Are body functions slowed when alcohol reaches the brain, heart, stomach, or liver?
1 Answer
Alcohol has its depressant effect on the brain. Effects on other organs vary, but the tendency to slow reactions occurs in the brain.
Explanation:
Alcohol travels through the stomach with essentially no change, and is absorbed only slowly there.
Its long-term effect on the liver is to produce the damage that can result in cirrhosis, but this is chronic rather than acute.
Any action on the heart is secondary - it comes as a result of the effect on the brain.
In the brain, alcohol reaches control centres on an "outside - in" basis. That is, at low blood-alcohol levels, it affects the behaviour of centres in the outer layers of the brain such as the cerebral cortex. Thus, fine motor skill, discrimination and inhibition are altered at low levels of alcohol.
As consumption continues, blood alcohol increases, and the effects occur on deeper and more protected levels of the brain. Balance is altered, speech impaired, vision may double.
At very high concentrations, the alcohol may reach the more primitive areas deep within the brain. This can affect first consciousness, and even respiration and the circulatory system.
So, if the determined drinker does not pass out first, it is possible to have the brain "forget" to continue respiration, and the individual may stop breathing. Or, the heart may simply stop, as though the brain forgot to keep it beating.
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