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Alcohol will also handicap general motor skills for up to days after being consumed. Reaction time and mental processing will be slowed down significantly, reducing performance and increasing risk of injury. Alcohol drastically decreases hand-eye coordination and impairs judgment, making simple tasks very difficult to carry out. .
Alcohol, when consumed in amounts that binge drinkers usually consume, can dramatically decrease testosterone levels. Decreases in testosterone lead to decreases in aggression, muscle mass, muscle recovery and overall athletic performance. This can also cause testicular shrinkage, breast enlargement, and decreased sperm development in males. Females can experience irregular meunstral cycles, loss of a sex drive, and an increase in the production of estradial, which increases the risk of breast cancer. Alcohol also has a direct affect on sexual relations. It is a common misconception that drinking alcohol will increase sexual performance, when it actually increases the desire, but takes away from the performance. When an alcoholic woman becomes pregnant, her baby has a great risk of being born with fetal alcohol syndrome, which causes distinctive facial defects, a lower IQ, and behavior problems.
Alcohol also has a serious effect on both sleep quality and on daytime attention and focus. Alcoholics and even people who have completely stopped drinking commonly have sleep problems. The effects of alcohol on sleep and attention span are complicated, and have considerable variability depending on the person.
Alcohol does seem to accelerate falling asleep. The negative effects come later and affect the quality and length of sleep. Sleep is a complicated experience in which there are several alternating stages: deep sleep, which is known as REM sleep, during which a person dreams, and light sleep. An unaltered cycle of these two stages of sleep is vital for a person's health, and well being.