What Actually is Alcohol?

Here is some background to what alcohol actually is. 

Alcohol is a drink containing ethyl alcohol, or ethanol. Ethanol is a by-product of the fermentation process (when yeast and sugar are mixed together and react). Ethanol dissolves easily in water, so it can be rapidly absorbed from the digestive tract and circulate throughout the body in the blood.

Ethanol acts as a depressant on the body. This means that  it slows down the brain’s activities and the activity of the spinal cord. Many people assume alcohol is actually a stimulant because of the feeling it gives you but this is actually just the short term feeling.    

Ethanol does contain calories but does not have any minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates, fats or protein associated with it.The body actually assesses ethanol to be a poison, and therefore has many mechanisms to try to deal with it and render it harmless

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What actually happens to you on a physical level when you take your first sip of alcohol?

This post will explain what happens to you and your body step by step and the effects alcohol is having on you.

When you take a drink of alcohol, the alcohol is absorbed by the stomach, enters the bloodstream, and goes to all the tissues. The effects of alcohol depend on a variety of factors, including your size, weight, age, and sex, as well as the amount of food and alcohol you have already had before drinking this particular drink. 

Let’s begin with how alcohol is absorbed in the body. The first effect of drinking is felt of course in the mouth. Some alcohols can cause a ‘burning’ taste on the back of your throat. This burn is caused by the pain receptors in your taste buds. Essentially, the body is warning you against consuming alcohol because it sees it as a toxic substance.  

Next, the stomach wall absorbs 20% of the alcohol as it enters the blood stream. Depending on the time of day and when you last ate, the alcohol may be readily absorbed or slowly absorbed. If your stomach is empty, the alcohol is quickly absorbed.

Essentially only a few minutes after you have started drinking, there will be alcohol all across your body. The remaining 80% of the alcohol is absorbed in the small intestine. 

We all have an enzyme in our stomaches designed to process ethanol into a safer substance. The enzyme in use is called alcohol dehydrogenase. Alcohol dehydrogenase in men is 70-80% more effective than the same enzyme in women.

There are also age differences – young women and men over 50 years of age have the most difficulty coping with alcohol.  But note that heavy drinkers and people with alcohol problems have severely reduced levels of this important enzyme.

The longer the stomach has to work on the ethanol, the less harm it can do to your body. When a meal is eaten the exit valve of the stomach closes in order to digest the food.  When food and alcohol are consumed at the same time this prevents the alcohol from passing quickly into the small intestine from where it would be rapidly absorbed giving the enzyme more time to work.

The bigger you are the more blood you have in your bloodstream.  Added to this, the average adult male is made up of 66% fluid, compared to 55% for women. 

 So if a man and woman of the same weight drink the same amount in one occasion, the woman will end up with a blood-alcohol level a third higher than the man’s. It will take a third longer for the woman’s body to eliminate the alcohol from the blood. 

The alcohol that passes through the stomach is absorbed by the small intestine. The small intestine allows 80% of the alcohol to be absorbed more quickly than from the stomach. Once in the blood stream, the alcohol spreads throughout the body.  

Finally, alcohol enters the nerve cells and begins to have an effect on the brain. Alcohol circulates in the bloodstream until it is processed by to the liver. The body cannot store alcohol so has to deal with it. Problems occur when there is too much alcohol in the system and the liver is being overworked. 

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