If you are someone who loves drinking every once in a while without taking prime precautions such as taking a full meal before dozing off yourself with booze, sipping water or hydrating fluids while drinking; you would know What does alcohol do to your liver.
Needless to say, effects of alcohol are dreadful and sadly, there is no true cure for it, except for avoiding to drink completely or a few home remedies, You can find here what to eat after a hangover.
Researchers have, since more than a century, been working towards finding a cure for the dreading effects of alcohol, and to do so, they first researched about how our bodies react to alcoholic drinks.
Here’s what they found;
How Alcohol effects you in 24 Hours
1. First Couple Minutes
As you sip the drink, it finds its way directly to your stomach where it is absorbed in by the bloodstream which helps it reach to every part of the system including the brain as well as all the muscles.
2. With-in First 10 Minutes
It takes no more than ten minutes for your body to distinguish the alcohol as a poison. The system immediately commands the breakdown of this hostile substance and get rid of it instantly in order to avoid getting the alcohol stored in your body.
3. 15 Minutes after Sipping a Cocktail
At this point, your system is working vigorously to break down the alcoholic molecule into its simplest form which is fatty acids and water for it to get off from the body.
During the process, your body excretes the AHD (Alcohol Dehydrogenase) enzyme which breaks down alcohol into Acetaldehyde, a heavy toxin. It is further broken down into acetic acid and later converts into its final stage – fatty acids and water.
This is how your body works to sober you up!
We wish the effects of alcohol were easy to get rid of.
But Alas!
This is only in the case when you take minute amounts of alcohol which the liver can readily get rid of. But not when you are slurping cocktails after cocktails, without a care of the world.
4. 20 Minutes Later
20 minutes after your drinking session, your system starts showing minute signs which reflect that alcohol has started affecting the system. Such as light-headedness, mood swings etc.
5. Somewhere Between 30 to 45 Minutes
The blood alcohol level starts rising like crazy
6. An Hour Later
The frequent and well, pretty embarrassing trips to the restroom, begin. Since alcohol is diuretic in nature, it directly travels to the bladder, making you feel the need to use the restroom ever so often. Also resulting in making you feel dehydrated.
At this point, your body might fall asleep due to the lack of hydration, commonly known as ‘drunk sleep’.
7. Good 16 – 20 Hours Later
This is when you start regretting what happened last night. 16 to 24 hours into the drinking session, your system begins to show signs of the much-feared Hangover. From headaches, dryness in the mouth to vomiting, hangovers make you go through all.
Well in short, the first few minutes while drinking are no less than a party, but mind it the fun doesn’t last for long. Our bodies are made to fight everything and anything, which it fears, may be hostile. As the body begins to fight the effects of alcohol, down come the demeaning symptoms of hangover, which is referred to as a total party-bummer, since decades.
During the hangover you will hear yourself promise not to go near a club again, let alone drink. Which obviously you say only to get rid of the guilt of creating such havoc for your body to deal with later, in exchange of hardly a couple hours of partying and 20 trips to the loo.
Those hours during the dreadful hangover, will make you realize how good it would have been if you had stayed home and watched Game of Thrones (which reminds us, only 6 days to go for the new season!!), or even better completed that college assignment. But oh well. What is done is done.
All you can do during a hangover is, wait it out. Drink lots and lots of hydrating fluids other than water, as it isn’t enough to provide you with the needed amount of hydration. Energy Drinks are a good idea. Not only will these help hydrate your system but they taste like heaven too!
Try to rest as much during the horrendous hangover situation, as that is one way how our body heals, after battling with interventions.
The alcohol effects the system terribly. It takes almost 24 hours for the system to wake up completely from the mess, you created. Despite 24 hours of complete chaos, your system is now ready to function normally.
And we all know what that means,
Beer or martini?
And that’s how all the promises, go flushing down the drain!
