Just imagine the following situation: Your best friends invites you to his party and you decide to drive by car. Since it's your best friends birthday he wants to have some fun with you and offers you some drinks. At first you deny the drinks because you came by car but after he asked you with sparkling eyes to celebrate you take a sip. Drink and drive is an absolut "no go" and you know that! You decided to go home on foot.
Unlucky enough you forgot your coat at home and outside we have -10 degrees Celsius. You came up with the idea to have one or two more drinks before leaving the bash. Why? Because you know that alcohol makes you warm!
What do you think Steemians? Is it true that alcohol makes you warm and helps you to fight cold temperatures or is this just another fictional story I told you?
Put your glas away and lets find out!
What is alcohol and why makes it you feel warm?
Fig.1/2 Chemical structure of Ethanol Source
First of all we need to know what we actually have in our drinks. There are lots of different types of alcohol, however the drinking alcohol is called Ethanol.
This is important to know since other types of alcohol can be very harmful to the human body. Adulterated alcohol often contains Methanol which, in worst case, can make you blind or even kill you.
Those of you who occasionally have a drink or two know that alcohol can affect your body in several ways. In today's article we will focus on the temperature sensation. It is true that alcohol makes you feel warm. Ethanol acts as a vasodilator, which means it makes your blood vessels dilate. What happens is that the blood moves from your body's core to the surface of your skin. When this happens your capillaries widen and the warmth of your body move from inside out, leaving you with the sensation of warmth. Since our skin has tons of receptors you will perceive rising temperatures. People who drink usually have red flushed cheeks indicating they are warm and more blood flows through their skin.
Dangerous misconception
We found out that alcohol makes you feel warmer. What I didn't tell you so far is that actually the exact opposite happens to your body! When your body moves the blood from the core to the skin it also moves the warmth from inside out. This is a process that happens on hot days! It helps to cool down your body since you don't need unnecessary warmth inside your body. As your skin's thermorezeptors interpret the heat from your blood your body starts to sweat. Sweating is just another mechanism of your body to cool down. This is very dangerous because in reality your core temperature decreases! On top of that comes that your body does not shiver! There are cases where people died of hypothermia because their body were not able to prevent them from cooling. Actually the human body constricts blood vessels in order to prevent losing heat – not the opposite!
Remember these cute looking dogs? These are St. Bernard dogs and known for their alpine rescues. Often they are displayed in cartoons with barrels around their neck that contain alcohol. So should you be in the unlucky situation where a Bernard needs to rescue, I recommend you to not drink any of its booze.
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Tim