7 early warning signs alcohol is killing you SILENTLY

Have you ever felt like your drinking might be more dangerous than you think ? Well , today I'm uncovering 7 early warning signs that alcohol could be killing you . These aren't your typical warnings . They're subtle , often ignored signals that your body is crying out for help .

If you've ever wondered about the real impact of your drinking habits , then stick around , because this video might just be the wake up call that you need . So at number 1 , we have a have a preoccupation with alcohol .

This is one of the most unmistakable signs that your drinking is starting to get out of control , that you were transitioning from the so-called social drinker to an actual addict . See , in the early days you basically go about your daily life without thinking about drinking .

You might have been drinking several times a week , but for the rest of your time the alcohol didn't really go into your thoughts . But as the addiction starts to take hold , preoccupation with alcohol becomes a central theme in a heavy drinker's life . The booze basically lives rent-free in your head .

So , for example , when you're having a bad day of work , all you can think about is getting that bottle when you get home . Or maybe if you run out of booze one evening and you can't think of anything other than going out and buying more alcohol .

Alcohol also becomes a factor when it comes to planning any sort of activity A night out , a social visit , a trip . You simply struggle to make any sort of plans without factoring in the availability of alcohol . The other sign of increasing preoccupation is how easily you're triggered by alcohol-related stimuli .

So things that used to elicit no emotional reaction in you whatsoever now evoke a strong automatic response . Passing outside of a bar , maybe having a cigarette after a meal , viewing a drink scene in a movie you get the point . What's astonishing is how severe this preoccupation with alcohol can become before some people even take notice .

If you're not sure how far along you are , here's a simple experiment that you can do Pick a day and , starting from the moment that you wake up , be mindful of the occasions when you think about alcohol , and you could write them down if you want . Each time you notice .

Now you might be astonished at A just how frequently you were thinking about drinking and , b how impervious to this that you've been up until this point . Have you noticed this ? Let me know in the comment section . I will check every single comment on this video , but let me know if you've noticed more preoccupation with alcohol .

Number 2 is increasing amounts of alcohol tolerance . So another dangerous sign is that your alcohol consumption is increasing and you're drinking more and more because your previous consumption levels simply cannot give you the same buzz as before .

Many heavy drinkers pride themselves on this and will frequently challenge lighter drinkers to competitions , make fun of them and so on . But instead of something to be proud about , this tolerance is one of the biggest red flags that alcohol is killing you . It's actually so important that many scientific works on alcoholism list tolerance as a core feature .

Statistically , if you're tolerant to booze , you're far more likely to progress to full-blown alcoholism , and so much faster . At a physiological level , tolerance to alcohol results from two separate processes . Firstly , your brain adapts to the pleasant effects of alcohol .

Because you keep on artificially triggering the same pleasure centers in the brain , those eventually become numb to the ethanol . The second process that leads to tolerance is metabolic . After years of training , your body learns to break down and expel the alcohol much faster . The enzymes used to break down alcohol become much more active and efficient .

The fact that it's now metabolized quicker means that the same number of drinks as before cannot achieve the same blood concentration of alcohol . So you have A a brain that is more immune to the pleasant effects of alcohol , and B a metabolic syndrome that makes it very difficult to achieve the same alcohol blood levels .

And the only solution to these problems is you guessed it to drink more . The problem is that even though it gets harder to get a buzz from booze , its deadly effects on your body are still there . You never get a free pass from alcohol toxicity . Though you're now metabolizing alcohol faster , it is still all being converted to acetaldehyde .

See , this highly toxic metabolite is around 30 times more harmful than ethanol itself . Acetaldehyde is responsible for the bulk of the damage to your body and no matter how tolerant you've become , almost all of the ethanol is still being converted to acetaldehyde in your liver . There's just no escaping this .

And even though your brain's pleasure centers are not as sensitive as they used to be , all the alcohol that reaches your brain is still highly neurotoxic . It's steadily killing off brain cells and eventually shrinking your brain in size . If you keep on drinking , by the time of your death your shrunken brain may well weigh a full ounce less . 3 . Weight gain .

