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Alcohol and Your Body
I was 18 years old and living away from home for the first time. One of my new friends was from England. We were talking about a party we were going to that weekend. She asked me about my favorite alcoholic drink.
“I don’t drink,” I answered. I expected her to think I was weird, but instead she was almost jealous.
“Really! Your liver must be so healthy!”
Alcohol literally poisons your liver. Your liver has more than 20 jobs in your body—everything from using fats to removing poisons from your bloodstream. When you drink, about 20 percent of the alcohol you swallow seeps out the stomach lining into your bloodstream. The rest of the alcohol slips through the walls of your small intestine to your blood cells. The blood travels through the liver to get cleaned. The liver recognizes any strange chemicals (like alcohol) and pulls them from the blood. Then the liver begins to break down the alcohol into chemicals that won’t hurt the body.
Problems come up, though. The first step in breaking down alcohol actually makes another chemical that is even more poisonous than alcohol. When this chemical (called acetaldehyde) builds up in your body it starts causing cancer. Plus, your liver can only work so fast. If you keep drinking alcohol, more acetaldehyde builds up and parts of your liver actually begin to die.
Your liver isn’t the only organ that you poison when you drink. Alcohol takes only a few minutes to get into your blood, and your blood quickly travels throughout your whole body. Within minutes, every major organ, muscle, and tissue has alcohol in it. Perhaps you’ve heard that girls are affected by alcohol faster than boys? This is because boys have more water in their bodies (especially in their muscles), and water can dilute alcohol, so you don’t notice it as quickly.
Remember that alcohol is traveling through your body in the bloodstream. Normally that blood carries oxygen throughout your body. When alcohol is taking up the oxygen’s space, your body parts begin to starve for oxygen. Your brain cannot survive without oxygen! Also, because your brain does not work right without enough oxygen, many drinkers have memory problems, black out, pass out, or even hallucinate.
Alcohol is actually a depressant because it slows down parts of your body. Your body doesn’t work as fast for two reasons:
1. You don’t have enough oxygen.
2. You are being poisoned by alcohol and acetaldehyde.
Jason* explained that he became addicted to alcohol because it relaxed him and helped him forget his problems. The reason he relaxed was because alcohol slows down your brain and nerves. When your nerves are not working right you don’t always notice pain—you might get hurt and not realize it until the next day. The reason Jason forgot his problems was because his brain was being destroyed.
Nerves and brain cells aren’t the only parts of your body alcohol hurts. Imagine your blood cells traveling through your body like cars traveling down a highway. Alcohol takes up space on the highway and makes the blood cells stick together. When the blood gets to narrow passages it can completely block the blood supply in that passage. If this happens in the brain, you can have a stroke.
Muscles also suffer from alcohol. Muscles need oxygen to work, and alcohol robs them of oxygen. Sore muscles are part of a hangover. The worst part is that your heart is also a muscle. If you drink regularly, parts of your heart weaken and die.
Teenagers still have some growing and changing to do, and alcohol messes with that. Studies have shown small brain problems, loss of bone material, and loss of hormones in teenagers who drink.
What if you’ve already had some alcohol? You’re not doomed to heart failure and brain damage yet! All these problems add up with each drink you have. The sooner you stop, the better shape your body will be in. A strong body is an alcohol-free body! You get only one body—take care of it by staying away from alcohol.
*Name changed
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