Who doesn’t love to unwind with a cocktail at the end of a long day?
Babies, that’s who!
No, I mean that literally.
Infants shouldn’t do that.
Hey everyone!
Amy talking drinking on DNews today.
Recently it was reported that a mother in Kenosha, Wisconsin, noticed her baby was acting
a little funny after dinner one night.
So she went to the hospital and realized she’d mixed her baby’s formula with two ounces
of vodka instead of water!
Local police said the infant’s blood alcohol concentration was 0.29 percent!
To put it into perspective, that’s higher than a 200-pound man’s BAC after 10 drinks!
The good news is that the baby, according to reports, was expected to survive, though
any long-term effects were unclear.
But how did the infant survive?
We get intoxicated from alcohol because it’s metabolized by our bodies.
It’s first absorbed in the stomach as it passes through, then moves onto the small
intestine where the bulk of the alcohol we ingest — about 80 percent — is absorbed
through the intestinal walls into the bloodstream.
Because alcohol is a poison, the body needs to filter that out, and the filtration system
is the liver; enzymes break down the alcohol and rid it from the body.
But it’s a slower process than consumption.
On average, the liver can process one ounce of liquor, which is about one standard drink,
every hour.
If you drink more than this, your system becomes saturated and you end up drunk with alcohol
in your blood and body tissues until your liver can metabolize it.
But no two people are the same, which means no two livers will process alcohol the same
way.
And of all the things affecting how individuals process alcohol, age is one thing that isn’t
a factor.
Your liver doesn’t develop between infant hood and your 21st birthday such that you
can suddenly drink safely.
What really happens in these 21 years is that you get bigger.
Body weight and type are two things that drastically affect how your body processes alcohol.
Some people are smaller than others, and smaller people have less mass through which alcohol
can diffuse so they end up with more alcohol in their bloodstreams and become intoxicated
far more quickly.
Body composition also plays a role.
Individuals with a lower percentage of body fat will end up with a lower blood alcohol
level than those with a higher percentage of body fat.
Gender plays a role, too.
The enzyme dehydrogenase that breaks down alcohol in the stomach, is less prevalent
in women than in men, meaning more alcohol is absorbed through women’s small intestine’s,
contributing to an overall higher blood alcohol content.
Add to that that women typically have higher body fat percentage than men, and the ladies
are getting far drunker than the fellows.
A woman my size can have less than one drink before reaching the legal limit to drive:
that’s 0.08 BAC, whereas a man my size could drink twice as much and be fine.
Of course, there are other factors that affect how your body handles alcohol including mood,
hormonal levels, medication, illness, and mentality — if you go out wanting to get
drunk research shows you could get “drunk” even off non-alcoholic drinks!
But ultimately, size plays a huge part in alcohol consumption.
Your liver can always process alcohol, your body will just be saturated by it if you’re
small…
especially infant-sized.
So a baby might survive getting drunk, but there could be devastating long-term effects.
From the moment they start to form, our brains continue to develop until our early 20s.
And at every stage, alcohol is one of the worst things to give a developing brain.
The brain is less susceptible to alcohol after birth, but the circuits are still developing
meaning alcohol can disrupt that development.
Alcohol in a developing brain can affect problem solving skills, concentration, mood, and overall
mental health.
The longer you go without drinking any alcohol the better is it for your brain, but almost
no one does this.
Including pregnant women.
A mother who drinks passes the alcohol to her baby in the womb.
There, the developing brain’s architecture can be severely stunted for alcohol exposure,
but is there a safe amount to drink?
Tara has more on that story here.
We’ll put a link below if you’re on mobile.
So knowing a little more about how alcohol affects brain development, what do you guys
think is the right drinking age?
Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe for more DNews every day
of the week.
So knowing a little more about how alcohol affects brain development, what do you guys
think is the right drinking age?
Let us know in the comments below and keep coming back to Test Tube for more DNews every
day of the week.
So knowing a little more about how alcohol affects brain development, what do you guys
think is the right drinking age?
Let us know on the Discovery News Facebook page or on Twitter @DNews.
You can also find me @astvintagespace.
Thanks for watching!