5 ms·

This isn't about the drinker noticing, this is about measurable physiological outcomes. Longevity, for instance, is not clearly affected by low levels of alcoho

This isn't about the drinker noticing, this is about measurable physiological outcomes. Longevity, for instance, is not clearly affected by low levels of alcohol consumption. Not to question your Engineering teachers; I wasn't there and don't know the context, but there isn't a strong scientific basis behind the assertion that "there is no lower limit for alcohol being neurotoxic".

thatcat 6y ago
There is no threshold value below which alcohol causes 0 damage to neural tissue was their point, which does not imply it has a measurable effect on longevity or physiology or any metric. If you dilute the alcohol it has proportional damaging effect to the concentration. It's a theoretic truth not an experimentally measured one.
- lanstin 6y ago
  Your brain isn’t a static system. Being happy, active, socially connected can probably grow back/heal the damage as fast as it happens.
  - thatcat 6y ago
    You're totally right it's worth it sometimes for other reasons to drink.
- xvedejas 6y ago
  But there is also a theoretical reason not to believe things are so linear. The body is designed to react to stress, and a minimal amount of stress can even be beneficial, because of the way the body reacts to it. At least in some cases this is unequivocal. - Muscles must be stressed and sustain damage ("microtrauma") before muscle growth occurs. - DNA must be damaged by UVB radiation in order for the body to create melanin. - Allergen immunotherapy works by exposing the body to larger and larger amounts of a substance which causes an allergic reaction. This process is clearly nonlinear and involves hysteresis! I'm not arguing that ethanol is beneficial to neuronal health, but rather that the body can maintain homeostasis under stress, to an extent, as it does in so many other systems. For alcohol, we know that drinkers develop a tolerance. Heavier drinkers are able to produce enzymes more quickly and in higher numbers, and greater amounts of alcohol can be eliminated at a time. (Sufficiently heavy drinkers are still sustaining higher levels of all concerned chemicals, of course). Ethanol exists naturally in the body, in small amounts (~3g/day), as a byproduct of fermentation in the digestive system. We're always producing a small amount of the enzymes which convert alcohol to acetaldehyde, and then acetaldehyde to acetic acid and acetyl-CoA, and so on. Is it such a stretch to imagine that the body has a feedback mechanism to deal with variations in these levels, and that that mechanism is effective at preventing neurotoxicity for small enough variation in these levels? At some point I think to argue there is no theoretic way the body regulates these low levels of ethanol, you'd just be arguing that living, itself, is neurotoxic.
  - thatcat 6y ago
    3g released over 24H is not the same as having a drink, that would be 0.124 g/H and probably does maintain a 0 BAC homeostatic environment. A drink would be 8 oz (5%) = 11.2 g etoh / beer avg that is consumed in <30m so that's 22.4 g/H or 1800% higher rate of etoh consumption for single beer compared to what your body naturally produces. Due to that, it remains in your blood stream and crosses the blood brain barrier for some period of time before the enzymes can effectively convert it, hence the increase in BAC for that period of time. That indicates that you are not maintaining homeostasis at that rate of consumption. If you drink more, then that extends the time of exposure and raises the level further - so yea there is a non-linearity there. I'd compare it more to toluene or some solvent you breath in accidentally while working. Sure your body removes it, there are acceptable OSHA personal exposure levels so obviously it won't kill you at that concentration, maybe it gets more efficient at removing it after you expose yourself repeatedly. Still it's a neurotoxin and breathing any in causes non-zero damage. All this beer talk got me thirsty, cheers!

thatcat 6y ago

There is no threshold value below which alcohol causes 0 damage to neural tissue was their point, which does not imply it has a measurable effect on longevity or physiology or any metric. If you dilute the alcohol it has proportional damaging effect to the concentration. It's a theoretic truth not an experimentally measured one.

lanstin 6y ago
Your brain isn’t a static system. Being happy, active, socially connected can probably grow back/heal the damage as fast as it happens.
- thatcat 6y ago
  You're totally right it's worth it sometimes for other reasons to drink.
xvedejas 6y ago
But there is also a theoretical reason not to believe things are so linear. The body is designed to react to stress, and a minimal amount of stress can even be beneficial, because of the way the body reacts to it. At least in some cases this is unequivocal. - Muscles must be stressed and sustain damage ("microtrauma") before muscle growth occurs. - DNA must be damaged by UVB radiation in order for the body to create melanin. - Allergen immunotherapy works by exposing the body to larger and larger amounts of a substance which causes an allergic reaction. This process is clearly nonlinear and involves hysteresis! I'm not arguing that ethanol is beneficial to neuronal health, but rather that the body can maintain homeostasis under stress, to an extent, as it does in so many other systems. For alcohol, we know that drinkers develop a tolerance. Heavier drinkers are able to produce enzymes more quickly and in higher numbers, and greater amounts of alcohol can be eliminated at a time. (Sufficiently heavy drinkers are still sustaining higher levels of all concerned chemicals, of course). Ethanol exists naturally in the body, in small amounts (~3g/day), as a byproduct of fermentation in the digestive system. We're always producing a small amount of the enzymes which convert alcohol to acetaldehyde, and then acetaldehyde to acetic acid and acetyl-CoA, and so on. Is it such a stretch to imagine that the body has a feedback mechanism to deal with variations in these levels, and that that mechanism is effective at preventing neurotoxicity for small enough variation in these levels? At some point I think to argue there is no theoretic way the body regulates these low levels of ethanol, you'd just be arguing that living, itself, is neurotoxic.
- thatcat 6y ago
  3g released over 24H is not the same as having a drink, that would be 0.124 g/H and probably does maintain a 0 BAC homeostatic environment. A drink would be 8 oz (5%) = 11.2 g etoh / beer avg that is consumed in <30m so that's 22.4 g/H or 1800% higher rate of etoh consumption for single beer compared to what your body naturally produces. Due to that, it remains in your blood stream and crosses the blood brain barrier for some period of time before the enzymes can effectively convert it, hence the increase in BAC for that period of time. That indicates that you are not maintaining homeostasis at that rate of consumption. If you drink more, then that extends the time of exposure and raises the level further - so yea there is a non-linearity there. I'd compare it more to toluene or some solvent you breath in accidentally while working. Sure your body removes it, there are acceptable OSHA personal exposure levels so obviously it won't kill you at that concentration, maybe it gets more efficient at removing it after you expose yourself repeatedly. Still it's a neurotoxin and breathing any in causes non-zero damage. All this beer talk got me thirsty, cheers!