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Thinking About Your Drinking |
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What exactly are the effects of alcohol on my body? |
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There are many effects.
We shall concentrate on the more IMMEDIATE EFFECTS first.
A couple of important facts about the drug alcohol:
- Alcohol is a depressant.
- It is also an irritant.
Alcohol depresses the activity of certain parts of the brain; to be more precise, it depresses the parts of the brain responsible for our inhibitions and coordination - as a lot of us will already be aware.
The consequences of this don't really need elaborating, do they?
It is easy to tell that alcohol is an irritant because in many cases it burns as it goes down to your stomach. The immediate irritant effect of alcohol is to make the stomach over-produce the natural acid there, to the point that it overwhelms the normal protective layer and begins to dissolve the stomach lining itself. When the lining is inflamed you have gastritis; when one spot is dissolved more deeply you have an ulcer: both have dangerous complications.
At least drinking doesn't make me fat.
Have you ever seen a beer belly?! Alcohol is rich in calories, and if you are interested in your weight you'll know all about them!
How does my body get rid of alcohol?
As quickly as it can!
Unfortunately, your body has to burn up alcohol, and this can only happen in your liver. That is why the liver is one of the first parts of your body to suffer damage from heavy drinking. (Look at the diagram on the next web page if you need convincing.)
Alcohol is burnt up slowly by the liver; it takes about one hour to burn off one unit of alcohol.
This figure is important for drivers, for example, if you have seven pints of strong lager (8%-10% alcohol) in an evening drinking session, you may still be over the legal limit for driving late in the afternoon of the following day and will still have some alcohol in your body twenty-four hours later. Any drinks you have after this session will simply add their units onto those yet to be burnt up from yesterday.
A sobering thought as they say!
Click here and learn more about the effects of alcohol on the body...
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