If the driving force of a hangover is dehydration, why does chasing each drink with an equal glass of water not really work for preventing a hangover?
In: Biology
Alcohol dehydrogenase is an enzyme that converts alcohol to acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is responsible for many of the unpleasant hangover symptoms. The more you drink the more you saturate these enzymes and it takes longer to clear the acetaldehyde. The more alcohol, the longer it takes since there’s a limited amount of enzyme molecules and a limited rate that each enzyme can process each molecule of alcohol. These enzymes also come at a cost of energy that changes the fuel demand dynamics in the cell leading to a cascading effect of altered metabolism in otherwise unrelated enzymes which probably has other significant effects but I do not remember them.
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