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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 October 2020 and 16 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Laurennnnnnnl.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignmentbyPrimeBOT (talk) 13:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
will 10 grams of sorbitol or xylitol as candy per day raise alcohol dehydrogenase levels like 10g actual etoh alcohol, are there other common materials that raise alcohol tolerance without side effects. I am wondering as a reference, www dot cancer dot gov/cancertopics/pdq/genetics/breast-and-ovarian/HealthProfessional/page1 says women that drink more than 10g of alcohol per day have 10 pct higher breast cancer rate, thus anything that ups alcohol tolerance may also reduce cancer.
Does metabolism affect alcohol tolerance? Some guy 09:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Im not 100% but I believe the speed of detoxifying alcohol in the body is the same at all times, and only varies to small degrees. In between people it will be different, but in the infdividual it will generally stay the same unless they drink heavily, meaning their tolerance will grow as the enzymes involved are found in higher numbers. When your doctor test to see if your an alkie, he tests the enzymes, and not the alcohol content. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.184.30.132 (talk) 23:04, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but the logic here is not making complete sense to me. I think there really needs to be a citation for that "study" that reports equal BAC among alcoholics with varying levels of response. The page suggests that individuals who are chronic alcoholics are less susceptible to the effects of alcohol at a given blood concentration than regular people because of increased alcohol dehydrogenase. Alcohol dehydrogenase is an enzyme which oxidizes and neutralizes ethanol. If chronic alcoholics have increased alcohol dehydrogenase production, it would require MORE alcohol to effectively raise their BAC vs. normal individuals, but once it reaches a certain level the effects should be equal among any individual. That is to say, increased alcohol dehydrogenase would enable a person to consume more alcohol without raising their BAC as much as a non-alcoholic with a similar body mass index. Increased enzyme concentration may increase speed of alcohol degradation and therefore its blood concentration during a given time, but it does nothing to alter the effects of the ethanol on the brain and nervous system once it reaches a certain concentration in the blood. This is a liver enzyme after all, not a neurotransmitter or something. I think there may have been a misinterpretation of the study, but it is impossible for me to tell because it is not cited.--Wingsfan6047 23:49, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That was what I was thinking, but according to about.com the effects at same BAC values can be much lower for people accustomed to alcohol. This is called Functional Tolerance:
"Humans and animals develop tolerance when their brain functions adapt to compensate for the disruption caused by alcohol in both their behavior and their bodily functions. This adaptation is called functional tolerance (2). Chronic heavy drinkers display functional tolerance when they show few obvious signs of intoxication even at high blood alcohol concentrations (BAC's), which in others would be incapacitating or even fatal (3)."
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/alerts/l/blnaa28.htm
145.97.201.67 00:05, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Aren't there little miniature organs that your liver produces that spread out through your body and assist in processing toxins? I can never remember their name.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.70.113 (talk) 23:39, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I find this article very misleading. For one, alcohol tolerance is affected by other factors not mentioned here, such as GABA receptors downregulation - this can be achieved not only by heavy alcohol consumption, but also by other drugs, the most known of them is GHB —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.165.11.10 (talk) 20:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The only was europeans could have 'evolved' alcohol tolerance is if tolerance gave some sort of reproductive advantage, which conventional wisdom says it does not. You could argue that people with low tolerance died of alcohol related disease more so than high tolerance, but this is a highly unlikely scenario unless alcoholism was epedemic in eurpoean history and is unlikely to hit popuations so hard as to cause natural selection to 'select' toerance over non tolerance.
Therefore you can only really conclude that the higher levels of alcohol dehydrogenase was there BEFORE europeans started drinking. Perhaps this enzyme has another utility, or it was just a chance neutral mutationn in the population that gave rise to this fact. Perhaps the gene or group of genes controlling amount of alcohol dehydrogenase in the blood has some other unknown purpose, and this has led to high level.
I think the statement saying Europeans 'evolved tolerance' in the article shows a misundertading of evolutionary theory, and misleads people. It should be removed.
Please could someone edit this, as I cant be bothered as im sure it will just revert back to how it was. A very frusrating fact of wikepeida, meaning I dont bother editing articles... but enter things for discusion.
