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Long-term effects of alcohol misuse high blood pressure. stroke. pancreatitis. liver disease. liver cancer. mouth cancer. head and neck cancer. breast cancer.
In your bloodstream Your bloodstream can move alcohol through your body quickly. This affects various bodily systems until your liver is able break down the alcohol. When it’s in your bloodstream, alcohol also causes your blood vessels to widen.
You might become emotionally unstable and get easily excited or saddened. You might lose your coordination and have trouble making judgment calls and remembering things. You might have blurry vision and lose your balance. You may also feel tired or drowsy.
When you drink alcohol, you don’t digest alcohol. It passes quickly into your bloodstream and travels to every part of your body. Alcohol affects your brain first, then your kidneys, lungs and liver. The effect on your body depends on your age, gender, weight and the type of alcohol.
When Nightly Drinking Is OK D., director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). “There’s very little data that having one or two drinks has any deleterious health effects in young men or leads to alcohol abuse later,” Koob says.
Drinking too much puts you at risk for some cancers, such as cancer of the mouth, esophagus, throat, liver and breast. It can affect your immune system. If you drink every day, or almost every day, you might notice that you catch colds, flu or other illnesses more frequently than people who don’t drink.
It increases sexual desire — sort of Drinking alcohol increases testosterone levels in females. This male sex hormone plays a role in sexual desire. It may be a factor in females reporting more sexual desire when drinking.
That aspect seems to stem from the fact that alcohol increases activity in the dopamine neurons in the mesolimbic reward pathway, as well as opioid cells that release endorphins. Both produce feelings of joy, pleasure, euphoria, depending on the type of activation. That’s why drinking can be so pleasurable.
On average the body can eliminate 0.015% BAC per hour, so depending on the person and type of alcohol, they may have a BAC of 0.02% – 0.03% at a rate of 1 drink per hour. That means, the body can take 1 – 2 hours to metabolize the alcohol consumed in that hour.
“There’s usually some version of one’s true feelings that come out when one is drunk,” Vranich said. “People dredge up feelings and sentiments from somewhere deep in their brains, so what one says or does certainly reflects what’s going on deep down.
Alcohol stifles reasoning skills and contemplating repercussions. As a result, people are more likely to tell the truth while intoxicated, offering up brutally honest, unfiltered opinions. And without the fear of consequences, alcohol can give people the courage to do or say things they ordinarily wouldn’t entertain.
You might feel depressed after drinking because alcohol itself is a depressant. Drinking activates the reward system in your brain and triggers dopamine release, so alcohol often seems to have a stimulating effect — at first.
What are the early signs of liver damage from alcohol? swelling of your liver, which may lead to discomfort in the upper right side of your abdomen. fatigue. unexplained weight loss. loss of appetite. nausea and vomiting.
The researchers conducted multiple scans to track the changing state of the brain over time. The MRI research revealed that alcohol abstinence led to brain volume increases in key areas including the frontal lobe and cerebellum. This involved both gray matter and white matter.
Drinking alcohol in moderation generally is not a cause for concern. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, drinking is considered to be in the moderate or low-risk range for women at no more than three drinks in any one day and no more than seven drinks per week.