Drinking without blushing is more dangerous than you think

It is common for people all over the world to drink when they are happy and when they are unhappy.

According to the World Health Organization's 2018 Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health, 2.3 billion people aged 15 and over are drinking alcohol, nearly a third of the world's population.

After a few cups, some cheeks flushed, others pale. It's not because one person has yellow wine, one has red wine and one has white wine. It's because of the genotype of enzymes that metabolize alcohol in our bodies.

Some people drink white face, because can drink well? The way you react to drinking alcohol has to do with how alcohol reacts in your body.

Alcohol, also known as ethanol, appears in the blood within five minutes of being ingested and reaches its highest concentration within 30 to 60 minutes. Only a small amount is secreted directly from the body through sweat, urine, and the respiratory tract, while about 90 percent is metabolized by the liver.

In the liver, alcohol undergoes two enzyme-catalyzed reactions: In the first stage, ethanol is converted to acetaldehyde with the help of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). In the second stage, with the help of aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), acetaldehyde turns to acetic acid, which breaks down to carbon dioxide and water.

Acetaldehyde, the product of the first stage, is responsible for drunkenness. It can cause blood vessels to dilate, facial flushing, tachycardia, rapid pulse and other reactions.

The product of the second stage, acetic acid, is weak acid acetic acid, the main substance in white vinegar, a common kitchen condiment, which can cause metabolic acidosis in severe alcoholism.

The facial expression changes after drinking alcohol are closely related to the two reaction stages of alcohol.

If your complexion stays the same and you're sweating profusely, that means both enzymes are working properly, and the ethanol is quickly metabolized into carbon dioxide and water, which is excreted out of your body -- a sign that you have a strong ability to metabolize alcohol.

Blush after drinking, is because the first enzyme activity is high, and the second enzyme activity is low, after drinking, acetaldehyde generation rate is greater than the rate of decomposition, accumulation in the body.

And pale after drinking, there are two possibilities. One possibility is that the first enzyme is so low that ethanol has a hard time turning into acetaldehyde, and when the body finds that the concentration of ethanol in the blood is too high, it turns on the liver microsomal ethanol oxidation system (MEOS). This system not only consumes energy, it damages the liver, and the product acetaldehyde damages the liver;

Another possibility is to continue drinking after the flush, acetaldehyde in the body build up, or damage the liver. Either way, a pale face after drinking suggests that your liver is putting too much of a metabolic burden on it.

The human system is exquisitely self-regulating. When the liver's metabolic activity increases, oxygen consumption increases, and production becomes excessive, it's like a wheezing machine that runs out of fuel and dumps its output for export.

At this point, blood, the transportation system, floods to the liver to fuel the machine (i.e., oxygen) and divert excess products.

Since the amount of blood is basically constant, if it rushes to the liver, less is allocated to the rest of the tissue. The blood flow through the veins of your skin is reduced, and you turn pale.

In short, pale face means your body can't handle its current metabolic load, so stop. The myth that small amounts of alcohol are good for you and large amounts are bad for you is, sadly, just wishful thinking.

According to a 2018 analysis by the Lancet, the lowest level of alcohol consumption that does not pose a risk is zero, meaning there is no "safe dose" of alcohol.

In 2016, about 5 percent of global deaths were alcohol-related, and the death rate caused by inappropriate drinking is even higher than that caused by diseases such as tuberculosis, AIDS and diabetes.

The degree of alcohol damage to human body is related to a series of factors such as gender, age and congenital genes.

Simply put, young men metabolize faster than women, but in old age, women metabolize faster than their male counterparts.

This is because of the two enzymes involved in alcohol metabolism, the first key enzyme (alcohol dehydrogenase) relies on the coenzyme NAD+ for its work, and men have significantly higher levels of NAD+ in their whole blood than women, allowing them to metabolize faster. But there was a significant decline as men aged, while women did not.