Alcoholism is (partly) genetic (E62)
The Adam Ragusea Podcast
00:00
The Effects of the ADH Gene on Alcohol Use
The ADH enzyme breaks ethanol down into acid aldehyde, which is thought to be directly responsible for many of the ways that alcohol hurts you. About half of East Asians carry a variant of the gene that encodes ALDH and this variant effectively reduces the performance of the ALDH enzyme. In about half of the ethnically East Asian population, their bodies are better at converting ethanol into acetaldehyde while being simultaneously worse at converting acetaldehyde into acetate. This is a recipe for the most wicked hangover you can imagine.
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