7 common alcohol myths and scientific denials

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Rumors that hard drinks kill the brain and coffee helps sober up are somewhat exaggerated.

UPD. Text updated on August 2, 2019 with more scientific evidence from verified sources.

Drinking alcoholic beverages is one of the oldest traditions of mankind. And during its existence, it has managed to acquire a whole bunch of various myths. Some of them are a thing of the past, while others turned out to be surprisingly tenacious and still exist. This article will introduce you to the opinion of science about some of them.

1. Strong coffee can sober you up

Every novice alcohol lover always faces two problems: how to get drunk faster and how to sober up as soon as possible. There are many recipes for solving the second problem, including drinking strong coffee, which supposedly will again return your clarity of thinking. Unfortunately, this method doesn't actually work.

Professor Anthony Moss from South Bank University in the Food Unwrapped program said that coffee will not sober you up faster: caffeine only helps to resist drowsiness caused by alcohol.

This is confirmed by the experiments carried out by Moss. By the way, to give this scientist the opportunity to test drunk people, South Bank University opened its own pub. All for the sake of science.

Moss isn't the first to find a link between caffeine and sobriety. Scientists from Temple University in Philadelphia have found that coffee will not help you sober up even earlier.

Through our research, we know for sure that coffee is not an antidote to alcohol. Coffee is a stimulant that can reduce mild fatigue but does not help lower blood ethanol levels. The only thing that can sober you up is a little time.

Anthony Moss

Drinking coffee after heavy drinking is rather harmful because it will make it harder for you to fall asleep. So give up this idea and just go to bed.

2. Alcohol kills your brain cells

Look at drunk people: their coordination of movements is impaired, their speech is incoherent, they lose control over their emotions. Fans of a healthy lifestyle try to explain this by saying that alcohol kills the brain. On the Internet, there are often statements like "Three pints of beer kill 10 thousand brain cells."

But this is not the case. Alcohol does not kill brain cells. Yes, ethyl alcohol can destroy cells and microorganisms, which is what makes it an effective antiseptic. But when you drink, your body does not allow ethanol to kill your cells. Enzymes in your liver break it down, converting it first into acetaldehyde (which is really very toxic) and then into acetate, which is broken down into water and carbon dioxide and excreted from the body.

Liver speed is limited. It can only process 0.35 liters of beer, 0.15 liters of wine or 0.04 liters of pure alcohol per hour. If you drink more, the liver does not have time to break down the alcohol and it enters the bloodstream.

Once it reaches the brain cells, ethanol does not kill them. However, it blocks the connection between neurons in the cerebellum - the part of the brain that is responsible for coordinating movements (which is why drunks are so clumsy).

Researchers at the University of Washington in St. Louis have found that alcohol does not kill neurons, even when injected directly into them. He only prevents them from transmitting information. This is unpleasant, yes. But, according to Professor Robert Pentney from the University of Buffalo, this damage is reversible - it is enough not to drink for a while, and the neural connections will be restored.

In some people who drink heavily, brain neurons still die off. This occurs in patients with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. But the reason for the death of neurons is not alcohol consumption, but a lack of vitamin B1 (or thiamine) and general malnutrition, which drunkards are often prone to.

What's more, some studies generally suggest that moderate alcohol consumption does not affect cognitive function in the future, or even slightly reduces the risk of dementia.

3. Mixing several drinks makes you drunk

The opinion that it is impossible to mix various alcoholic drinks in order to avoid excessive intoxication is one of the most widespread. For example, if you started drinking wine, then all evening you need to use only it and in no case go to vodka or champagne.

Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa, in an article for The New York Times, refutes this claim. In fact, it is not the number of drinks mixed, but the total amount of alcohol consumed that is decisive.

Only the total amount of alcohol, as well as the food you eat, which can slow down or speed up its absorption, affects your intoxication. The total amount of alcohol, and not the combination of drinks containing it, affects the intoxication of the body and its consequences.

Roshini Rajapaksa

This opinion is supported by research by Boston University doctors Jonathan Howland and Jaycee Gries.

Why is this myth so widespread? There is not a physiological, but rather a psychological explanation. Starting with "weak" drinks, we set ourselves a certain rate of intoxication, adjusting our behavior to it.

Moving on to hard alcohol, we continue to adhere to the same pattern, which leads to sad consequences. This is about the same as if you were driving at a low speed all the time, and then sharply pressed the gas pedal all the way. The result is a loss of control and you are in the ditch (under the table).

