Drinking alcohol already comes with its known dangers. But alcohol intake outside in the cold weather comes with its own additional risks. While consuming alcohol does give false feelings of warmth, these are only temporary, and your core body temperature could still drop to unsafe levels.
As energy costs have soared in recent months, it’s worth pointing out that drinking alcohol is not a safe or sensible way to stave off the cold in your own home either. Frequent or heavy drinking can also have a number of other negative impacts on your physical and mental health.
What Does Alcohol Consumption Do to Your Body?
Alcohol addiction and generally drinking alcohol can have a number of different effects depending on the individual. This includes your:
- Weight
- Gender
- Age
- Consumption levels
Alcohol represses an excitatory neurotransmitter called glutamate while increasing an inhibitory neurotransmitter known as GABA in the brain. This is what impairs thinking, movement and speech as you become intoxicated. It also depresses the central nervous system, further affecting parts of the brain that control inhibition, thought, perception, attention, judgement, memory, sleep and coordination.
At the same time, drinking can trigger the release of the ‘feel good’ chemical dopamine. This can make drinking feel pleasurable and rewarding, but the effects start to diminish over time as you build up a tolerance to alcohol.
There are also a number of other physical effects of drinking alcohol. Around 20% of the alcohol you consume passes into the bloodstream through your stomach, with the rest passing through the small intestine. Drinking a small or moderate amount of alcohol can increase your appetite as it affects the flow of stomach juices. Large amounts, however, can dull the appetite and lead to weight loss and malnutrition in the long-term.
This is not the only long-term effect of drinking alcohol. Alcohol is a causal factor in more than 60 medical conditions, including high blood pressure, cirrhosis of the liver, depression and several types of cancer.
A short time after you drink it, alcohol will pass into your bloodstream, and it is at this point that drinking may start to make you feel warm.
Why Do I Feel Warm After Drinking Alcohol?
Alcohol affects the way your body controls its temperature in a process known as thermoregulation. Your liver is the heavy lifter when it comes to processing alcohol, converting it into water and carbon dioxide. It can typically oxidise around one unit (approximately to a small glass of wine or half a beer) per hour. The liver produces heat during this process.
Unprocessed alcohol in the bloodstream also acts as a ‘vasodilator’, meaning that it widens and relaxes the blood vessels. One short-term effect is increased blood flow to the skin (‘vasodilation’). This can increase the skin temperature, temporarily making you feel warm. At higher levels, it can have the opposite effect, impairing normal thermoregulation and increasing heat loss, which can exacerbate conditions such as migraine headaches and frostbite.
Alcohol Sweats
For some people, the warm feeling from drinking alcohol can also be accompanied by ‘alcohol sweats’. Under normal circumstances, sweating is used as a thermoregulation process to keep the body cool as the sweat evaporates from the skin. Due to the effects of alcohol making your body feel warmer than it is, your autonomic nervous system is reacting by sweating to cool itself down. This in turn can lead to dehydration, worsening the effects of cold weather exposure.
Health Risks Connected with Alcohol Use in Cold Weather
While drinking alcohol can give you a feeling of warmth as more blood flows towards the skin’s surface, this can be misleading, as your core temperature actually drops. One study suggests that alcohol acts as a ‘poikilothermic’ agent, causing a lowering of core body temperature when exposed to cold conditions.
As well as sweating and increasing heat dissipation via vasodilation, drinking alcohol may affect the body’s ability or tendency to shiver. This is due to decreased responsiveness in your brain.
All of this can lead to a person who has been drinking believing that they are warmer than they actually are. This can be the case even when their body temperature drops to dangerously low levels and can be particularly risky when coupled with impaired thinking capacity, decision-making and reactions. As alcohol also decreases the effectiveness of your body’s immune system, you’re also more at risk of contracting illnesses such as the flu.
Hypothermia
A simple example could be someone choosing to walk home in cold conditions after a night out without the proper winter clothing. As they feel relatively warm, they might not recognise that their body heat is actually plummeting and this could potentially lead to hypothermia, which can be potentially deadly. The NHS says that hypothermia is a medical emergency that needs to be treated in a hospital. It occurs when body temperature drops below 35C, with normal body temperature being around 37C.
These dangers can be even worse if the person passes out or falls asleep, leaving them exposed to cold weather overnight. There may also be a danger of frostbite in particularly cold conditions.
Some warning signs of hypothermia to look out for include:
- Shivering
- Pale, cold and dry skin
- Blue skin and lips
- Slurred speech
- Slow breathing
- Tiredness or confusion
Some of these may be present anyway when a person is intoxicated, but due to the increased risk and if in doubt, you should call 999 or go to A&E.
Get Help for Alcohol Addiction
Alcohol might make you feel warmer temporarily, but it does not protect you from the cold. In fact, increased heat loss, impaired judgement and changes to the body’s natural temperature-regulating responses can make drinking alcohol in cold conditions particularly dangerous.
Whether you are concerned about your own drinking or someone close to you, taking the first step and speaking to a professional can help you understand your options.
Call Asana Lodge today on 01908 489 421 or complete our online contact form to speak confidentially with a member of our team.
