I got quite good answers. thanks to everyone for participating.
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Alcohol is like an explosive weapon: good at doing damage but it doesn’t really care what it damages. So while it is effective at destroying disease causing microorganisms, it will also just as quickly destroy good microorganisms and healthy cells.
Every cell, bacteria, virus, etc… relies on special molecules called proteins. These are large molecules made from smaller building blocks that help the cell or organism do stuff. Anything from transporting waste outside of the cell to converting food into energy there are so many unique proteins that it’s hard to imagine. Alcohol and proteins do not get along.
Proteins are made from smaller building blocks, kind of like legos. The way you put together Lego blocks is very important to the final result. If I want to build a model plane out of legos I need to arrange the blocks in a different way than if I needed to build a mode skyscraper. Both things are made out of legos, and both use a lot of the same individual pieces, but the way they are arranged determines the final result. The same is true for proteins. The building blocks are strung together like beads on a string, but proteins often have reeeeaaalllly long strings with LOTS of beads. Proteins need to be compact, so they will fold and squish until they resemble a ball of yarn more than a string. The shape they fold into is EXTREMELY important and a protein may not work correctly if it loses that shape. The process of a protein losing function because of changing it’s shape is called “denaturing.”
Alcohol kills bacteria by denaturing its proteins. Alcohol will pass through the bacteria’s protective membrane and begin to change the shape of proteins it encounters. It will also cause these “denatured” proteins to clump up. At this point the proteins are irreversibly damaged and can no longer do their job. A bacterial cell could be destroyed within in seconds of exposure to alcohol. Unfortunately, the same thing can happen to the cells in our stomach, intestines, mouth, throat, and elsewhere so while disease causing germs might die, so will a lot of good, healthy cells.
To summarize: alcohol works by destroying important proteins responsible for doing all sorts of tasks inside of a cell. It doesn’t check to see if the cell or organism is beneficial first, so it will destroy both good and bad cells. This makes it good for disinfecting surfaces, but bad for treating diseases inside the body. Alcohol also doesn’t kill all bacteria or viruses so it’s important to know that disinfecting with alcohol is not 100% effective. Polio virus, for example, is not destroyed by alcohol
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