Booze is very high in calories , starting from , say , 100 calories in a neat serving of a spirit , all the way up to 200 or more calories in a pint of lager . But it's not just the calories in the drink itself . For reasons that aren't clear , alcohol stimulates your appetite , and it generally does this for high-fat , salty , greasy foods .

You know , things like pizza and potato chips and hamburgers and so on , and I'm sure none of this comes as a surprise to anybody . I mean , when was the last time you had a few drinks and then found yourself craving a piece of broccoli or a green salad ? What you might be surprised to learn is that our brains don't adjust our appetite for food .

Given the calories from the booze , as scientists like to say , they don't compensate for them . Now let me give you an example so you can understand this . Let's say your dinner is 700 calories and your beer is 200 calories . If you drink the beer right before dinner , your appetite will not register a corresponding decrease .

In other words , you won't be leaving 200 calories worth of food on your plate . You simply drink the beer and hoover the dinner off your plate all the same . Now , not only will the calories from the beer not diminish your appetite . On the contrary , the beer will actually stimulate your appetite and you'll wipe your plate clean even faster .

Combine all these factors the high calorie count that is not compensated , and an appetite that is stimulated for the worst kind of food well , the outcome is almost inevitable . For example , one study invited over a thousand male drinkers to write down what they ate on a day that they drank , versus a day where they abstained , and the results were pretty shocking .

On the drinking day , the men consumed an average of 168 more calories through food , and please understand this , this refers only to calories from food , not counting the booze . The booze contributed an extra 264 calories , bringing the total extra calories to a whopping 432 .

On the drinking day , these additional calories tended to come from things like white potatoes , meat and discretionary fats . On the contrary , on their drinking days , the men lowered their consumption of vegetables and milk .

Unsurprisingly , you can expect to lose one and a half to two kilos during your first 30 days of not drinking , and , provided you stay sober , the weight will keep falling off you until you eventually approach your normal , healthy levels . The fourth sign are blackouts .

So we saw how , with mathematical certainty , tolerance leads to increased consumption , and this is where the scary thing blackouts come into play . Now , people often confuse blackouts with passing out , but the two are very different . When you pass out , you lose consciousness completely . You're basically non-responsive , just like when sleeping .

Blackouts , on the other hand , are when you retain your consciousness but subsequently lose memory of events that took place during a drinking episode . So you wake up the following morning after and your friends describe events for which you have absolutely no recollection . You may have been carrying out conversations at a party , arguing , driving , whatever .

You were conscious at the time and fully responsive to your environment . You just don't remember any of it afterwards . Sometimes , when somebody clues you in about what happened during the blackout , parts of your memory of the event can come back , and researchers call these fragmentary blackouts End block .

Blackouts , on the other hand , happen when it's impossible to recall any of the events , even when reminded . Can social drinkers also experience blackouts ? Well , yes , they can . In surveys , up to 40% of college undergrads reported experiencing at least one blackout in the last year . What separates these people from future addicts is the frequency of blackouts .

This is so crucial that it was actually at the centre of one of the very first studies on the typical progression of alcoholism . This was done in the 1950s by a researcher called Elvin Morton Jelinek .

After interviewing many people suffering with alcohol use disorder , jelinek concluded that frequent blackouts will often mark the beginning of the progression from social to problem drinking .

He noted that not only are blackouts more frequent in those who have transitioned to problem drinking , they can also often come about even after mild intoxication , sometimes as little as 4 drinks . Though they are a massive red flag at the start .

Today we know that these blackouts will , in the grand scheme of things , be kind of insignificant compared to the overall damage that alcohol will inflict on one's memory . Eventually , all aspects of memory will suffer . This includes recalling events of the past and the ability to remember to do something in the future .

When all is said and done , memory will probably be the one cognitive domain to take the biggest beating of all . At number five , we have an irregular heart rate . Now , contrary to popular media's propaganda , light to moderate drinking can actually be good for your heart health . Alcohol is not good for your heart . It's bad for it , very bad .

This includes even the most organic and wholesome of all red wines , even if you ferment it on your own property and know exactly what went into it . It is all bad for your heart , you see , regardless of how much you consume it and from what source . The plain fact is ethanol is cardiotoxic .

