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Topics: Food and Drink, Health, Alcohol, Science
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Food and Drink, Health, Alcohol, Science
You may feel the effects of alcohol after a few drinks but do you know what's really going on in your body?
While you may only start noticing alcohol having an effect on you about half-way through your drink, it actually begins impacting your insides minutes after you've sipped, glugged or shotted your drink.
You probably don't want to know how alcohol impacts you after several minutes, 20 minutes on and each hour after that, but hey, maybe this will be the final push you need to committing to Dry January this year?
Northwestern Medicine explains: "Alcohol affects your body quickly. It is absorbed through the lining of your stomach into your bloodstream. Once there, it spreads into tissues throughout your body.
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"Alcohol reaches your brain in only five minutes, and starts to affect you within 10 minutes."
After 20 minutes, Healthline reports that 90 percent of the alcohol will have reached the small intestine, pancreas and your liver then starts processing the alcohol, metabolizing an average of one ounce of alcohol every hour.
Professor of hepatology and medical advisor to the British Liver Trust, Debbie Shawcross, tells Mail Online that 'about a quarter' of alcohol is 'absorbed via the stomach' and the rest is 'further along your digestive tract'.
Most of the alcohol is broken down by a chemical called alcohol dehydrogenase which 'can cause flushing of the skin, nausea and palpitations', and then the alcohol can be broken down further and expelled through breath, sweat or urine.
Factors which impact alcohol absorption include the concentration of the drink i.e. if it's a spirit with a higher percentage of alcohol versus a beer, alongside whether you've lined your stomach properly with a meal before consuming alcohol.
And if you've overdone it?
Well, sadly the liver 'can't speed up the detoxification process,' Shawcross notes, so even if you stop drinking 'alcohol can stay in your blood for up to six hours and in breath for 12 to 24 hours'.
You - or more likely others around you - will probably begin to notice the effects of the alcohol more after the two-hour mark.
Alongside your self-awareness slowly going out of the window, your speech may begin to slur, your movements may start to slow down and your balance may not be too great after you hit the two-hour mark of drinking alcohol.
This is because the brain stops producing as much of a chemical messenger called GABA when there's alcohol in your system.
And we probably all know what begins to happen when you hit the four hour plus mark.
Four hours plus of drinking alcohol and it's probably time to get a taxi and head home.
Alcohol is a sedative so you'll likely start feeling drowsy and it's better to pass out in the comfort of your own home rather than in a club toilet cubicle or on the streets isn't it?
Hours later, the dreaded hangover will kick in, you may throw up, have a headache, experience hangxiety, an aching body, tiredness and/ or crave junk food - we've all been there.
You may also struggle to sleep despite desperately knowing how much sleep is the only real cure for you.
So, make sure to drink responsibly and all that, eat a proper meal before you go out, alternate drinks if it's a long night and down water before bed.
And may the odds be ever in your favor of escaping the dreaded hangover.