Most people think that alcohol is fairly harmless and just something to be enjoyed. Other than a few ill-effects the next day and maybe putting on a bit of extra weight, alcohol does not seem to have any long lasting effects.
But alcohol can cause harm. Each year in the UK 150,000 people are admitted to hospital and 22,000 people die prematurely due to alcohol related causes. That death toll works out as 400 people every day. The cost to society has been estimated at over £20 billion.
It is a mistake to think that you have to be a heavy drinker to run into problems. Although it can take as long as 10 to 20 years, drinking just a bit more than you should over time can seriously harm your liver. Not feeling any side effects from drinking does not mean that you are not risking chronic ill-health or lasting liver damage from alcohol-related liver disease. Vast numbers of us now fall into this category.
The liver is your largest internal organ. Among hundreds of jobs, it has to deal with the alcohol you drink. If you’re drinking too much, your liver has to literally soak up the punishment. With so few nerve endings to signal pain you won’t know that your liver is complaining. If you’re drinking a lot on a regular basis, chances are that you will not feel anything happening until your liver has had enough. The harm to your liver at this stage will be severe – and could even be fatal.
This is not an attempt to put you off drinking. Being more sensible about how you drink is the aim. It can be easy to underestimate how much alcohol you are drinking and often difficult to stop after a certain number of drinks. A little more knowledge about alcohol itself will help. Taking a few minutes to read this leaflet to help you understand the effect alcohol has on you and your liver is a big step in the right direction.
This information is written to signpost the ways to safer drinking. It gives you short and long-term odds on the things that will go wrong if you ignore them.
The message is simple: when you raise a glass, spare your liver a thought. If you keep track of how much you drink, you should stay in better shape and around for longer to enjoy it.
Jim's story
Jim is 55 years old. He used to visit his local pub most days to meet up with his mates. He had two to three pints at lunch and a couple of drinks in the evening (roughly 60 units of alcohol a week). Recently, over the course of a few weeks he noticed his abdomen had become swollen and tight. After tests, it was discovered that this was due to the build up of fluid (ascites), caused by cirrhosis of the liver. Jim took his doctor’s advice and has stopped drinking completely. After six months the fluid has gone and he is now feeling well and fitter, even though his liver will never fully recover. If he had continued drinking even a small amount, things could have been worse. Half of people with ascites die within two years of diagnosis.
What is alcohol?
Alcohol is derived from the fermentation of sugar by yeast. It is a drug. The main psychoactive ingredient in alcoholic drinks is ethanol, or ethyl alcohol.
Ethanol dissolves quickly in water and is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream. In the short term, in small doses, it acts on receptors in the brain to make people feel uninhibited and provides a general sense of well-being. Drinking more alcohol starts to affect the balance and the speech centre of the brain. If you drink regularly, the brain’s receptors adapt to the alcohol and higher doses are needed to cause the same effect.
Alcohol is a depressant. Rather than acting as a stimulant, alcohol is likely to have the opposite effect on people who drink heavily.
What happens when you drink alcohol?
Alcohol is quickly soaked up through the lining of the stomach and the upper part of the gut (intestine) and into your blood stream. The higher the concentration of alcohol, the faster it will be absorbed (whisky will be faster than beer, for example).