DSince when do we have a hangover (or “veisalgia” for scientists)? Presumably much longer than the invention of wine and other fermented beverages. In fact, 10 million years ago, our ancestors could have consumed fruit that had fallen to the ground, potentially rotten and therefore laden with alcohol. However, if this consumption presents an advantage due to the richness in calories of ethanol, with its 7 kcal/g compared to only 4 for carbohydrates or proteins, it does not come without a counter-effect which our predecessors have probably quickly realized: alcohol first makes you happy… then sick.
Indeed, our body is not well adapted for this consumption, and alcohol remains toxic, even if evolution has done what it could by stabilizing in our genome a mutation in the gene coding for the enzyme ADH4 (alcohol dehydrogenase 4), making it forty times more efficient in carrying out the first step of alcohol detoxification. This mutation does not, however, make us immune to the effects of alcohol.
ALSO READ Drunk without having drunk alcohol: do you know about intestinal fermentation syndrome? As soon as swallowed, alcohol quickly passes the stomach to arrive in the intestine, then the blood circulation (it is detected in the blood a few minutes after ingestion), then irrigating all our organs, including the brain (the first effects are then smell) and the liver (the second eff […] Read more
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