Alcoholism Nutrition Information

Nutritional Impacts of Alcohol Addiction

Nutrition, in the forms of the foods we eat and the liquids we drink, provides the body with energy and with the other things we need to grow and stay healthy. For example, nutrients such as vitamins play important roles in the body's chemical processes, minerals such as calcium are important for maintaining healthy bones, and proteins are needed to build and maintain muscles. In addition to its devasting impacts on other aspects of one's life, alcoholism can primarily have two bad effects on one's nutrition:

First, alcoholics frequently do not eat a balanced diet. An active alcoholic may ingest much of their total daily calories from alcohol. By choosing alcohol instead of more nutritious foods, they limit their intake of healthy vitamins and minerals, and deficiencies of these essential nutrients may likely follow. This has negative effects on metabolic, or energy-producing, processes as well as the maintenance and repair of the cells that make up the physical body.

Second, alcohol interferes with the body's ability to use the nutrients it does receive by affecting how well it can use them by means such as liver disease or impaired liver functioning. So even if sufficient nutrients are consumed in an alcoholic's daily diet, alcohol can so effectively disrupt body functions as to cause nutrient-related deficiencies.

Taken together, these two factors affect both energy supply, or metabolism, and the maintenance of the body's physical structures. It is also important to note that even if an alcoholic should assume a sober lifestyle and abstain from alcohol, immediate adoption of good eating habits is by no means assured. Rather, improving on old eating habits is often a separate journey that can unfortunately be indefinitely postponed. In the meantime, the recovering alcoholic is left to maintain sobriety while possibly encumbered with an under-nourished body.

Effects of Alcoholic Malnutrition

Because alcoholics tend to eat poorly, a major concern is that alcohol's effects on the digestion of food and utilization of nutrients may shift a mildly malnourished person toward severe malnutrition. In fact, research indicates that many alcoholics who are hospitalized for medical complications of alcoholism do experience severe malnutrition.

Even in the absence of major disease and illness, the effects of such deficiencies may include low energy, headaches, depression, slowed mental processes, general feelings of malaise, impaired immune systems, and fluctuating blood sugar levels.

Nutrition and Cravings

It has also been asserted that nutritional deficiencies may, in some cases, contribute to the addictive cravings experienced by alcoholics and drug addicts. Recovering alcoholics are frequently advised to avoid "H.A.L.T", which is an acronym for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. It may be that some perceived hunger is actually the body crying out for the nutrition it lacks. In such cases, it is important to ensure that the body is receiving the proper nutrients it needs for healthy functioning. This may be particularly true with regards to fluctuating blood sugar levels as they are frequently cited as triggering cravings for alcohol.

Nutrition, Stress & Immunity

Let's face it: recovery can be stressful. It is also true that stress and nutrition are directly related. How well the body handles stress is also connected to how well the body is nourished. Adequate intake of vitamins and minerals is important in preventing the loss of nutrient stores in the body used to combat stress as well as being important contributors to immune response. The body releases hormones that suppress immune response when stress is present.

What to Do in Recovery

In learning to live a sober life, it is important that recovering alcoholics begin to eat nutritionally balanced meals on a regular basis. Attention to each of the major food groups in recommended proportions will help assure this happens.

However, this is often more easily said than done. Many people have, at best, only a passing knowledge of the basic and interrelated dimensions of a healthy eating regime such as proteins, fats, carbohydrates (starches and sugars), cholesterol, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. For some, learning about these things and then building improved eating habits can be an interesting and challenging part of recovery. For others, it might be more important to find a program that offers specific suggestions, or even food items themselves, as a way to quickly get on a path of improvement.

In addition, and particularly in early sobriety when the body is recovering from alcohol abuse, augmenting one's diet with broad-based multi-vitamin, mineral, and antioxidant supplements can play an important role in restoring physical wholeness to the body.

Which Vitamins and Minerals?

By definition, vitamins are those substances that are required for maintaining growth, ensuring normal metabolism , and enabling the body to manage stress. They regulate many physiological processes. Chronic heavy drinking is associated with deficiencies in many vitamins because of decreased food ingestion and, in some cases, impaired absorption and utilization.

In dealing with stress, some of the most important vitamins are vitamin C and the B complex of vitamins. The B-complex vitamins are needed to help maintain the nervous system. A deficiency in the B-complex vitamins can alter nerve function and increase the symptoms of stress such as depression and irritability. Vitamin C can also help stress by strengthening the immune system.

Vitamins A, C, D, E, K, and the B vitamins, also deficient in some alcoholics, are all involved in wound healing and cell maintenance. In particular, because vitamin K is necessary for blood clotting, deficiencies of that vitamin can cause delayed clotting and result in excess bleeding. Vitamin A deficiency can be associated with night blindness, and vitamin D deficiency is associated with softening of the bones. Deficiencies of other vitamins involved in brain function can cause severe neurological damage.

Mineral deficiencies of calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc are common in alcoholics. Mineral deficiencies can cause a variety of medical consequences from calcium-related bone disease to zinc-related night blindness and skin lesions.The minerals magnesium and zinc are also depleted in times of stress. Chromium, as a trace mineral, plays an important role in helping to maintain stable blood sugar levels.