It damages your heart and cardiovascular system in general , and one of the earliest signs that your bruising is getting out of control is in a regular heartbeat . The scientific name for this is atrial fibrillation , but you'll often hear it referred to as holiday heart .

It got this name from an astute doctor who noticed it in many of his patients who returned from holidays that involved heavy drinking , and that is literally all . It can take a couple of weeks of heavy drinking , and don't think that this is something rare either , even though it sounds so scary .

Up to 60% of all emergency department visits for atrial fibrillation are alcohol-related . It can appear either while you are still intoxicated or up to one to two days later . Some of the people don't even have to binge drink With them . Steady low-level consumption over a sustained period of time can be enough . While I'm talking low-level .

I literally mean as little as one to two drinks a day , and with each extra daily drink , you increase your risk of atrial fibrillation by 8% . Now , regardless of how it comes about , one thing is certain your heart is giving you a massive , very easy to spot red flag . If you stop drinking early on , the atrial fibrillation will most likely resolve .

Keep on drinking , however , and it will most likely progress to a more persistent form , called well , persistent atrial fibrillation . This can be far more difficult to resolve and also deadly . When you progress to this persistent form , you are putting yourself at an increased risk for blood clots , stroke and heart failure .

Now you might want to check your pulse , because if the atrial fibrillation is there , you'll probably feel it straight away in the form of missed beats , double beats or beats that are irregularly spaced . At number six , we have increased blood pressure , also known as hypertension . See another sign of growing toxicity to your heart .

Hypertension is a hallmark of problem drinking , an objective , clear-cut indicator that your drinking is starting to compromise your health . Scientists now know that hypertension increases linearly with consumption from just over a drink a day for women and two drinks for men . According to the World Health Organization , 16% of all hypertensive diseases are alcohol-related .

The link between alcohol and hypertension can be separated into two components . First , there's the direct damage drinking causes to your heart and cardiovascular system on account of its toxicity . Then there's all the other problems that alcohol will create or exacerbate and which , in turn , will contribute to hypertension .

These include unhealthy calories , weight gain , insulin resistance , elevated cortisol and sleep problems . Now , hypertension in and of itself generally has no symptoms . You'll need to get it measured to spot the problem , and I would strongly encourage you to do this , especially if you're still drinking .

The problem is is high blood pressure increases your risk of severe disease and premature death in all sorts of ways , things like stroke , aneurysms , kidney problems , vision impairment and so on . On the flip side , after an initial increase during the first few days , your blood pressure will fall rapidly after you stop drinking .

Only a month after your last drink , it will have returned to its baseline levels . Guys at number 7 , we have lies and deceptive behavior . See , one of the core features of drinking that is getting out of hand is self-deception being in denial about how much the drinking has gotten out of hand , rationalising it to avoid facing the unpleasant reality .

But self-deception is always a bit subjective . I mean , hey , if I tell myself that I can stop whenever I want ? Who knows , maybe I can Now , a far more objective sign that things are getting out of hand is when you start deceiving and lying to the most important people in your life .

Here things are more clear-cut . If you're starting to hide empty bottles or pour your liquor into your coffee , then this is pretty black and white . You can't really explain this any other way . When you start lying to your loved ones about where you've been and what you've been doing , again this is pretty unambiguous .

Deception is actually one of the core features of families with those suffering from alcohol use disorder . As one researcher , already from the 1960s , put it , the home of the drinker is a place where quote , people have lost their ability to be honest , where the families deny , minimize , discount and rationalize .

Note , this description extends to the entire family , not just the drinker's family members . Sadly and this is one of the great tragedies of drinking very soon all the family members will be forced to lie in order to survive .

The spouse of the drinker will typically transition from an initial denial of the problem to being actively deceptive herself , typically in order to shield the children from the chaos . But the children are not dumb and very soon they will be forced to start lying to their peers in order to cover up what's happening in the house . Pretty sad stuff .

Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking podcast by Sober Clear . If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly , then make sure to visit wwwsoberclearcom .