The Science of Alcohol

As the summer approaches we start drinking more. A cold pint in a beer garden on a sun is a pleasure, but what's the science behind world most popular legal drug? Which grandma's advices are actually true, and which are completely, utterly ridiculous? Lets' s look at some myths, stereotypes and research behind the substance, that kills around 100,000 people globally every year (computed by Wolfram Alpha).

1. Alcohol is a poison. 

TRUE. And naturally humans produce a defence against it - an enzyme called 'alcohol dehydrogenase' (AD). This enzyme is a way your body fights back booze and gets you sober. The enzyme grabs hydrogene from ethanol molecule and makes it non-toxic acetaldehyde. Well, it's non-toxic, but a high cumulation of it will eventually cause dehydration and hangover.

2. Asians bodies don't produce alcohol dehydrogenase.

FALSE. It's a genetic variation that caused some of them produce less than in Caucasians. Variation was large enough to affect 1/3 of Asian drinker's population. Their great-great-grandparents simply didn't get so wasted Friday night as in Caucasian culture.

3. Women get easier drunk than man.

PARTIALLY TRUE. There are many factors, but generally AD enzyme mentioned previously is much more effective in man than women (70-80% greater activity in man than woman). However there is a tradeoff - AD enzyme activity drops much quicker for man than for women with age - so later in life those differences disappear.

4. Better eat before you get pished.

TRUE, but not because food 'soaks' the alcohol. When your stomach is full, it closes a small valve that leads to your small intestine (called 'pyloric sphincter'), so your stomach will have time to process the food before it gets to high-absorption intestine. If you drink on empty stomach - your pyloric sphincter is wide open and leading straight to 200 square meters of absorption surface in the small intestine that will happily suck the alcohol into your blood stream very fast and get you knocked.

5. If I drink one-half-pint-per-hour, I should be ok to drive us home.

WRONG. Your alcohol absorbtion and elimination is a curve, not a straight function. 

   

6. Drunk bums live longer.

TRUE, to some extend ;-) Surprised? Well, in the recent study published in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research journal, Holahan et al. (2010) followed 1824 people over a total of 20 years, as they aged between 55 and 65. Of those who totally abstained 69% died. From 'light drinkers' - 64% died. Among those who drunk 'moderately' - 41% died. Even heavy drinkers did better than abstinents and light drinkers - 61% of them passed away during the study.

As the summer hits, this topic will get covered more, with other drugs too, so stay tuned.

Behind Motion In Social.

About six weeks ago I started a small side project - creating website that would gradually evolve into communicating research I do in Psychology, sharing knowledge and resources related with research and creating platform for running online experiments (this part coming soon). The project debuted last week as Motion In Social. Let's do a bit of deconstruction for the reasons behind this project.

It all started when I was writing one of my current papers. I don't like writing scientific papers. I did advertising in the past, and writing papers is all that is against the rules of writing for advertising:

1. There is a stiff formal tone, rather than easy conversational one.

2. Use of big words is impressive, instead of using common terms.

3. You need to write the certain number of words to make a point, instead of writing as short as possible. 4. And finally - the format matters as much (or more) as the content, which is actually quite true for advertising too, but I think it is sometimes overloaded in the case of papers.

So I got into the point when I had a vomiting reaction the moment I saw word processor greeting screen loading my paper draft. That's where I thought -  that's wrong, what can I do to avoid it, to make it more pleasant experience for myself. That's how Motion In Social was conceived.

The reasoning is based on a simple principle from psychology - collaborative learning and presentation boosts the effects of learning. There are tones of studies showing that it is easier to learn something, when you learn it in a group, comparing to when you learn it alone. It boosts your motivation, attention, memory and generally makes learning a deeper, more meaningful experience. Speaking simply - sharing your learning resources is better both for you and others. So the primary goal of Motion In Social became sharing and communicating my research with others. Through this I knew I will gain better motivation and insight into my own research.

So I went online and looked for examples of good academic research websites. I quickly realised that internet is full of dead websites from academics, with outdated information that was copied-and-pasted from paper abstracts, badly positioned graphics and horrible psychedelic layout. I quickly realised that 90% of academic websites are really bad.

The first thing I noticed there - too much text that was too complex to understand. That's how I came out with 66 words rule - ANY paragraph written in my website would be no longer than 66 words. This is on average about 10 seconds of reading time. All the difficult words would be explained in separate section or referenced to relevant Wikipedia links. Every project described would be accompanied by results figures, sample movies and images.

Than I knew I need to get it out to the people. I could have created forum, but isn't just better to stand on the shoulder of giants and connect Motion In Social with every possible social network out there? That's how Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and Mendeley channels were created, together with RSS feeds. Upcoming soon is YouTube channel for movies and maybe Flicker as well to share photos, but I need to think how to creatively use those two options.

At this point, I feel like I have achieved my goal with Motion In Social. I now have a different perspective on the projects I am doing, they are more alive, and somehow I feel more responsible for their content. Writing is suddenly more exciting because I immediately think "how could I tell this story to people online?". But the project is not finish, it will evolve more gradually as I progress with my work. One thing is to find a way to get people involve more, so Motion In Social will be launch platform for discussion. It's also about making things easier and better to navigate, and there is a still long way to go to achieve ( I am not a web designer ;). The amazing thing is that we have all the necessary information and resources available online to create amazing things, and it's such a great opportunity, that we can't ignore it.