Lesson video

Welcome to this RSHE lesson, and my name's Mr. Duffy, and we're going to look at drugs and alcohol, this lesson does cover issues about the effects of alcohol.

If this is a sensitive topic to you, we recommend checking with a trusted adult before starting or doing the lesson with a trusted adult nearby.

Like I said, I'm Mr Duffy we are going to look at the short term and longterm health effects of alcohol.

So you are going to need to write some things down today.

So please make sure you've got an exercise book or paper and obviously you're going to need a pen or pencil.

Hopefully you've done your quiz, we're going to look at behaviour drinking and risky behaviours of binge drinking and risky behaviour.

We're going to look at alcohol poisoning, alcohol misuse, and serious illness, and you'll do the exit quiz at the end of the lesson.

So let's take a look at some key words.

So binge drinking usually refers to drinking lots of alcohol in a short space of time or drinking to get drunk.

And alcohol poisoning, this is a serious and sometimes deadly consequences of drinking large amounts of alcohol in a short period of time.

So let's just remind ourselves of the laws really important that you understand that you are not allowed to consume alcohol under 18 anywhere, and it is illegal for somebody to buy you alcohol or attempt to buy you alcohol if you are under the age of 18 and for someone under 18 to buy alcohol or attempt to buy alcohol ought to be sold alcohol.

So essentially you need to be over the age of 18 to consume or purchase alcohol.

So what I want you to do now is pause the video, and I want you to think about the short and long-term effects of alcohol.

I've done a little example for you there so sleepiness and liver damage, can you think of any others? So draw the table out and I'll see you soon.

So the short term effects can include sleepiness, talkative and risk-taking.

So somebody can become quite sleepy because as we know it is a depressant, so it makes you more sleepy, tired but you do start to lose your inhibitions.

And that's why you start to become quite talkative, and as a result, you can start taking risks.

The long-term effects include liver damage, brain damage and obviously becoming an alcoholic.

'Cause alcohol is highly addictive.

So what happens when I drink alcohol? What happens when an adult drinks alcohol? After you swallow an alcoholic drink about 25% of the alcohol exec is absorbed straight from your stomach into the blood stream.

The rest is mostly absorbed from your small bowel.

Once alcohol has entered your bloodstream, it remains in your body until it is processed.

About 90 to 98% of the alcohol that you drink is broken down in your liver, and that's why we can have liver damage if you drink excess, if you drink in excess, the liver is having to work even harder to break down the alcohol.

The other two to 10%, of alcohol is removed in your urine.

Breathe out through your lungs or excreted in your sweat.

Now how much is absorbed into your body or how quickly is dependent on the amount of alcohol within the drink, so the higher concentrations of alcoholics is absorbed quicker.

And also a carbonated alcoholic drinks.

Things like Prosecco is also absorbed into the bloodstream much quicker.

So what is binge drinking? And I want you to pause the video, and I'll see you in a second, right? So write this down, see you soon.

So binge drinking then, so this is what the NHS defines binge drinking as, "drinking lots of alcohol in a short space of time or drinking to get drunk".

The definition used by the office for national statistics for binge drinking is having over eight units in a single session for men and over six units for a female for a woman.

Now, if you think back to the last lesson when we looked at units, it's having roughly three large or strong pints of beer, so a large glass of white wine of three strong pints of beer for a month, and having on average roughly two large glasses of white wine for a female.

So binge drinking is having an excess of that, having more than that.

So drinking too much or too quickly does cause risky behaviour and the thought sorts of things, more likely to happen when people drink too much or too quickly on a single session include accidents resulting in injury.

Misjudging risky situations or losing self-control.

So why is binge drinking dangerous thing considering the risks, considering the health implications.

Why is binge drinking dangerous? Pause the video, and write some ideas down on your paper and I'll see you in a second.

So the dangers of binge drinking then is that your body can only process one units of alcohol per hour.

So if you think if you were to have a large glass of white wine, so if you're not to had a large glass of white wine it would take three hours for that alcohol to leave an adult's system.

So drinking six units of alcohol in a short space of time let's say an hour, will raise the blood alcohol concentration, and could make someone drunk very, very quickly.

If you think it's going to take one hour for each unit to leave the body.

