Alcohol issue
The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the USA (National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism) has identified the "main question" with which it is possible to determine whether a person is an alcoholic.
A study by the Boston Medical Center confirmed the effectiveness of this diagnostic method.
Usually, American doctors used a series of special questions to determine a person's activity when drinking alcohol. For example, the US Department of Health (Department of Health and Human Services) recommends applying the following 10 questions:
1. Do you drink alone?
2. Are you trying to find a reason to drink?
3. Do you need frequent drinking just to function normally?
4. Are you able to reduce the volume of alcohol consumption or stop drinking?
5. Has your drinking caused violence?
6. Do you drink secretly from others?
7. Do objections to your drinking make you angry?
8. Have your eating habits changed?
9. Have you become less aware of your appearance?
10. Do your hands shake in the morning?
A positive answer to five or more such questions shows that a person is overdoing it with alcohol and in the near future he may develop alcoholism.
At the end of 2008, the National Institute for Research on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism recommended that specialists ask the following question to people who may potentially suffer from alcohol abuse:
"How many times during the year have you drunk more than four (for women) or five (for men) servings of alcohol a day?".
One serving of alcohol is traditionally understood as 1 glass of strong alcoholic beverage, a glass of wine or a glass of beer. It is believed that the maximum permissible level of consumption for a healthy adult man under 65 years of age is no more than 4 servings per day and no more than 14 servings per week, for women, respectively, 3 and 12. A study by the Boston Medical Center (conducted in Boston clinics), the results of which were published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, showed that this question alone is enough for a correct diagnosis.
There is no exact data on the level of alcoholism in the USA (as in all other countries of the world), the corresponding statistics are usually obtained by analyzing medical histories and sociological studies. In addition, there are different permissible norms of alcohol consumption in different states.
It is generally believed that about half of adult residents of the United States drink alcohol, and 15% of the country's residents are at risk, that is, they drink more alcohol than they should. Approximately 5-7% of men and 3-5% of women can be recognized as alcoholics.
According to the canons of the US Department of Health, an alcoholic is considered to be the person who:
1. has a constant craving for booze,
2. unable to limit himself in the process of drinking alcohol,
3. experiences a physical craving for alcohol (refusal to drink leads to the appearance of various symptoms, for example, runny nose, sweating, trembling in the legs, etc.),
4. he has developed an addiction to alcohol, he needs a constant increase in the dose of alcohol.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru13.03.2009