It is no secret that alcohol has damaging effects on both physical and mental health-but why? What actually happens to us when we consume alcohol?
In this article, I am going to be breaking down the different ways that alcohol affects our physical bodies. More specifically, I will be going over how it affects the brain as well as sharing my top tips for preventing severe hangovers!
What is alcohol?
An alcoholic beverage is a drink which contains ethanol. Essentially, ethanol is the base of all alcohholic drinks. It is produced using a fermentation process that involves fruits, grains and other sources of sugar.
When we consume these types of beverages, it results in a state of intoxication, AKA being drunk. Sometimes this is fun, sometimes it is not!
You may think that the simple fact of it is that drinking more leads to higher levels of intoxication and thus worse hangovers following your night out. However, it is a little more complex than that!
Drinking alcohol has been part of our history for what feels like forever. Existing evidence of humans consuming alcohol dates all the way back to 5400-5000 BC.
Furthermore, it has played a huge role in the development of certain cultures, how we socialise and how we celebrate. Developing and drinking also displays a huge turning point in our evolution.
Although there are many positives that have come from our beloved alcoholic beverages, we went a very long time mindlessly consuming alcohol without understanding its long-term effects.
Thanks to modern-day studies, we have a lot of insight into the tole that alcohol takes on our bodies/brains and just how toxic it really is.
A few things to keep in mind
First of all, it is important to understand the ways that can alter how your body processes alcohol. There are many factors to consider.
Some include but are not limited to; your body weight, how much food you ate that day, what kind of food you ate, the alcohol percentage per drink you consume, other compounds that are in your beverages (eg, sugar) how much sleep you had that night and your body temperature.
Additionally, mixing different types of alcohol into one night of drinking may result in harsher aftermath. All of these factors can dictate how the effects will feel in the moment as well as the severity of your hangover the next day.
How does alcohol affect the brain?
Drinking decreases specific neuronal excitation in the brain. Let’s use a shot of vodka as an example.
After taking a shot, 20% of the alcohol is absorbed into your stomach, while 80% is absorbed by the small intestines (where it enters your bloodstream) and then to your liver to be metabolized. Ethanol (what all alcohol is made from) gets into your cells by passive diffusion.
This means that the more beverages that you consume, the faster you get drunk…Duh! Eventually, when all of your vodka shots accumulate and finally reach your brain, it suppresses the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate which is responsible for information transfer in the brain becoming slower, with only the largest signals making it through.
What does this mean? You feel less, perceive less, notice less, remember less and (quite frankly) think less!
Let’s have a look at one particular section of the brain that is majorly suppressed by alcohol; The prefrontal cortex.
This area of the brain controls your impulses and restrains behaviour, which is why many of us are able to ‘loosen up’ after a few drinks and become more extroverted than we were prior to consuming alcohol.
Additionally, your prefrontal cortex also governs your memory, attention, judgments and other vital functions. Let’s look at some typical scenarios that occur under the influence and how they are linked to your frontal cortex.
Have you ever been having a conversation with someone who is drunk and they were continuously repeating the same question over and over again?
This is because their prefrontal cortex is being suppressed, which means their memory of asking you the same question is not accessible.
Have you ever seen someone who is so drunk that they are completely unaware of something they would usually find obvious, eg. their shirt being on backwards? This is because their ‘attention’ has dissolved due to the inactivity happening in their prefrontal cortex.
Have you ever had your friend tell you that they hooked up with someone that they found unbelievably attractive in the moment, only to find out said one-night-stand turned out to be someone they found really unattractive the next morning?
That is because their prefrontal cortex is not able to make a regular judgment and is unable to tell the true extent of someone’s attractiveness. Of course, this is opinion based but I am sure you know what I mean!
Have you ever blacked out? This is where you have no recollection of what happened throughout specific time periods during your night out. When you drink some alcohol, your prefrontal cortex will begin to shut down.
The more you drink, the more it shuts down. After consuming enough alcohol, you will have lost so much activity in this part of the brain to the point where you were unable to store any memories during an alarming chunk of the night.
Your brain acts as a computer in the way that it processes and stores memory and information. When that area of the brain is unable to do what it normally does, you will draw a blank when trying to think back to the night before as those functions were temporarily disabled.
All of these things are extremely common scenarios and display the results of how the prefrontal cortex is affected under the influence of alcohol.
However, these are only the short-term effect that alcohol has on the brain. If drinking alcohol for one night can have such a negative effect, imagine what drinking often can do in the long run. But that is a whole conversation for another day!
Ways to minimize your hangover
Hangovers are no joke! They can quite literally make you bed-ridden for the entire day following a night out. You may experience severe dehydration, sensitivity to light/sound, body aches and exhaustion.
In more extreme (yet common) cases, you can also experience nausea, vomiting and irregular bowel movements. Additionally, hangovers can leave you feeling mentally unwell. Your average hangover often results in feelings of anxiety, depression, irritation and unstable hormones in general.
All in all, you will be feeling the total opposite of how you felt when you were dancing on the bar with a sweaty stranger the night before!
A hangover is pretty much always unavoidable if you plan to have more than a few drinks, however, taking some precautions can have a significant reduction in the severity of your symptoms. Here are a few things to keep in mind during your night out that your future self will thank you for!
1. Sugar
When you are out drinking with your friends, sugar is hard to avoid. Many delicious drinks, specifically cocktails, contain high amounts of sugar, which can increase the negative effects that alcohol has on your system.
Your body does not react well to sugar as is. Your brain will be busy repairing itself during the day of your hangover. Having a spike in sugar levels will not help this recovery process.
Instead, it will make your brain have a harder time recovering, which can lead to worse hangover symptoms as well as prolonged symptoms.
2. Water
One of the best things you can do to minimize the chances of a nasty hangover is drink enough water! Although this is easier said than done, it is so important.
TIP: Drink as much water between your alcoholic drinks as possible and try to have a shot of salty water or an electrolyte tablet before you go to bed. This way, all the water you drink doesn’t pass through your system and you can get more hydration out of the water you did manage to drink. I’ve been doing this for years and it really helps!
3. Food
Make sure that you eat before you drink so the alcohol you consume can be processed at a less damaging rate. Extra points if the food you consume beforehand is nourishing!
While you are stuck in bed feeling like death from bottomless margaritas at happy hour, the food you ate beforehand will still be processing in your body during your hangover and will either work with you or against you!
4. DHM
This is by far the most effective hangover prevention method in the book. This compound has been used for centuries in Japanese, Chinese and Korean cultures as a health supplement.
It was originally applied with the motive of effectively treating severe fevers. However, in modern-day usage, it is used as a hangover prevention Nootropic!
I have used DHM a lot and it is surprisingly effective! However, the only obstacle is that you may face is redosing DHM throughout the night. You need to take 1-2 capsules alongside each drink which gets very hard to remember as the night goes on-but it is so worth it!
Essentially, DHM slows down the rate at which alcohol is processed in the body. If the processing of alcohol is slowed down, your hangover symptoms will be significantly minimized.
Final thoughts
When we talk about substances, we typically say ‘drugs and alcohol’ as if they are two separate categories. Due to the legality of alcohol and how socially acceptable it is to drink, we often forget that at the end of the day alcohol is a drug!
You’ve probably heard this a million times and will hear it a million times but but drink responsibly! There is nothing wrong with drinking when mindfulness is practiced alongside drinking alcohol.
Be safe, try (keyword being try) to make good decisions and for the love of God, take some DHM and thank me later!
