What Happens In The First 24 Hours After You Drink Alcohol!
In The First 5 minutes: Within minutes of taking a sip the alcohol travels to your stomach where it is absorbed into your bloodstream, it then travels all over your body including to your brain and around your muscles.
10 minutes: Your body sees the alcohol as a poison, it doesn’t want to store it and aims to break it down and get rid of it as quickly as possible.
15 minutes: Your stomach now is trying to breakdown and remove the alcohol, it now produced the enzyme Alcohol dehydrogenase which converts the alcohol into chemicals including Acetaldehyde (which is quite toxic and is a big contributing factor to your hangover the next day), then into acetic acid and finally fatty acids and water (the final two the body likes). This then sobers you up, however if you drink more than your liver can deal with you will become drunk.
20 minutes: You generally start to feel the alcohol affecting you after 20 minutes, this includes a light head, feelings of happiness or other emotions
45 minutes: Between this time and 90 minutes is when the alcohol level will peak in your blood
60 Minutes: You wll likely need to go to the toilet, as alcohol is a diuretic the kidneys direct drink directly to the bladder, this causes you to need the toilet more often and dehydrates you. If you stop drinking you are likely to feel sleepy or crash out, although you will get to sleep quickly, due to dehydration your quality of sleep is not good.
12-24 hours: When you are awake you will likely feel one of the many symptoms of a hangover such as headaches, dizziness, thirst, paleness and tremors, most of which are caused by dehydration. Your body will still be trying to deal with any excess alcohol in your system.
It is well known that a large meal before drinking known as “lining your stomach” can help, this is because the alcohol does not enter the blood as fast due to food being absorbed too.
If you drink some Champagne or something with bubbles this can make you feel the alcohol faster due to the bubbles causing pressure in your stomach to increase and forcing the alcohol to go into your bloodstream quicker.
Women’s body will process alcohol slower than men, this is due to men having more muscle tissue. Muscles have more water in them and this dilutes the alcohol, it is also said that women have less of the enzyme that breaks down alcohol.
Your age, Generally your body processes alcohol faster the older you are, as your body and liver get used to it and the key enzymes which break down the alcohol are increased with age.
Stress, when you are stressed you will find that increased levels of hormones in your body which affect your metabolism and your body absorption of alcohol.
Alcohol can affect the ‘neurotransmitters’ in your brain which are responsible for carrying messages around your body, hence why you can lose your balance, slur your words, slow your reaction speeds and affect your judgement. It also makes you more likely to take risks as the chemical Gaba is produced which reduces your communication between cells in your brain
The only real way is to let the body do it’s natural functions, this includes the liver burning the alcohol which it will do at a rate of 1-2 units an hour, this varies depending on your body, build and many other factors. Typically a unit of alcohol equates to half a pint of beer, a small glass of wine or a single shot of spirit.
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