“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(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Schoepf+++Heun+2015), showedthat alcohol-dependent persons in hospitals died only 7.6 yearsearlier 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, mildcognitive impairment, peripheral neuropathy), psychological illness(depression, suicide, concomitant use of other drugs), overdose,decreased immunity, and cancer (especially mouth, throat, liver, colonand breast). Of course, most alcoholics have multiple “co-morbidities”and the above does not include the impact of violent death of othersfrom drunk drivers, the social and psychological toll of alcoholism ondisrupted families, lost time from work, and direct/indirect cost toour health care system.