How Alcohol Affects the Brain?

Do not be fooled, even if you believe that the alcohol consumption you do will not be harmful to your health, the reality is that in the long term, excessive and frequent intake can cause serious problems in your body.

If you want to understand how alcohol affects the brain and nervous system, to have in your possession valuable information that allows you to redirect your habits, read carefully.

4 consequences of how alcohol affects the brain

It is sure that going out and meeting to have some wines, some beers, or a few drinks with your stable, work buddy, or with your partner, is something you do often. And it is most common, culturally normalized because it is one of the ways in which we socialize and enjoy part of our free time. However, we must control the frequency and the quantity of alcohol that we consume, due to its harmful effects in the medium and long term for health in general, and for the brain in particular. In such a case alcohol rehab is a great solution.

The cause of everything is ethanol or ethyl alcohol, which is present in all alcoholic beverages, and which can cause an addiction that ends up degenerating into alcoholism. Although it affects a person or another differently depending on factors such as gender, age, height, weight, emotional and health status or tolerance, the sensations of consuming it in large doses, are manifested in all equally and include:

• drunkenness, characterized by a condition of euphoria and initial excitement, feeling of courage, inhibition, verbiage, etc., and which, taken to the extreme, can lead to intoxication or ethyl coma that causes loss of consciousness and needs urgent medical treatment. Ethyl comas can even end in death when the blood alcohol flow is so high that it causes cerebral edema or hemorrhages throughout the brain.
• The loss of cognitive skills (perception, logical reasoning, and knowledge).
• Hangover, which is the discomfort experienced when the effects of drunkenness pass (by way of headache, dizziness, nausea, or vomiting) and are generated by dehydration of the brain. It improves with rest, drinking a lot of water and eating fruit.

Among the effects of continued and excessive alcohol consumption on the brain and nervous system are these three:

1. Psychic disorders

People with alcohol problems can develop serious mental illnesses such as psychosis, and experience hallucinations and delusions that lead them to escape from reality. A paranoia that can make you think that you have people against you, and see, hear, and feel things that do not exist.

2. Behavioral disturbances

Regular and excessive alcohol consumption is associated with changes in behavior and emotional disorders. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that regulates mood, and drinking frequently modifies its levels, lowering them.

As a consequence of this alteration, the euphoria, impulsiveness, and joy that is experienced at the beginning of a binge can end up degenerating into aggressiveness, violence, and pictures of sadness, anxiety, stress, and depression. For solving behavioral disturbances, alcohol rehab can be lifesaving.

3. Memory failures

Alcohol affects the brain, exactly the hippocampus, a small organ located in the brain, which is associated with memory. They can start as small lapses or so-called gaps, making fragments not be remembered hours after getting drunk. With time and excesses, they can become a more serious problem that damages the brain and affects the ability to memorize, and memories in the medium and long term.

If alcohol abuse at any age is very harmful, it is even more harmful during adolescence, a time when the brain is still developing, because memory problems can be linked to learning and concentration problems, which affect school performance and cognitive function in the future.

Imon is a freelance writer. He likes to write on health & food related topics.