10 Crazy Things Booze Does To Your Body

The upshot of all of this bacteria suddenly swimming around your blood stream is that your immune system kicks itself into overdrive, releasing something called proinflammatory cytokines. The effect of this is largely systemic inflammation (that's inflammation in your entire body).

Alcohol doesn't just awaken your innate ability for karaoke and mainlining large kebabs, it also makes you swell up like the Michelin man.

It has been shown that just one binge can cause the effect. The body is reacting to alcohol as though it is an injury or disease and this is one of the things that is behind the flu-like symptoms you get when you're hungover.

Even though this occurs all over the body, the liver is the organ that takes the most abuse. After just four weekly sessions, that's just a month of fairly moderate drinking, liver inflammation can increase by as much as 25% as it desperately tries to process all those Cheeky Vimtos. This isn't great news as inflammation of the liver is a precursor to the more serious scarring that causes liver cirrhosis.

It's almost as though it's a poison or something.