6 Things That Happens To Your Body On Booze

6 Things That Happens To Your Body On Booze

While you think a cocktail every day after work isn’t a huge deal, research is showing this just isn’t true. Even small amounts of alcohol consumed regularly are enough to cause negative repercussions on a variety of your organs. Before you take another swig of whiskey after a long day at work, consider the effects it’s going to have on your body.

The Brain

Alcohol certainly has an effect on the brain long-term, but its short-term effects are equally sobering. Alcohol distorts the brain’s ability to send messages that result in stored memories, creating altered memories or memory lapses. Everyone who has ever been relatively tipsy knows their movements become difficult to control and thinking clearly becomes challenging or downright impossible.

These alcohol-related changes also create mood and behavioral shifts. These include depression, agitation, and even seizures. Long-term binge drinking can actually reduce the size of the brain cells and eventually affects normal body functions like sleep, motor coordination, and temperature regulation.

The Skin

The skin is often overlooked as an organ, and so it’s overlooked as being affected by regular alcohol consumption. Alcohol encourages the body to retain water and creates that puffy, bloated look around your face after you’ve had a few too many cocktails. Significant amounts of alcohol break the delicate blood vessels in the face and give you a flushed face and red eyes.

The Muscles

If working out is incredibly important to you, then it’s important to remember having a few drinks every night is going to have a significant effect on your muscle gains. Not only will a hangover decrease your motivation for hitting the gym the next day, but it also decreases your body’s ability to build muscle after a workout. Research has found that alcohol affects protein synthesis which is the body’s process that builds new muscle. Steady alcohol consumption is linked to a decrease in muscle weight and lean body mass.

The Stomach

When you drink, the alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream, but alcohol that isn’t absorbed ends up travelling through the entire gastrointestinal tract. If it isn’t absorbed through the small intestine, the alcohol stays in the stomach and irritates the stomach lining. This irritation increases the production of digestive acids, but too much alcohol leads to a decrease in the body’s ability to digest food. Constant irritation eventually damages the lining of the stomach.

RELATED ARTICLE: 8 Things that Can Happen to You When You Stop Drinking Alcohol!

The Heart

Yes, booze also affects your ticker, and it’s another reason to imbibe responsibly. Binge and long-term drinking affect the speed at which your heart beats. There’s a natural pacemaker in the heart, and alcohol impairs this pacemaker and makes the heart beat too quickly or irregularly. These arrhythmias also occur even if you don’t drink very often, but you do drink to getting drunk on occasion. Research has also proved that binge drinkers are 56 percent more likely to have an ischemic stroke versus people who never binge drink.

The Penis

If none of the prior information gets your attention, this probably will. Alcohol not only decreases your libido, it also decreases the blood flow to the penis and makes erections weaker or impossible to get.

Alcohol is okay in moderation, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to affect your body’s most important organs.

Pubs.niaaa.nih.gov   Books.google.com   Image Source: Menshealth.com