what happens to your body if you drink alcohol?
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After a drink is swallowed, the alcohol is rapidly absorbed into the blood (20% through the stomach and 80% through the small intestine), with effects felt within 5 to 10 minutes after drinking. It usually peaks in the blood after 30-90 minutes and is carried through all the organs of the body.
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According to alcoholgifts.co.uk, which created the imagery, just 5 minutes after a beer, its alcohol is absorbed into your bloodstream and immediately begins to affect your brain and muscles. Over the next hour your body tries to deal with what it sees as a “poison”, trying to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
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Drinking alcohol can cause an overgrowth of intestinal bacteria. This can lead to symptoms like bloating and constipation, according to an article in the journal Alcohol Research . Researchers also know that metabolizing alcohol in the GI tract can lead to inflammation, which causes a variety of symptoms.
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Often, it's packaged as a neat factoid like “Three beers kill 10,000 brain cells.” But is this true? No. But alcohol does damage some of your 86 billion brain cells, or neurons, which send electrical and chemical messages within the brain and between it and other parts of the body.
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"You'll burn fewer calories too, because the alcohol is preventing your body from using its natural energy source – glucose." "While alcohol isn't stored as fat," Lucy says, "it blocks fat oxidation which basically accelerated the rate at which your body stores fat as body fat."
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How Does Alcohol Affect the Brain? Alcohol has a profound effect on the complex structures of the brain. It blocks chemical signals between brain cells (called neurons), leading to the common immediate symptoms of intoxication, including impulsive behavior, slurred speech, poor memory, and slowed reflexes.
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In fact, drinking too much alcohol can even lead to gastritis, which is when your stomach lining gets irritated, inflamed and erodes. Symptoms vary but include indigestion, stomach pain, nausea, upset stomach and more vomiting. Alcohol poisoning is a common cause of vomiting after drinking.
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Since your body can absorb alcohol faster than it can metabolize it, alcohol can build up in your bloodstream. If you drink faster than you metabolize your drinks, you build up acetaldehyde in the liver, your BAC level rises more quickly, and the effects of alcohol increase.
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It is absorbed through the lining of your stomach into your bloodstream, which then diffuses it into biological tissues throughout your body. Alcohol reaches your brain in only five minutes, with immediate effects appearing within 10 minutes. After 20 minutes, your liver begins processing the alcohol.
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Alcohol has a lot of empty calories and it's easy for a heavy drinker to drink an extra 1000 calories a day. Alcohol also changes your hormones, making it harder to lose weight. Once you stop drinking, it's easy to lose a few pounds pretty quickly. However, some people actually gain weight once they quit drinking.
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Alcohol affects many parts of your brain, from the medulla to the cerebellum.
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Alcohol depresses the central nervous system, affects judgment, and slows physical reaction time. Most people become impaired after only one drink.
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Alcohol also affects the cerebellum in the brain which controls balance and coordination as well as eye movements. Therefore high alcohol consumption can disrupt the brain's judgement of distances and heights and cause dizziness. The liver is the main organ that gets rid of alcohol by breaking it down.
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Alcohol is known to increase levels of the "good" cholesterol, or HDL, and new research shows that it may act as a blood thinner. In the new study, drinking alcohol decreased the clumping together of clotting cells in the blood, a process that can lead to blood vessel blockages in the heart and possibly a heart attack.
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Put simply, alcohol irritates your digestive system. Drinking – even a little – makes your stomach produce more acid than usual, which can in turn cause gastritis (the inflammation of the stomach lining). This triggers stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and, in heavy drinkers, even bleeding.
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Here's how alcohol can affect your body: Brain: Alcohol interferes with the brain's communication pathways, and can affect the way the brain looks and works. These disruptions can change mood and behavior, and make it harder to think clearly and move with coordination.
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Drinking alcohol affects many parts of your body, including your kidneys. A little alcohol—one or two drinks now and then—usually has no serious effects. However, excessive drinking–more than four drinks daily—can affect your health and worsen kidney disease.