Alcohol Tolerance Hypothetical

[calcbandit]

I take 2 clones of myself.

Clone A drinks 2 beer every day for a year.
Clone B drinks 12 beers at a time, once per week, for a year.

After the year is up, which clone will be able to drink more alcohol? Who has the higher tolerance?

[mbillie1]

[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.

[eof]

Clone B would. i cannot justify it in anyway but i am quite sure. i drank in college on the weekends profusely and had a huge tolerance. now i drink more often, but less each time and i have almost no tolerance. there is something about being shitfaced that gets your tolerance up imo.

[kevin017]

interesting question.

im gonna guess that binge drinking will be worse for you in every way, including producing more tolerance.

[vhawk01]

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interesting question.

im gonna guess that binge drinking will be worse for you in every way, including producing more tolerance.

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Producing tolerance isnt really worse for you. Like I said, tolerance is mostly a function of increasing the amount of enzymes in your liver that metabolize and get rid of all the alcohol.

[tarheeljks]

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interesting question.

im gonna guess that binge drinking will be worse for you in every way, including producing more tolerance.

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Producing tolerance isnt really worse for you. Like I said, tolerance is mostly a function of increasing the amount of enzymes in your liver that metabolize and get rid of all the alcohol.

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i'm operating solely on intuition, but (which obv isn't worth much in science) even if it is only happening once a week, shouldn't the fact that clone b's liver is breaking down all that alcohol in a short time count for something?

[yukoncpa]

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Clone B, however, will have more hepatotoxicity, which could actually impair metabolism.

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This is very worrisome for me, because I enjoy binge drinking but then I take a lot of time off between bouts. I was under the impression from a General Practitioner I talked to back in the early 80's that there would be no hepatoxicity if I gave myself half a week between binges as the liver would have plenty of time to repair itself. Sounds to me that the info I relied on for 20 years is wrong. Can you elaborate just a little on my comments please ( my liver is still important to me).

[vhawk01]

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interesting question.

im gonna guess that binge drinking will be worse for you in every way, including producing more tolerance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Producing tolerance isnt really worse for you. Like I said, tolerance is mostly a function of increasing the amount of enzymes in your liver that metabolize and get rid of all the alcohol.

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i'm operating solely on intuition, but (which obv isn't worth much in science) even if it is only happening once a week, shouldn't the fact that clone b's liver is breaking down all that alcohol in a short time count for something?

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Yeah, probably. The thing is, alcohol is a very small molecule, so there are tons of individual alcohol molecules in every drink (way more than, say, the number of molecules cocaine or THC in a comparable sized sample) and since each molecule takes up one enzyme, these enzymes are VERY rapidly saturated. Alcohol is one of the very few substances that are cleared by the body according to "zero order" kinetics, and this is exactly why. So, even moderate amounts of alcohol keep these enzymes constantly saturated.

Like I said, though, I honestly dont know the answer to this, and a very rapid search of the literature didnt come up with any answers for me. So I'm really just trying to reason it out and I might very well be wrong.

[vhawk01]

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Clone B, however, will have more hepatotoxicity, which could actually impair metabolism.

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This is very worrisome for me, because I enjoy binge drinking but then I take a lot of time off between bouts. I was under the impression from a General Practitioner I talked to back in the early 80's that there would be no hepatoxicity if I gave myself half a week between binges as the liver would have plenty of time to repair itself. Sounds to me that the info I relied on for 20 years is wrong. Can you elaborate just a little on my comments please ( my liver is still important to me).

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I'm comparing this to drinking 2 beers/day, which has been shown to have some beneficial health effects. Drinking 6-8 drinks per day is much different.