Does drinking blush mean you can handle alcohol well?
A person who blushes after only a few sips of wine is common at the wine table. Many people think that the face is the performance of drinking too much, so friends who drink face is not red, alcohol must be stable. As for people who blush when they drink alcohol, if they pretend to talk nonsense, they can often pretend to be drunk, but it is not easy to be drunk on the social scene. Some time ago, an article that went viral on the Internet "Drinking blushes is suicide" pointed out that drinking blushes people's alcohol intake will bring different health risks than ordinary people. So is there any scientific basis for this? Most people will blush after drinking too much alcohol, but some people will immediately face after drinking a little wine. The condition is more common among people in East Asia (mainly China, Japan, and South Korea), so it is medically known as Asia Flush. According to the Kurihama Alcohol Center in Japan, this phenomenon occurs in about 36 percent of East Asians.
Why does drinking make you blush?
To understand why some people blush after a drink, we must first understand how alcohol is absorbed and metabolized after entering the body. The human body usually has two enzymes - ethanol dehydrogenase (ADH) and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2), the former will enter the body of ethanol (alcohol) into acetaldehyde, and then the latter will then convert acetaldehyde into acetic acid, the final acetic acid is excreted by the body, the alcohol metabolism process is over. The acetaldehyde formed in the process is a vasodilator, and the so-called acetaldehyde in the human body causes the capillaries to dilate before it is converted into acetic acid, making people look red.
Under normal circumstances, the two enzymes operate normally, as long as you do not consume too much alcohol, acetaldehyde will be quickly converted into acetic acid, only to drink too much, too late to metabolize, will remain in the body. And those who blush when they drink alcohol usually have some abnormal genes responsible for the production of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase in the body, which will produce mutated acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2*2), this similar enzyme activity is lower than normal acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, so the acetaldehyde in the body can not be quickly converted, and a little contact with wine becomes red. Depending on the effect of blood vessel dilation, some people even sweat, dizziness, headache, vomiting, rapid heartbeat and so on.
People who blush when they drink alcohol are more dangerous? Since alcohol is what makes people drunk, the difference in alcohol consumption depends on the ability of the body to metabolize ethanol, that is, the amount and activity of ethanol dehydrogenase (ADH) in the first metabolic reaction; If only the amount of alcohol is taken into account, there is no significant difference in the speed of alcohol metabolism between those who blush with alcohol and those who do not blush. But the health risks are very different. Because people who blush when they drink alcohol can not be quickly metabolized after converting alcohol into acetaldehyde, and too much acetaldehyde accumulated in the body will not only make them more uncomfortable after a hangover, but also increase the risk of high blood pressure and cancer. According to IARC, acetaldehyde can damage DNA and prevent cells from repairing themselves, which is a high-risk carcinogen. Both alcohol and acetic acid are relatively low risk factors for cancer.
Therefore, people who drink alcohol on the face, after drinking and high carcinogenic substances contact time is also longer. NIAAA: A 2009 report published by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Kurihama Alcohol Center in Japan concluded that the relative risk of esophageal cancer in people who blushed medically was much higher than in non-blushing people. However, due to the complexity of the causes of cancer, this analysis has not been supported by direct experimental or statistical data. The report also admitted that for some areas with high incidence of esophageal cancer, long-term drinkers blushing and not blushing is not the main factor affecting the incidence. Although the association with cancer rates is not conclusive, people who blush with alcohol should be more aware of high blood pressure that can be caused by excessive drinking.
At the end of 2013, a team of medical researchers at Chungnam National University in South Korea made a direct breakthrough in a study on the relationship between drinking blushes and the risk of high blood pressure. They looked at the medical records of 1,763 people who did not drink alcohol, did not blush after drinking alcohol, and significantly blushed after drinking alcohol. The results showed that those who drank alcohol blushed significantly increased their risk of developing high blood pressure if they drank four or more standard amounts of alcohol per week.
Non-blushers are at risk if they drink more than eight standard drinks per week (a standard drink is 10ml of pure alcohol, usually equivalent to 87.5ml of wine /284ml of beer /25ml of low-alcohol Chinese liquor). So, to be clear, alcohol is not a completely untouchable poison for people who blush when they drink, but the boundaries of safe drinking are much stricter than for people who don't blush when they drink. Of course, not only is drinking blush, anyone should know how to drink moderately.