma that is uncontrolled in our life and society and has numerous variables that require to be addressed concurrently. The success rate by means of mainstream treatment alternative is poor at the best. Various Nutritional and dietary mechanism are hardly ever addressed, and the majority of people are unaware of their tremendous significance. Some of the main explorers of alcoholism contend that the alcoholism is not the mental sickness, however rather it is the common symptom of advanced food allergy. Within their study and practice, they have found that alcoholism is not the alcohol that individual is addicted to – rather it is the foodstuff source of what the alcoholic beverage is prepared up off. The various Alcoholic beverages are made up of food such as the grains like the barley, cane, corn or grapes. The Alcoholics have a foodstuff allergy to all these. In sophisticated food allergy, the person craves all the various allergenic food. Most of the alcohol reacherers proposes that alcoholism or the alcoholic is the craving the beverage which is made from, but not the alcohol itself. Whereas, the alcohol mostly serves as the catalyst to help the foodstuff is absorbed further quickly, as alcohol is captivated rapidly all throughout the gastrointestinal tract.

That is why most of the alcoholics struggle to remain sober as well as relapse is so common. While alcoholics put their alcohol down, they mostly continue to consume sugar, corn, and various other things etc.; when they consume these foods, it triggers their cravings. The foodstuff itself cannot supply the quick attach that the alcohol be able to provide as of its rapid amalgamation. The research has found that individual with this addictions have elevated levels of histamine, that he states consequences in the compulsive behavior. He has had achievement using the calcium, methioninine as well as a low-protein, elevated -carbohydrate diet to extravagance not only obsessive behavior but as well depression.

A range of medication is worn to treat alcoholism. The Benzodiazepines “Valium® , Librium®” are occasionally used during the primary days after the person stops intake to assist him or her securely withdraw from the alcohol. All These medications are not use away from the initial few days, though, because they might be extremely addictive. Other medication helps people stay sober. One of the medications used for this point is the naltrexone “ReVia™”. While combined with psychotherapy naltrexone be able to reduce the craving for alcohol as well as help prevent a person as of returning, or relapse, to grave drinking. a further medication, disulfiram Antabuse, discourage the drinking by means of making the person experience sick if he drinks alcohol.

Treatment Options for the Alcoholic

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

The classical use of medications for alcoholism is to encourage abstinence. Antabuse (also known as disulfiram), for instance, prevents the elimination of chemicals which cause severe discomfort when alcohol is ingested, effectively preventing the alcoholic from drinking in significant amounts while they take the medicine. Heavy drinking while on antabuse can result in severe illness and death.

Naltrexone has also been used because it helps curb cravings for alcohol while the person is on it. Both of these, however, have been demonstrated to cause a rebound effect when the user stops taking them. These do allow a person to overcome psychological addictions to alcohol, but they do not treat the neurochemical addiction.

In more recent studies it has been demonstrated that the use of naltrexone while the alcoholic continues to drink can result in extinction of the neurochemical addiction. Referred to as the “Sinclair Method”, this technique is used with good results some US states and in Finland but has failed to penetrate much of the world because of the long-standing bias against any treatment that doesn’t involve detoxification and abstinence.

Rationing
Rationing or other attempts to control use are increasingly ineffective as pathological attachment to the drug develops. Use often continues despite serious adverse health, personal, legal, work-related, and financial consequences.

Detoxification
Detoxification programs run by medical institutions often involve stays for a number of weeks in specialized hospital wards, where drugs may be used to avoid withdrawal symptoms. In severe cases, detoxification may lead to death. To that point, even a simple “de-tox” can involve seizures, if not properly monitored.

Post Detox Therapy
After detoxification, various forms of group therapy or psychotherapy are recommended to deal with underlying psychological issues leading to alcohol dependence. It is also used to provide the recovering addict with relapse prevention skills.

Aversion therapies may be supported by drugs like Disulfiram, which causes a strong and prompt sensitivity reaction whenever alcohol is consumed. Naltrexone or Acamprosate may improve compliance with abstinence planning by treating the physical aspects of cravings to drink. The standard pharmocopoeia of antidepressants, anxiolytics, and other psychotropic drugs treat underlying mood disorders, neuroses, and psychoses associated with alcoholic symptoms.

Group Counseling
In the mid-1930s, the mutual-help group-counseling approach to treatment began and has become very popular. Alcoholics Anonymous is the best-known example of this movement. Various branches are available for family members of the alcoholic or commonly referred to as the co-dependents. Other groups include LifeRing Secular Recovery and SMART Recovery.

Prevention
Some programs attempt to help problem drinkers before they become dependents. These programs focus on harm-reduction and reducing alcohol intake as opposed to cold-turkey approaches. One such program is called Moderation Management.

Nutritional therapy
Another treatment program is based on nutritional therapy. Many alcohol dependents have insulin resistance syndrome, a metabolic disorder where the body’s difficulty in processing sugars causes an unsteady supply to the blood stream. While the disorder can be treated by a hypoglycemic diet, this can affect behavior and emotions, side-effects often seen among alcohol dependents in treatment. The metabolic aspects of such dependence are often overlooked, resulting in poor results.

Return to normal drinking
Although it has long been argued that alcoholic dependents cannot learn to drink in moderation, research by the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) indicates a small percentage of individuals in the US whose dependence began more than one year earlier are now drinking in moderation. In contrast, a high percentage who undergo naltrexone use-reduction therapy are capable of normal drinking habits. Use of Naltrexone involves taking the medication an hour before any drinking occurs in order to maintain this.

Societal Impact
Today, alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence are major public health problems in North America, costing the region’s inhabitants, by some estimates, as much as US$170 billion annually. Alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence sometimes cause death, particularly through liver, pancreatic, or kidney disease, internal bleeding, brain deterioration, alcohol poisoning, and suicide. Heavy alcohol consumption by a pregnant mother can also lead to fetal alcohol syndrome, an incurable and damaging condition.

Additionally, alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence are major contributing factors for head injuries, motor vehicle accidents, violence and assaults, neurological, and other medical problems.

Alcohol addiction is a treatable disease. If you are an alcoholic or are a family member of an alcoholic, contact your physician for the most current treatments available.