So in that sense if they were to drink two glasses of a large glass of white wine, in theory, it is going to take six hours.

But if they've drank those two glasses in one hour they are putting themselves at risk for becoming extremely drunk very, very quickly.

And that's when we start to see the risky types of behaviour.

So what is alcohol poisoning? I mentioned alcohol poisoning and according to NHS alcohol poisoning occurs when a person drinks a toxic amount of alcohol usually over a short period of time.

And that's what I was saying, that it wasn't 18 units roughly, yeah in what four hours is just a huge amount of alcohol.

Being poisoned by alcohol can damage your health or even put your life in danger.

So the signs and symptoms then can be confusion, severely slurred speech, loss of coordination, vomiting some of the things that I was mentioning earlier especially with loss of coordination falling over easily you could fall into something, you can bang your head yeah all these things can and do happen when someone drinks alcohol in a short space of time.

Irregular or slow breathing, obviously breathing difficulties, pale or blue-tinged skin caused by low body temperature, so one of the things you in a park if your overnight and you know, it's going to be cold, even if sober is still going to be cold.

And you put yourself at risk of hypothermia because actually your body temperature does reduce when drinking alcohol.

And being conscious but unresponsive and passing out and being unconscious, passing out, falling asleep, it's really dangerous, particularly because of the vomiting.

Yeah you know somebody could choke on their own vomit from drinking too much and passing out.

So the dangers of alcohol poisoning if a person is poisoned by alcohol, they could stop breathing, they could have a heart attack, they could die by choking on their own vomit, becomes severely dehydrated which can cause permanent brain damage in extreme cases, develop more severe hypothermia, as I said, drinking on an evening, drinking out particularly in sober you know, particularly adults that might go to bar guard and have you know sweat shorts and t-shirt, and then suddenly by eight, nine 10 o'clock at night still sits outside and are now starting to get the effects of hypothermia, and as a result of all these things they can have fits or seizures, as a result of lower blood sugar levels.

So what we'll need to do now, you've digested quite a lot of information there.

But what I want you to do now is pause the video, and I want you to decide what is not a sign and symptom of alcohol poisoning.

So pause the video, have a breather, digest that information, and I'll see you in a second.

So being happy is not a sign or symptom of alcohol poisoning, although it is a short term effect of alcohol becoming happy it's not an effect of alcohol poisoning, however, it's the early signs of someone becoming intoxicated.

So alcohol misuse that so we've talked about binge drinking.

If somebody was to binge drink regularly, they would be in this category of alcohol misuse.

And this is when you drink in a way that's harmful or when you're dependent on alcohol.

So they can't give it up, they find it really difficult to stop drinking alcohol, to keep health risks from alcohol it's a low level both men and women are advised not to regularly drink more than 14 units in a week.

But people who misuse alcohol and drinking both the recommended daily and weekly alcohol intake guidance, so the longterm effects then a persistent alcohol misuse increases someone's risk of serious health conditions, and this can include heart disease, strokes liver disease, liver cancer, bowel cancer, and the reason for those ones particularly is as I said earlier, the liver and the bowels are working over time to break down the alcohol okay.

And if someone's drinking in excess regularly the liver and bowels are going to become damaged.

Alcohol can cause as well mouth cancer, alcohol, obviously with the ethanol, is going to damage cells within the mouth and excessive drinking could cause mouth cancer, breast cancer as well, and pancreatitis.

Now we are going to complete a mind-map task.

Copy the mind map outline, try to add two examples to each section of the mind map.

For the alcohol poisoning section, I've given you the example of a heart attack.

So there is some help and advice out there, and, these organisations websites can provide further information, the NSPCC, Youngminds and Drinkaware these three websites are brilliant.

And please, if you're worried about what we've been talking about today or you just want to find out more of information you're quite interested in it, you found the topic today really interested go have a look at these websites and do some research and read up on these things as well.

And like I said, it's a difficult topic, but hopefully understanding how to drink responsibly, you'll be in a really good position might be to advise John there and give him some really good advice.

If you'd like to please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak, like I said, I've been Mr.Duffy, I really hope you found the lesson today informative, and I look forward to seeing you again, see you later, bye now.