Hello, my name is Mr. Wilshire, and in this lesson we're going to be looking at the impact of alcohol.

The outcome for this lesson is I can describe the impact of alcohol on the human body.

As always, there are some key words for us to remember as we work our way through this lesson.

The first is alcohol.

After that, drug.

Then, it's addictive.

And finally, impact.

Don't worry if you're not too sure what some of these words mean.

The definitions are on the screen for you now, so if you need to, you can pause the video here and continue when you're ready.

The first part of this lesson is called alcohol.

Now, alcohol is a substance that is found in some drinks.

Here, you can see a picture of some alcoholic drinks in different types of glasses.

Alcohol is a drug which means that it changes the way your body works when you take it.

There are lots of different types of drinks that contain alcohol, including beer, cider, wine, alcopops, spirits, like whiskey, gin, or vodka.

Here, you can see some examples of the different ones from the bullet points.

I wonder if you've heard of any of these types of drinks before.

They certainly do come in a range of different colours, don't they? Let's stop and think.

What is alcohol? Is it a drug usually found in drinks? Is it a substance usually found in cigarettes? Or is it a medicine usually found in tablets? The correct answer here is alcohol is a drug usually found in drinks.

Now, like any legal drug, alcohol should be taken with care.

It can harm your body and it can harm your brain.

It's especially harmful to children, as their bodies and brains are still developing and growing.

This is why alcohol has an age limit, so if you want to buy it or consume it, you need to be of the correct age.

You may have seen some warning symbols or some age restriction guidelines in the shops or maybe even on the bottles of the drinks themselves.

Now, alcohol is addictive, which means that it can be very difficult for someone to stop drinking once they've become so used to it.

Here you can see an image of somebody pouring some wine.

That doesn't mean that everybody becomes addicted to alcohol once they start to drink it, but it does mean unfortunately that there are some people who can't quite stop themselves because of the addictive nature of the liquid.

Let's stop and think.

People can become addicted to alcohol, which means it becomes less harmful to them.

It becomes illegal for them to buy more.

Or it becomes very difficult for them to stop drinking it.

The correct answer here is C.

It becomes very difficult for them to stop drinking it.

Alcohol is a legal drug, but there are some restrictions on who can buy and drink it, just as I've said earlier.

It's illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to buy alcohol.

You may have seen symbols like this in the shops in the aisles where they sell alcohol or even on the bottles themselves.

Different types of drinks contain different amounts of alcohol.

Here you can see an image of some wine and some beer.

Now, some drinks are stronger than others, which means that they have got a higher alcohol content.

For example, wine contains a lot more alcohol than beer, so even though there is only a small amount, the amount of alcohol that is in the drink is considerably more.

Now, to work out how much alcohol is actually in a drink, we use measurements called units.

One unit is 10 millilitres of alcohol.

Can you see how many units are in these drinks? You may have seen symbols on bottles and other things like this before.

Have a little look and have a think.

How many units are in these drinks? In the wine label on the left there, there's two different types.

There's 1.

6 units in a single glass of wine per 125 millilitres serving, and in the whole bottle there's 9.

4 units per 125 millilitres serving, and it says there that the glass bottle will do a glass serving of six.

The beer bottle, however, is 2.

8 UK units per bottle.

Now, beer bottles do come in a variety of different sizes, so I wonder what kind of size bottle this was.

It's recommended that adults do not regularly drink more than 14 units of alcohol per week.

That's around six pints of beer or six glasses of wine.

This unit measurement has been averaged out though, so, six glasses of wine could be stronger in unit quantity than another six glasses of wine.

It will all depend on the strength of the type of wine in the bottle or the type of beer in the bottle.

Now, Sam has been learning about alcohol as well, and she says, "When I'm an adult, if I only drink 14 or fewer units per week, then it will be completely safe." Do you agree? Pause the video here and have a discussion.

Restart when you've done that.

So, what did you think? Did you agree with Sam? Is it going to be completely safe if she only ever drinks 14 or fewer units per week? Well, alcohol is a drug that affects the way that our bodies and brains work, so there is no completely safe amount to drink.

Here, you can see a tray, looks like in a party there, of alcoholic drinks.

So, drinking fewer than 14 units per week is less risky than drinking more, but still drinking this amount could still cause damage to your body.

So, doctors say it's not completely safe.

Let's stop and think.

Only drinking one or two alcoholic drinks per week is very dangerous.

Less risky than drinking more.

Or completely safe.

The correct answer here is less risky than drinking more.

Here is Task A.

Some children are talking about alcohol.

Aisha says, "Alcohol is a drug so it can be harmful." Alex says, "It is a legal drug, so I think it's completely safe." Lucas says, "I think alcohol can only harm children, not adults." Who do you agree with here, and can you explain why? Pause the video here and discuss.

Restart when you're ready to continue.

How did you get on? I wonder if some of the discussions that you've had were similar to what the children talked about here.

Now, Aisha is correct because alcohol changes the way our body and brain works.

It can cause damage to our organs.

Remember Aisha said that alcohol is a drug, so it can be harmful.

Alcohol is more harmful to children than to adults, but it's still not completely safe for adults to drink alcohol.

It's the same in the way that some medicines can make you better.

Taking too much of that medicine can actually make you very, very unwell.

So, this is why it's called a legal drug.

It's legal enough to take it, but you still need to be responsible and careful when you're doing so.

It's just the same with alcohol.

If you take too much of it, it can cause some serious problems to your health.

