10 Crazy Things Booze Does To Your Body

Britain is a nation of drinkers. Many of us love nothing better than a good session in a pub or a night out on the tiles, but what is all of that doing to our bodies?

You probably don't need to be told that boozing is bad for you. Anyone who has ever woken up with a hangover so bad that it feels like a sweaty dwarf is sitting on your neck, singing show tunes, will confirm that alcohol is indeed a poison.

A study in Scotland (a nation of proper drinkers if there ever was one) even found that 20% more people died of heart attacks on a Monday, and they thought that this was probably linked to drinking a skinful over the weekend.

That's drinking to excess though, surely a swift pint after work or a glass of wine with dinner is okay?

Well, we're not going to tell you to stop drinking (we're not your mum or anything), but you may as well arm yourself with the facts before embarking on your next session. 

Ever wondered why you blackout after one too many? Or what the science is behind "breaking the seal"? Did you know that boozing can even make your gut leak?

There's a lot more to that pint than meets the eye.

We've all been there. You wake up the next morning and stagger downstairs, only to find somebody grinning smugly at you over a big mug of tea. They clearly remember something you don't about the night before.

So why is it that you can't remember a single moment of your rousing karaoke version of "I'm Too Sexy", despite the fact that the entire performance has been uploaded to Facebook?

Alcohol interferes with the neurotransmitters throughout your brain. This is the reason why your coordination and reaction times go down the drain after a couple of shots of tequila, but it is when this occurs in the hippocampus that you get those big black spots.

When these receptors stop working properly, you become unable to form memories. So it's not that you've "forgotten" the night's festivities, so much as you just never hit record in the first place. Your experiences pretty much went in one ear and right out of the other without leaving a trace.