Content:
Alcohol, often seen at social events and celebrations, significantly impacts our bodies. This article explores how alcohol affects our physiology, relates blood alcohol levels to their effects, and explains alcohol metabolism.
When you drink, alcohol gets absorbed by the intestines and travels through the bloodstream to your brain. This changes how the brain typically works, affecting your hearing, vision, reasoning, and other regular functions. Alcohol can make you feel euphoric and more daring, increasing your confidence. It acts as a sedative, dulling your senses like distance and speed perception, slowing your reflexes and reaction times, and narrowing both your central and peripheral vision.
You don’t have to drink a lot of alcohol to feel its effects. Even small amounts can affect your body. Here’s how different blood alcohol levels impact you:
– 0.2 g/L: Your reflexes aren’t as sharp, which means you might not see risks clearly and could act recklessly.
– 0.4 g/L: You might have trouble coordinating your movements, and your alertness and perception slow down.
– 0.5 g/L: Your ability to see and hear stimuli drops by 30-40%, and your field of vision shrinks.
– 0.6 g/L: Side vision is seriously affected, delaying your ability to see movements and obstacles.
– 0.7 g/L: Your movements lose coordination.
– 0.9 g/L: You struggle to see in the dark, judge distances, recognize obstacles, and track multiple visual cues.
– 1 g/L: Euphoria levels rise, but vision and motor skills suffer. Your balance is shaky, your attention span is skewed, reflexes are slow, and reaction times become risky.
– 1.5 g/L: Euphoria fades into drowsiness, mental confusion, and a total lack of clarity.
When you drink, alcohol gets absorbed through your esophagus, stomach, and intestines into your blood. It then travels to your liver, where it gets broken down by metabolism. The liver first converts alcohol into acetaldehyde and then into carbon dioxide and water, using an enzyme called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. Acetaldehyde is what gives you that drunken feeling because it leads to the creation of a morphine precursor called tetrahydropapaveroline. If your drink has carbon dioxide, like sparkling wine, alcohol enters your bloodstream even faster.
Understanding how alcohol affects your body is essential for making informed drinking decisions. Even a little bit of alcohol can have significant impacts, particularly on your brain. So, always consume alcohol responsibly and stay mindful of its effects.