4. Drinking one glass every hour will not interfere with driving

Some people believe that drinking a small amount of alcohol more than an hour before the trip will not affect the quality of driving in any way. In support of their words, they say that about one glass of vodka, a glass of wine or a glass of beer is excreted from the body in an hour.

However, Dr. Kenneth Warren of the US National Institute on Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse (NIAAA) refutes this.

The average person with a normal metabolism is able to cope with about 100 mg of alcohol per 1 kg of weight in one hour. This means that with a weight of about 70 kg, the body can neutralize only 7 g of alcohol, while a standard bottle of beer already contains 14 g of this substance.

Kenneth Warren

Thus, even stretching the consumption of alcoholic beverages over time, you will not be saved from intoxication. With each next sip, alcohol intoxication will continue to grow, so driving in this case is strictly prohibited.

5. You can cheat the breathalyzer

There are several folk tricks that supposedly help to deceive the breathalyzer, including special mint candies, a special breathing technique, and so on. Some not very conscious drunk drivers even throw a coin into their mouths to confuse the device with a metallic taste, and one completely original individual tried to get rid of the smell of fumes by chewing on his own used laundry (you don’t eat while reading this article?).

All these methods are erroneous, since they are aimed at masking a specific smell, and the breathalyzer works in a completely different way.

It contains a special substance that reacts with alcohol vapors contained in the breath, so what your breath smells like, it doesn't care.

However, one study suggests that strong, intense breathing can confuse a breathalyzer. Hyperventilation can make the device lower the degree of your intoxication by 10 percent. True, on the first try so few people will succeed, except for the guru of breathing exercises. And any police officer will notice that you breathe, to put it mildly, strange.

6. Different drinks affect your behavior in different ways

We've all heard this before: whiskey makes you rowdy, tequila invites you to dance, rum makes you sad, and so on. People want to believe that there are special drinks that trigger a certain mood. But there is no scientific evidence for these myths, and from a chemical point of view, only the amount of alcohol in each of the drinks matters. This is confirmed by Dr. Guy Ratcliffe in The Guardian.

The influence of alcohol is always the same, in whatever form it is taken. The only thing that matters is the speed and the total amount drunk. Alcohol is a simple molecule that is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. So if you drink a strong drink in large portions, then the effect will be significantly different from what appears when you consume a low-alcohol drink for several hours.

Guy Ratcliffe

Most likely, such myths have a psychosocial basis. In different life situations, we choose different drinks, and then we get exactly the effect that our brain expects and which is most suitable for this situation.

7. Pickle, green tea, coffee, booze will cure you of a hangover

Every alcoholic drinker has their own signature hangover-fighting recipe. Most often they repeat common folk remedies, although there are also completely unique "secret" methods. Only they don't work.

• Brine. Not only in Russia, but also in the USA, England, Poland and Japan, there is a myth that drinking brine (not necessarily cucumber - in Japan, for example, they prefer brine from sour plums) helps with a hangover. However, Dr. Tochi Iroku-Malise of Long Island, New York, says this is not the case. According to her, the pickle does not help with a hangover in any way, except that it reduces dehydration. But you don't drink much of it, so it's easier to prefer water.
• Coffee. We've already said that coffee doesn't help you sober up. It also does not help against a hangover. Nutritionist Melissa Majumdar of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics confirms this. And nutritionists generally do not recommend mixing caffeine and alcohol.
• Green tea. Green tea, like coffee, contains caffeine. It also has a diuretic effect, which puts more stress on your kidneys and promotes dehydration. So it's better to replace it with water too.
• Binge. "Like is cured by like" … No, it is not cured. Drinking 100 g to sober up will temporarily increase your endorphin levels, making you feel better. But then the hangover will come back. You already loaded your liver yesterday, there is nothing to add to it even more work, forcing it to break down an additional portion of booze.

In addition to the above, many people consume cabbage, eggs, ginseng, bananas and many other foods for a hangover. And they are all … useless. As a study by Oxford researcher Max Pittler shows, there is no conclusive evidence that any conventional drug is effective in preventing or treating hangover.

The best way to get rid of a hangover is to drink plenty of water and sleep. And the only reliable and accurately working preventive measure is, undoubtedly, abstaining from excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages the day before.