How Alcohol Affects the Nervous System

The human’s nervous system is one of the systems of the body that is greatly affected by alcohol.  Alcohol affects the nervous system by slowing down signals from the brain to nerve endings and the spinal cord.   This implies that when you drink alcohol the bloodstream immediately absorbs it and the functions of the nervous system slows down drastically; this results to the buzz or the numbers people normally feel after some alcohol intake.

Alcohol influences the body in a similar fashion as a sedative; however, it does not pass through a regular digestion process unlike the sedative, like a pill for example.  It just flows directly to the bloodstream, which makes alcohol dangerous, especially if someone drinks regularly and becomes dependent to it.  In some extent, someone who drinks too quickly are in for some big trouble as alcohol can suddenly paralyze the entire organ.

Our body generally has two systems – involuntary and voluntary. The voluntary system functions your muscles while, on the other hand, the involuntary or autonomic nervous system controls the operation of our organs – whether how fast or how slow it performs.  The breathing and heart rate are also controlled by the autonomic nervous system. Most of the time, the brain sends electric signals to the body, which fundamentally regulates how we breathe.  This process is probably reserved already for people with pre-existing medical conditions.  This implies that any person has no control on how this part of our nervous system performs, that is why if you are an excessive drinker – an alcohol addict, the brain finds it hard to interpret the electric signals which can cause a person to start having shallow breathing – or worse, stop breathing at all.

Generally, the long and short-term effects of alcohol in the nervous system are dependent on the amount of alcohol intake, how often and for what duration.  These effects can vary over time, which is dependent on the tolerance level a certain person builds up.  Again, this can change over a period of time.  If a person drinks for a longer period of time, human cells get immune from alcohol and become less porous to alcohol, which means human cells literally get thicker.  Healthy cells define a healthy nervous system.

There are many possibilities for serious problems to take place if cell institute resistance to alcohol; this lessens the body’s ability to fight infection.

Some of the most common effects of alcohol to the nervous system are stroke, dementia, and heart attack.