The Effects of Alcohol on the Brain and Liver

Alcohol consumed in small amounts causes changes in the body, but chronic consummption can cause serious, life-threatening damage.

Alcohol is a toxin.

Scientifically, a toxin is defined as a poison of natural origin that causes structural damage or disturbs the workings of your body. Because alcohol breaks down existing tissue and drastically interferes with metabolic processes that build and repair the body, the body reacts immediately to get rid of it.

Alcohol causes damage throughout the body. In addition to damaging the liver and the brain, alcohol also depresses the immune system. Heavy use of alcohol can lead to heart disease, diminished sex organs, stroke, weakened muscle tissue, and brain damage.

The Brain

Alcohol causes changes in the brain in even small amounts. In small amounts, it famously lowers inhibitions and causes a pleasant feeling or a “buzz.” Because alcohol leaves the stomach unmetabolized, enters the bloodstream and moves quickly to the brain and through the blood-brain barrier, the “buzz” is almost immediate.

The immediate effects are in the superior frontal cortex of the brain. Alcohol serves as a central nervous system depressant mainly in the left side, or the rational, thinking side of the brain. Alcohol alters the concentration the brain’s feel good chemicals, neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, glutamate, and others. In some people, the production of serotonin becomes dependent on alcohol consumption.

Even one night of heavy drinking can cause cognitive difficulties such as blackouts, memory loss, lack of coordination, and the inability to retrieve, store, acquire, or use information.

Because of the damage done by alcohol to their brain and nervous system, when chronic drinkers abruptly stop drinking, they experience a disorder known as delirium tremens, the alcohol withdrawal syndrome also known as the DTs. It usually occurs in alcoholics who consume at least one pint of distilled alcohol a day over a period of months. Symptoms of this condition include horrible hallucinations, shaking, agitation, and dehydration. Delirium tremens requires immediate emergency room care to save the person’s life.

Chronic drinkers have also been shown at autopsy to have lighter, smaller, more shrunken brains than nondrinkers of the same age and gender. It is not clear, however, if damage to the brains of chronic drinkers is due to the alcohol itself, or due, for example, to thiamine deficiencies caused by chronic drinking (called Wernicke’s encephalopathy and Korsakoff’s psychosis).

The Liver

Of all of the organs of the body, alcohol damages the liver the most. The liver is located in the abdominal cavity, the upper-right quadrant and is connected to the gallbladder, the intestines, and the bile duct.

The liver is the largest organ in the human body, and it performs up to 95 percent of this function of eliminating alcohol from the body. (The other five percent is eliminated through the skin, breathing, and urination).

The liver metabolizes alcohol in three stages: alcohol is metabolized to acetylaldehyde and acetylaldehyde is then converted to acetic acid, which is then converted to carbon dioxide and water. Two major enzyme systems function inside the liver to metabolize alcohol: the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme; and when this is system overwhelmed, MEOS (microsomal ethanol oxidizing system) helps with the oxidation.

The metabolite of alcohol, acetylaldehyde, is actually more toxic to the body than alcohol itself, and is the main culprit in occurrence of hangovers. Acetylaldehyde is converted by acetylaldehyde dehydrogenase (another enzyme) to acetic acid (or acetate), which is then converted to carbon dioxide and water.

The liver is damaged when it overwhelmed with this job of metabolizing alcohol. Three distinctly different pathologies result from chronic alcohol consumption: fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis. Fatty liver is characterized by fat globules in the liver tissue. Chronic drinking leads to inflammation of the liver, which is a defense mechanism of the immune system to ward off further damage to the liver tissue. This characterizes alcohol hepatitis. It is through the healing of the damage that scar tissue is formed, and this scar tissue is the hallmark feature of cirrhosis.

In conclusion.

The effects of alcohol on the brain and liver depend largely on the amount of alcohol consumed and the length of time. Some of the most harmful effects are permanent, especially with chronic, long-term alcohol abusers.

But the good news is that many of the effects on the liver (such as fatty liver) are reversible if the person stops drinking. Some studies have shown that the brain of the chronic alcoholic will rewire itself after a certain period of abstinence.

SOURCE: newsolio