I got a bit of a personal vendetta against this paragraph in the text because I used to wrongly think this was how evolution worked, and confused me for some time.
Animals only evolve if the new trait gives them a reproductive advantage, and higher alcohol tolerance does NOT give this advantage. Infact it is probably more likely that heavy drinkers have a slightly lower reproductive advantage, as they would less likely be abe to hold together a family or have children due to many factors...
SO CHANGE THE DARN TEXT!—Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.184.30.132 (talk) 13:29, 16 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(Beer drinker - 23:55 - 16/5/2010 Hello Most human cultures have an agricultural past, such as the ancient chinese. It is well known their tolerance for alcohol is relatively low so I'm not sure about this claim you made. I just think it's misleading to say Europeans 'evolved tolerance'... Even someone of low tolerance would not experience the deleterious affects of alcohol related disease till late in life, giving them plenty of time to reproduce spreading their 'low tolerance genes'. This would also have to be coupled with the sudden appearance of a new novel Alcohol Dehydrogenase activity enhancement based upon genetic mutation, and I feel this is unlikely.. As well as taking into account people died young in these times often. Its the same as cancer.... in the west we will not evolve away from cancer due quite simply because people have children before cancer hits them (mostly). The same principle applies here.
The only way Europeans could have evolved tolerance is if the vast majority of people started drinking heavily in childhood, and died in their early teens before they could reproduce. This is a highly unlikely scenario. I'm aware alcohol drinkers were less likely to get water borne diseases, but I just dont believe the effects of this could evolve a high tolerance so quickly and in such a significant way. There are simply some ethnic differences in human physiology that are not to do with the environment but just chance mutations.. and this is one of them.
I know im being anal about this, but I think this statement confuses people in evolutionary theory, and probably is behind a lot of people's lack of understanding, followed by rejection of darwinism.
As to the discussion of the evolution of alcohol tolerance. It has nothing to do with ethanol metabolism--that is simply a byproduct. Alcohol dehydrogenases function to metabolize alcohol that could become toxic. Alcohol like retinol (vitamin a) can reach toxic levels if there is no metabolism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.5.167.23 (talk) 00:33, 14 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes but the levels of an enzyme can fluctuate due to selective pressure in a population, due to the environment. There is a good case to be made that Europeans may have evolved tolerance, although I'm highly skeptical of that, as the selective pressure of alcohol on people of child bearing age in pre-industrial Europe would not have had much effect, and would not likely produce the markedly higher levels of Alcohol Dehydrogenase in Caucasian blood. It is more likely that there is another reason, probably that Europeans often ate rotton fruit, or were ingesting Ethanol for other reasons apart from getting drunk. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.31.107 (talk) 02:13, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure who is 'taking charge' of this particular article, but please be more careful. In one read-through I found several errors.
In the last section, for instance, Europeans have a higher tolerance but are LESS likely to become alcoholics? That goes against both medical thinking/logic and actual reported rates of alcohol abuse by region (See wiki entry on alcoholism). Also, the enzyme responsible for flush is not alcohol dehydrogenase, it is acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. And it is not a "lack of the genetically coded enzyme". It is a mutation in the coding sequence of the enzyme, making it less efficient. Btw, enzymes are all genetically coded, there isn't the need to specify that.
Check sources! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nutmeganddramamine (talk • contribs) 03:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
ugghh...I fully agree! I have only just read through this article and am instantly struck by the shoddy writing. Overall:
▪it's disorganised, ▪the sensible subheadings are followed by information that is woefully inadequate, ▪entire article is severely citation-deficient
I intended on reading this as an overview, viz. quick info gathering to understand which processes comprise human tolerance to consumed ethanol. It's bizarre encountering such a poorly written Wikipedia article on a scientific topic😕 When I have time I'll gladly begin tackling this article's numerous issues😤 Elysium0820 (talk) 15:04, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have reorganized a bit and added a few sources and a bit of text. Petter Bøckman (talk) 20:02, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In the section on ethnicity, there is curiously no mention of people of African ancestry. Why is this? Stonemason89 (talk) 03:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.9.168.249 (talk) 09:18, 9 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]