I wonder what defines alcohol tolerance in the biological level. Like because of this part or trait, I can drink x amount of bottles compared to the other guy that can only drink y amount od bottles.
Its said that you can develop alcohol tolerance, so I wonder which parts of the body change to reflect that.
The only trait that I know of currently is the size of the body since technically given the same amount of alcohol, a smaller body will be filled up more compared to a larger body.
In: Biology
Types of tolerance:
Behavioral— if you drink alcohol often, you get used to its effects/the way it makes you feel, think, act, so you can manage to “appear” more sober than someone who is drinking for the first time
Metabolic— your body gets better at metabolizing alcohol. For example, blood tests can identify if you drink a lot of alcohol by detecting elevations in certain liver enzymes. If you drink a lot, your body will produce more of these enzymes so that you can eliminate alcohol more quickly from your body
Cellular/synaptic— your body and brain always prefers to be at rest/balance/homeostasis, and will try to get back to resting state by compensating for being “pushed” away from rest in one direction or the other. For example if you get too hot, your body tries to get back to resting/normal temp by producing sweat to try to cool you down.
In the case of alcohol tolerance: Alcohol activates GABA receptors on your brain cells, which typically turns the cell “off.” If you activate enough of these receptors you will get really tired and pass out, basically because you’ve turned off so many cells.
Remember, there is a baseline “resting” amount of gaba receptor activation happening all the time—
if you drink a lot, you will be constantly activating these receptors and turning off cells more than normal, and the cell will try to compensate by making less receptors available for alcohol to interact with. So next time you drink you will have to drink more alcohol to turn off as many cells as you did last time because the amount of available GABA receptors has decreased, making it harder for alcohol to find them and turn off the cell.
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