12 Myths About The Human Body Debunked

This misapprehension often comes with two false facts in one, and likely stems from concerned adults who do not want children to drink in excess, as well as from anti-alcohol sentiment. The myth states that alcohol kills your brain cells, and that brain cells do not grow back or repair themselves if damaged.

Fortunately, this is yet again false.

Our ability to drink alcohol comes from very far back in our evolutionary lineage, where our early ancestors would eat fermenting fruit off of the ground, which contained substances harmful to other animals, thus giving us an evolutionary edge. When we drink alcohol it will be sent to the liver for processing into less harmful substances. Though what frequently happens, is that when we drink it we drink too much for our livers to process, often far in excess of a few morsels of fermenting fruits.

Until it can be broken down, this extra alcohol will circulate in our blood stream and eventually passes into the brain. Unlike the conventional wisdom of this myth, this will not destroy or damage brain cells in the area. Even if it did, which it wouldn’t, brain cells are mostly like any other in your body and would be quickly replaced or repaired.

What does happen though, is that this can disrupt the signalling between the nerve cells in the brain, which leads to the wide array of symptoms we commonly associate with being drunk.

So there is a modicum of truth to alcohol affecting your brain, but this is in the signalling between a particular set of brain cells and not in the killing of cells as the tales suggest.