The next part of this lesson is called the impact of alcohol on the body.

Some children are talking about how alcohol affects the body.

Aisha says, well, "It goes into your digestive system, so I think it can affect your stomach by making you feel sick." Izzy said, "I've heard adults say that they have a headache after drinking, so, I think it can affect your brain." And Lucas says, "I think it can affect lots of different parts of your body." Hmm, well, what do you think? We've discussed alcohol at length so far and even had a think about who was correct and who was incorrect.

So, what do you think here? Are any of these children correct? Have a discussion.

Restart when you've done that.

Did you agree with anybody at all? Let's find out more.

Drinking alcohol can have an impact on lots of different parts of the body.

Here you can see a person at a bar trying to decide what it is that they'd like to drink.

Now, alcohol can have an effect on a person's mood.

It can make them feel more happy.

It could make them feel more relaxed, sad, or even angry.

It often makes people react differently to things than they would if they hadn't had any alcohol.

This is why it wouldn't be safe to operate heavy machinery if you've had an alcoholic drink.

Alcohol can also affect a person's ability to see and think clearly.

Here you can see an image of some bottles in a very blurry vision.

That doesn't mean that drinking one alcoholic drink is going to make everything very blurry, but it does start to affect your brain, and if your brain is unable to process in the same way, it can start make you see things that you wouldn't normally see, and sometimes that can be very scary.

So, it means people are much more likely to injure themselves when they have had alcohol because they may misjudge how dangerous something is.

If your vision is slightly impaired by alcohol, you may misjudge walking up stairs, for example, and trip over a little bit.

This is why it's a very good idea to be very careful the amount of alcohol that you drink when you're an adult.

Let's stop and think.

Alcohol impacts our thought processes by making it easier to concentrate on a difficult task? Making it harder to see things as they really are? Or making things clearer and more sharply focused? The correct answer here is B.

Alcohol impacts our thought processes by making it harder to see things as they really are.

People who have been drinking alcohol are less coordinated, which means that it may be more difficult for them to walk and move around as normal.

Alcohol makes your reaction times a lot slower as well, so you can't react to things as quickly as you would normally.

This also contributes to an increased risk of injuries and means that it's very dangerous to drive after drinking.

I mentioned this before about operating heavy machinery.

If you've been drinking alcohol, it is illegal to do so.

Several hours after drinking alcohol, there are often other effects on the body.

Here you can see someone who's feeling very tired.

Adults might begin to get headaches, feel very sick or tired, and be a lot more irritable as well.

This is often called a hangover.

Drinking alcohol can also have a greater long-term impact on the body.

Here you can see the body and the human organs within.

So, regularly drinking large amounts of alcohol can actually cause damage to many of the organs inside the body, including your brain, your heart, and your liver.

You know that alcohol can damage these organs, so a regular consumption of alcohol is really going to have an effect on them.

Drinking a lot of alcohol regularly has been shown to increase the risk of several illnesses, including cancer, liver disease, stroke, and heart disease.

Again, just because you drink one glass of alcohol, it doesn't mean that you're going to get any of these diseases, but there is a higher risk of you getting them if you drink regularly.

Doctors and other scientists are always researching the ways that drugs like alcohol impact our bodies, so we can find out more about what their evidence tells us by carrying out research using secondary sources of information.

Here you can see an image of someone reading secondary sources.

Now, this has helped us to stay informed and make some healthy lifestyle choices.

Stop and think.

Drinking alcohol regularly can increase your overall fitness.

Your scores in tests and sports.

Your risk of developing some types of diseases.

The correct answer here is C, your risk of developing some types of diseases.

Here is Task B.

You need to carry out some research using secondary sources to find out the impact of alcohol on different parts of the body and to annotate the diagram to show its effects.

Here's an example of a human body diagram, but you may wish to draw your own.

You can annotate the human body using all your different research about the impact of alcohol.

Good luck with your task.

Restart the video when you've done that.

How did you get on? Now, your diagram may be similar to this.

Here you can see the first annotation towards the brain there, and it says that alcohol can cause dizziness, confusion, and slow reaction times.

It can also cause feelings of sadness and anxiety.

Now, in the mouth there, sugar and alcohol can damage teeth and cause gum disease.

Now, moving down from your neck and into your throat, it can irritate the oesophagus.

It can cause heartburn as well.

And then, of course, from the heart there, it can cause high blood pressure and heart disease.

Now, further down the body, it can cause pain, nausea, sickness, it may even cause ulcers.

Alcohol can also damage the liver and it can cause liver disease.

And then down into the lower part of the body, it can even cause cramps and diarrhoea.

So, this is the impact of alcohol on the body.

Remember, just having one alcoholic drink isn't going to cause all of these things to happen, but if you regularly consume alcohol across the week and drink more than the desired amount of units, there is a higher risk of this happening.

Let's summarise our lesson.

Alcohol is an addictive drug that can be found in drinks such as beer, cider, and wine.

Alcohol changes a person's ability to think, speak, and see things as they really are.

It can cause damage to your liver, your heart, and your brain.

It can also cause illnesses, including cancer and strokes.

Information about the impact of alcohol on the body can be researched using secondary sources of information.

Hopefully, you've got a better understanding of what the impact of alcohol is on the body, and that's hopefully going to lead you to make some better choices in the future about how you may wish to consume alcohol when you're an adult.

I'm your Mr. Wilshire.

Thank you very much for listening.