Alcohol Tolerance Hypothetical

[vhawk01]

Well, the tolerance to alcohol has basically two facets. First, your liver has enzymes called cytochrome P450s and alcohol dehydrogenases that are responsible for metabolizing the alcohol and eliminating it from your system. With chronic alcohol use, these enzymes get upregulated and so you metabolize the alcohol much faster and so you have better "tolerance." Secondly, you can probably induce tolerance at the membrane or receptors for the actual alcohol molecules on actual cells. However, we dont actually know exactly how alcohol exerts its effects on cells and causes the effects we see. They used to think it didnt actually have a receptor but instead interfered with the membrane itself. As far as I know, this theory has sort of gone by the wayside and we now think there are actual receptors, but I dont think we know much about them. I certainly dont.

Thats probably a lot more information than you need, but basically I'm not entirely sure about this and I wanted to give my reasoning, since my conclusion might be incorrect. But basically, I'm pretty sure Clone A would have more tolerance. He is going to constantly have alcohol in his system and it takes time to upregulate these enzymes. Clone B, however, will have more hepatotoxicity, which could actually impair metabolism. Alcoholics usually have increased tolerance IN SPITE OF liver problems, and the super-binger might not develop the tolerance to make up for his reduced liver function.