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What Happens to Your Body Within an Hour of Drinking a Beer
Rachel Grumman Bender
August 18, 2015
When it’s happy hour on a hot summer day, there are few things more refreshing than downing an ice-cold beer. But what exactly happens to your body as you knock back that brew? Turns out, quite a bit. Drinking beer affects everything from the brain to blood sugar levels.
You probably already know the definition of “moderate” alcohol consumption, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — up to one drink a day for women, two drinks per day for men — and that binge drinking can put your health at serious risk. But what happens in your body after just one beer?
Well, there’s a reason having a drink feels so relaxing — a 2013 study in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology found that, even before you feel buzzed, sipping beer releases the famous feel-good hormone dopamine. This lights up the reward centers in the brain, which in some people, can increase the desire to have another … and another.
Although you won’t exactly be hanging from the restaurant chandelier after having a single beer, you do start to lose your inhibitions after just one. “You get more garrulous, talk a lot more, and are more likely to make a social interaction, such as going over to a colleague you’ve been wanting to meet and introducing yourself,” National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism director George Koob, PhD, tells Yahoo Health. “That’s why it’s a social lubricant.”
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/health/when-its-happy-hour-on-a-hot-summer-day-there-126690007587.html
Rachel Grumman Bender
August 18, 2015
When it’s happy hour on a hot summer day, there are few things more refreshing than downing an ice-cold beer. But what exactly happens to your body as you knock back that brew? Turns out, quite a bit. Drinking beer affects everything from the brain to blood sugar levels.
You probably already know the definition of “moderate” alcohol consumption, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — up to one drink a day for women, two drinks per day for men — and that binge drinking can put your health at serious risk. But what happens in your body after just one beer?
Well, there’s a reason having a drink feels so relaxing — a 2013 study in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology found that, even before you feel buzzed, sipping beer releases the famous feel-good hormone dopamine. This lights up the reward centers in the brain, which in some people, can increase the desire to have another … and another.
Although you won’t exactly be hanging from the restaurant chandelier after having a single beer, you do start to lose your inhibitions after just one. “You get more garrulous, talk a lot more, and are more likely to make a social interaction, such as going over to a colleague you’ve been wanting to meet and introducing yourself,” National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism director George Koob, PhD, tells Yahoo Health. “That’s why it’s a social lubricant.”
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/health/when-its-happy-hour-on-a-hot-summer-day-there-126690007587.html
