A small amount of alcohol enters your bloodstream as soon as it comes in contact with your tongue and other soft tissue in your mouth. About a fifth of the alcohol you consume enters your bloodstream through the stomach. The remaining amount reaches your bloodstream through the small intestine. This is the reason why the food you eat before and while drinking affects drunkenness.
Food helps with the absorption of alcohol in the stomach. It also affects the amount of time it takes for alcohol to reach your bloodstream, which is why drinking on an empty stomach is riskier than drinking with or after a meal. This causes a variety of side effects, including flushed skin, a decrease in body temperature, and a drop in blood pressure. Alcohol reaches your brain within about 5 to 10 minutes.
Most people feel happy, more confident, and more social at this point. Their inhibitions drop. This is all caused by the release of serotonin and dopamine in the brain. At this stage, people experience loss of coordination, blurred vision, dizziness, and slowed speech. The brain produces the antidiuretic hormone ADH , which tells your kidneys how much water to conserve.
When you drink alcohol, ADH production is limited. This causes the kidneys to release more water, which is why you need to use the bathroom so often when consuming alcohol. Not consuming enough non-alcohol fluid when drinking and urinating more often leads to dehydration. Many people are surprised to learn their lungs are affected when they drink alcohol. About 2 to 5 percent of the alcohol you drink is expelled via breath, urine, or sweat. The liver is responsible for oxidizing most of the alcohol you drink.
It converts it to water and carbon monoxide. Ethanol passes throughout your body via the digestive system and the bloodstream and passes through cell membranes.
In your brain, it depresses the central nervous system and triggers the release of dopamine and serotonin. It binds to glutamate, which is a neurotransmitter and prevents it from acting. This makes the brain slower to respond.
Ethanol also binds to and activates gamma-aminobutyric acid GABA , which makes you feel calm and sleeping. Up to 20 percent of the alcohol you drink goes into your bloodstream through your stomach.
The rest of it gets in your bloodstream via your small intestine. If you have food in your stomach, the alcohol will stick around longer. Without food, though, it moves to your bloodstream a lot faster. Your bloodstream can move alcohol through your body quickly. This affects various bodily systems until your liver is able break down the alcohol. This may result in:. Alcohol can hit you pretty fast. It typically reaches your brain within 5 minutes, and you can begin feeling the effects within 10 minutes.
You might feel happy, more social and confident, and less inhibited. Your brain produces antidiuretic hormone ADH , which tells your kidneys how much water to conserve. Alcohol limits ADH production, which brings us to our next body part.
When alcohol suppresses ADH, it causes your kidneys to release more water, which is why you pee more when you drink. Peeing a lot and not getting enough nonalcoholic fluids can lead to dehydration and make you even more drunk.
Yup, some of the alcohol you drink makes it into your lungs. You breathe out about 8 percent of the alcohol you drink. This alcohol evaporates from your blood through your lungs and moves into your breath. After it enters your digestive system, it takes a ride in your bloodstream, passes through cell membranes and strolls through the heart.
It especially likes to hang out in the brain , where it becomes a central nervous system depressant. While in the brain, ethanol wanders around, causes feel-good dopamine to be released and links up with nerve receptors. Of these receptors, ethanol particularly binds to glutamate , a neurotransmitter that normally excites neurons. Ethanol doesn't allow the glutamate to become active and this makes the brain slower to respond to stimuli.
Ethanol also binds to gamma aminobutyric acid GABA. Unlike its stinginess with glutamate, ethanol activates GABA receptors. These receptors make a person feel calm and sleepy so the brain's function slows even further [source: Inglis-Arkell ]. Of course, the severity of one's drunkenness is dependent on other factors, too. Gender, age, weight -- even what you had for dinner -- can all play a role in how much alcohol it takes to become intoxicated [source: Beck ].
Alcohol is eventually metabolized by enzymes in the liver at the rate of about 1 fluid ounce 29 milliliters per hour, but this process can cause damage to the organ in the long term. Alcohol is also excreted by the kidneys as urine, or breathed out by the lungs.
Whole ethanol molecules can even seep from the skin. Of course it can also make a violent exit while vomiting [sources: Brown University Heath Education , Inglis-Arkell ]. However alcohol does not occur in the body naturally. Who you are and what you do alters the effects of alcohol has on your body. Eating a large meal before you drink slows down the effects of alcohol. This is because when you eat the combined alcohol and food stays longer in the stomach.
This means the booze isn't released into the bloodstream as quickly. Fizzy alcohol will make you feel the effects of alcohol more quickly as the bubbles increase the pressure in your stomach, forcing alcohol into your bloodstream faster. The other thing that can affect how alcohol is absorbed is your sex. This is because men tend to have more muscle tissue than women. Muscle has more water than fat, so alcohol will be diluted more in a person with more muscle tissue. Women are also thought to have less of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol, so they will get drunk more easily.
Dr Nick Knight told Newsbeat: "Age can affect how you process alcohol too. It can mean it is metabolised faster. Particular effects of alcohol on the body make drinking dangerous for drivers. Alcohol affects the brains 'neurotransmitters', the chemicals in the brain which carry messages to other parts of the body and tell it what to do.
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