Did you know that alcoholism is a common and deadly disease? Physicians have begun to associate cancers with alcoholism. They also see many examples of diseases related to alcoholism including alcohol-related cirrhosis, cardiomyopathy, gastrointestinal bleeding and pancreatitis. There are even those that suffer the consequences of alcoholism without even putting alcohol to their lips. These include the innocents that suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, a leading cause of mental retardation. Other serious consequences of alcoholism include the traffic accidents that drinking and driving cause, depression and dementia suffered by those with the disease, suicide, and homicide linked to alcoholism and the risk to children of alcoholic parents that they too might suffer someday the same illness

Do you understand that alcoholism has an affect on every organ in the body? Large doses of alcohol often cause coma and death. Individuals with long-term alcoholism are sometimes prone to experience withdrawal syndrome and brain excitability. Other symptoms of the disease include alcohol ingestion, which then leads to cell death and cerebellar degeneration, alcoholic hallucinosis, delirium tremors, and withdrawal seizures.

The disease has been known to effect inidviduals in all levels of society from royalty to street beggars.Those that have a higher historical risk include anyone with a family history of alcoholism, those in lower income brackets and those who do not have higher educational achievements. The World Health Organization found that at risk for mental disorders were those who had alcohol dependence.

Alcoholism, according to statistics is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Each year, 85,000 deaths are being linked to alcoholism in the United States. Another sobering statistic shows that a large percentage of global disease is linked to alcoholism. These include 7% of breast cancer, 32% of all cirrhosis, 10% of hemorrhagic strokes, 19% of mouth and oropharyngeal cancers, and 25% of liver cancer.

Statistically, reported by the U.S. National Comorbidity Survey and the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Survey, alcoholism in African Americans is greater than it is for those who are Americans and Caucasian. Others that have higher risk are those who are Hispanic Americans, Native American or Asian American. Alcohol addiction is also twice as likely to occur in males than females.

Despite the known danger of alcoholism and how common the disease is, medical doctors fail to make the correct diagnosis of alcoholism in almost 50% of the cases. Patients make diagnosing alcoholism difficult by denying they have a problem when asked, fear of job loss if employer finds out about a diagnosis of alcoholism or too ashamed to admit they have a problem with alcohol.

Sometimes the diagnosis is missed because medical professionals may be unaware of the proper way to screen for and to diagnose alcoholism. It is difficult to have accurate testing to make a diagnosis of alcoholism because blood tests and liver function tests as well as mean corpuscular volume are not always effective. Even the gamma glutamyl transferrin levels test are only 50% accurate.