According to 1 Samuel 25: 37-38, Nabal’s heart failed after his wife told him of the things that transpired as soon as he sobered up. It was only after ten days, that Nabal was struck by God and passed on. On this note, alcohol is known to weaken the myocardium, a thick muscle layer that exists between the outer and inner layers of the heart. As such, alcohol produces cardiomyopathy which causes the failure of the heart. This prevails following the reduced contractions of the heart’s myofibrils caused by the enlargement of the four chambers (Holmes et al., 2014). Eventually, cardiomyopathy causes the heart to be unable to pump sufficient blood to the body thus leading to its failure.
The excessive consumption of alcohol could also lead to other long-term effects on the cardiovascular system other than weakening the myocardium. One of these long-term effects is stroke. There are two types of stroke that could be caused by excessive alcohol consumption which occur as a result of the disrupted blood flow to the brain tissue. The effects of stroke are loss of motor and sensory functions. In this case, Ischemic stroke could be triggered following the blockage of the artery supplying blood to the brain. Alcohol causes high blood pressure, blood clot, and increases the fat levels which all lead to ischemic stroke (Kissin & Begleiter, 2012). The other type of stroke is the haemorrhagic one which results from high blood pressure that weakens the walls of the arteries supplying blood to the brain.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The other long-term effect is a heart attack which occurs as a result of a damaged artery that no longer supplies blood to the heart. The blockage may be caused by cholesterol of fats build up to the coronary artery. Therefore, excessive consumption of alcohol leads to various long-term cardiovascular diseases.
References
Holmes, M. V., Dale, C. E., Zuccolo, L., Silverwood, R. J., Guo, Y., Ye, Z., ... & Cavadino, A. (2014). Association between alcohol and cardiovascular disease: Mendelian randomisation analysis based on individual participant data. Bmj , 349 , g4164.
Kissin, B., & Begleiter, H. (2012). The Biology of Alcoholism: Volume 2: Physiology and Behavior . Springer Science & Business Media.
