The harm of alcoholism can be summarized as "four injuries and four causes, namely brain injury, sadness, stomach injury and liver injury;" Teratogenesis, carcinogenesis, malnutrition and death.

Brain injury: Relevant data show that people who drink alcohol for a long time and drink more than 250ml a day on average are more prone to alcoholic encephalopathy. In addition,

Alcoholism can also cause damage to the cerebral vascular wall and induce stroke.

Grief: It is generally believed that drinking 125ml pure alcohol every day for more than 10 years or drinking 150.9 alcohol every day for more than 5 years may cause alcoholic cardiomyopathy, which is manifested as heart enlargement, arrhythmia, heart failure and even sudden death. In addition, acute alcoholism can induce acute myocardial infarction.

Harm to stomach: Alcohol is toxic to digestive tract mucosa and digestive gland. Excessive drinking can cause chronic gastrointestinal inflammation, accompanied by gastric mucosal tear, upper gastrointestinal bleeding and gastrointestinal perforation.

Liver injury: Long-term excessive drinking can easily lead to liver injury such as alcoholic fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis and alcoholic cirrhosis.

Teratogenesis: excessive drinking can lead to infertility, even if pregnant, it can also affect the development of fetal L. When pregnant women drink alcohol, alcohol can directly poison the fetus through the placenta, leading to abnormal fetal development and even miscarriage and stillbirth.

Carcinogenesis: Many cancers may be caused by alcohol. It can be said that alcohol is a carcinogen. Ethanol and its decomposition products can destroy cells and lead to cancer.

Malnutrition: Although alcohol is high in calories, it does not contain vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other nutrients. If you eat less when you drink a lot for a long time, it will cause obvious nutritional deficiency. In addition, the damage of alcohol to the digestive system further aggravated malnutrition.

Death: drunken trauma, stroke caused by acute alcoholism, myocardial infarction, vomiting after poisoning, etc. may all lead to death.

So is the quick rescue method effective? We must first understand the metabolic process of alcohol in human body. Alcohol is mainly metabolized in the liver, and only a small amount (about 2%~ 10%) is directly excreted from the urine through the kidney or exhaled from the respiratory tract through the lungs or excreted through sweat glands.

Briefly summarized: alcohol dehydrogenase on digestive tract mucosa converts a small amount of alcohol into Z aldehyde; Most alcohol enters the liver, where it is converted into acetaldehyde by alcohol dehydrogenase; Acetaldehyde is oxidized to CO 2 and water by acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and P450 in the liver.

It can be seen from the above process that the catabolism of alcohol in human body mainly depends on alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. In human body, there is alcohol dehydrogenase, and the number is basically the same, but there are more people who lack acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. The lack of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase makes alcohol not completely decomposed into water and carbon dioxide, but remains in the body in the form of Z aldehyde, which leads to drunkenness. In this way, as long as enough acetaldehyde dehydrogenase is given, can't the purpose of hangover be achieved?

However, "the ideal is full and the reality is very skinny. At present, all kinds of hangover products on the market have not increased the content of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase in the body. So we can only draw a regrettable conclusion: there is no real hangover product so far. Those magical hangover products are fooling the public.

What can I do before drinking to reduce the harm of alcohol to the body?

Although there are no reliable hangover products, we can take appropriate actions to reduce the harm of alcohol to the body before drinking. How drunk we are, slightly drunk or cheese drunk, we are unconscious, depending on the alcohol concentration in our blood.

One of the main factors that determine the alcohol concentration in blood is the water content in the body, so it is best to drink more water when drinking. If we eat a big meal before drinking, we won't get drunk easily, because alcohol dehydrogenase also exists in a small amount in gastric mucosa. When we are full, alcohol stays in the stomach for a longer time and can share the work that is usually only undertaken by the liver. Men usually have more of this enzyme in their stomachs than women, which means that it is more effective for men to drink when they are full.

Appendix:

The view that red wine is beneficial to human health stems from the well-known "French paradox": although the French diet is rich in saturated fatty acids, the incidence of coronary heart disease is relatively low. In the early 1990s, two scientists who love wine put forward an explanation. Maybe the French people's favorite red wine offsets the unhealthy part of their diet for some reason.

Modern research shows that red wine is considered to be beneficial to blood vessels, and the special component that relaxes blood vessels is called polyphenol, which is a natural chemical component from grape seeds and skins. But this can't be a reason to drink more red wine, because many other drinks and foods contain polyphenols. If our diet contains many fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grains, we will consume a lot of polyphenols instead of red wine.