One day, I was attending a friend’s party and was about to have a few drinks when my deskmate mysteriously took out a pill and pointed to the antique packaging box, indicating that the treasure in my hand was a “magic medicine” for relieving alcoholism.
As a professional, I was so curious that I came back to find out [is there any magic anti-alcoholism drug in the world? ]
Alcohol metabolism
The metabolism of alcohol in the body belongs to zero-order metabolism, that is, metabolism at a constant speed, and there are great individual differences, with the average value of 20 mg/dL per hour for the average person.
Ethnic differences are one of the reasons for alcohol metabolism differences. Most East Asians are people who carry genes that express weak metabolic types, and will blush with shame and increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases due to high acetaldehyde accumulation.
A small part of the difference comes from the long-term induction of chronic drinking. The alcohol metabolism rate of habitual drinkers is about 36 mg/dL per hour. Alcohol itself is an inducer of the expression of two metabolic enzymes, as well as many other drug metabolic enzymes.
Metadoxine/fructose
At present, the recognized prescription drug with the ability to promote acetaldehyde dehydrogenase is metadoxine, which can promote alcohol metabolism.
Another recognized substance that promotes alcohol metabolism, Fructose is the common fructose in daily food. Fructose is abundant in fruit juice and honey in a free state. The fructose content in honey is about 40%. Some studies have found that alcohol metabolism can be improved by about 44.7% if alcohol and fructose are ingested at a ratio of 1: 1. This is the theoretical source of folk belief that honey can help relieve drunkenness.
However, according to this ratio, the average amount of alcohol consumed by adults during drunkenness is 75 mL, and the amount of honey required for [relieving alcoholism] will be very large, requiring at least 148 g of honey, while the digestive tract of the human body cannot completely absorb and tolerate this amount of honey.
Plant-derived drugs
There are records in ancient Chinese books and records that Pueraria lobata can relieve alcoholism, and some modern studies believe that its mechanism may be related to promoting ethanol metabolism. However, there may be exaggerated dose-efficacy correlation between these plant-derived components, and there is still a lack of convincing evidence-based evidence.
At present, China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) has not approved any proprietary Chinese medicine with [anti-alcoholism] and similar indications. At present, most of the anti-alcoholism products with the common concept of traditional Chinese medicine in the market exist in the form of food quasi-characters.
Therefore, at present, only a few prescription drugs have been approved to be listed as [anti-alcoholism drugs]. Many so-called anti-alcoholism drugs existing in the folk are health care products or foods, and there is no definite evidence-based evidence as to whether they can play a role in anti-alcoholism.
In addition, it should be noted that some drugs such as aspirin, acetaminophen, H2 receptor antagonist, etc. can antagonize alcohol metabolism, and it is not recommended to use the above drugs to relieve headache and protect stomach after alcohol intake.
In fact, the best [anti-alcoholism medicine] is enough, just a little tipsy.