"Bananit" asks: Of the people I know, the Russians have a capacity for alcohol, meaning they know how to drink. Is this tendency genetic? Let's say, all the Russians who "couldn't drink" would have died from alcohol poisoning, or would have simply lost consciousness and frozen to death en masse in the winter, and then it happened that over the generations the Russian people became genetically "know how to drink"?
It's not all genetics. There is no Russian "vodka garden" just as there is no Brazilian "football garden". The ability of "the people you know" to drink a lot probably stems from the very fact that they drink a lot. The more a person is exposed to alcohol, the liver produces more enzymes that break down the alcohol and the ability to drink increases. No special genes are needed in order not to die from alcohol poisoning, and there are no people who are "genetically resistant" to alcohol.
Luckily for us, intoxication itself usually prevents us from drinking a lethal amount. There is a solid basis for your observation, Bananit, the per capita alcohol consumption statistics published by the OECD do show that Eastern European countries lead the table. The alcohol consumption figures are mainly related to the culture, the availability of alcohol and the economic-social situation. Russian history, politics and economy are saturated with alcohol.
In the 16th century, Tsar Ivan the Terrible turned the sale of alcohol into a source of income for the royal court, and in the 19th century, taxes on vodka provided 40% of all state revenues. The social consequences of the vodka economy are described extensively in the literature, this is how Chekhov describes the leisure culture of Russian peasants in the 19th century: "On St. Elijah's Day they got drunk, on Thanksgiving Day they got drunk, on the Feast of the Cross they got drunk, the Feast of the Intercession was a holiday for Zhukov, and on this occasion The peasants drank for three whole days. They drank fifty rubles belonging to the community fund and on top of that they made a tip to buy vodka from every father's house.
After failed attempts at the beginning of the 20th century to apply "dry laws" Stalin returned and introduced a lucrative government monopoly on vodka. In 1985-86, the first serious attempt was made to reduce alcohol consumption and the drop in mortality during that period led to a two-year jump in life expectancy, this unpopular policy was abandoned during the Yeltsin period and life expectancy plunged by three years in the early nineties. Both the increase and the decrease were due to a change in the death rate among young people: fluctuations that have no precedent in times of peace.
Yet there is no doubt that some peoples are more prone to drinking than others and genetics play a role in determining our likelihood of becoming alcoholics. Studies that compared the tendency to alcoholism in identical twins (same genetic load) compared to non-identical twins (whose DNA is different but grew up in the same environment) as well as the drinking habits of adopted children compared to the biological and adoptive parents suggest that our genetics has a similar or slightly more important weight than the environment in determining alcohol consumption and the chance indulge in a bitter drop.
Alcohol (ethanol in its scientific name) is created when yeast grows on food rich in sugar, in nature sugar is found mainly in fruits and alcohol is found in one or another amount in almost every ripe fruit. Accordingly, all animals that feed on fruits: flies through birds and bats to our monkey relatives are equipped with a mechanism for digesting alcohol. Some evolutionists speculate that our fondness for alcohol originates from those distant days when the smell and taste of alcohol was a sign of ripe and nutritious fruit.
In the rainforests of Malaysia lives a tiny mammal: Chop trees from my blues (Malaysian pen-tailed tree shrew) which feeds on sweet and alcoholic nectar from palm flowers. Throughout his life, Bael Hai fed him a solution containing almost 4% alcohol - about the strength of beer, and yet he does not show any signs of intoxication. The discovery is interesting because the arboreals are the presumed group from which the ancestors of the apes evolved about 40 million years ago and it is possible that this is also the age of our acquaintance with ethanol.
Alcohol affects animals in a similar way to human intoxication, fruit bats whose diet includes ripe fruit in which alcoholic fermentation sometimes begins fly more slowly and their ability to navigate based on echolocation is impaired after consuming fruit with an alcohol content greater than 1%. Accordingly, the bat prefers fruits with a lower alcohol content when it has a choice. Nightingales (a bird that feeds on fruits) avoid food with an alcohol content of more than 3%. It seems that natural selection works to prevent flying fruit eaters from driving drunk that might land them in the mouths of predators.
What influences more genetics or environment?
The one who can afford to be carved without being eaten is the elephant that is attracted to the smell of alcohol emanating from ripe fruits (although the reports of "drunk elephants" in the wild are probably exaggerated). The evolutionary familiarity with alcohol is ancient, about 10 million years ago a mutation occurred in the evolutionary lineage leading to us and our relatives the gorillas and chimpanzees. This change in the enzyme that processes the alcohol made it 40 times more efficient. This biochemical change corresponds to the time when our ancestors began to descend from the tree branches to the forest floor where they encountered ripe fruit that had fallen and started the fermentation process.
But evolution did not prepare us for the next historical stage, the concentration of alcohol in fruits in nature and even in the sweet and ripe ones is much lower than in alcoholic beverages. To reach an alcohol concentration like in beer or wine requires a controlled process and tools that prevent oxidation and evaporation of the alcohol. Such an ability to control fermentation was achieved by man only a few thousand years ago, so natural selection did not have enough time to deal with a situation of excess alcohol. The addictive feeling is created by alcohol in the brain where it acts on the system that produces and responds to dopamine: a neurotransmitter that is responsible, among other things, for the "reward" in the mood that evolution made sure to provide us for behavior that improves our chances of survival and reproduction: food and sex. Alcohol addiction is also responsible for the opioid system, which, as its name suggests, is also activated by drugs such as opium and heroin. Humans differ from each other in quite a few genes responsible for these systems and their various combinations are responsible for the tendency of some of us to become addicted to alcohol while others help controlled drinking.
In the liver, the alcohol is oxidized to acetaldehyde: the substance responsible for the less pleasant effects associated with drinking. The acetaldehyde continues to be oxidized by other enzymes to acetic acid: the same substance that the alcohol would have turned into anyway if we had left the wine in the glass exposed to the air long enough. The faster the oxidation of alcohol to acetaldehyde and the slower the oxidation of acetaldehyde to vinegar, the longer and more excruciating the hangover (an aggravation for the followers of the academy). A mutation that accelerates the oxidation of alcohol to acetaldehyde is relatively common in Jews and this may be the reason for the relatively low incidence of alcoholism in Jews compared to their Gentile neighbors. The difference in drinking between the Jew and his Slavic neighbors is an important motif in the way Bialik established the The figure of the Russian "Gentile" in Hebrew culture
"Esau moves to the tavern,
A barrel of water from his mouth will give off a smell.
Boy Oh Boy,
Woe to Esau a Gentile!
His cup - his life,
must drink
Because therefore he is a Gentile."
Bialik was probably surprised to hear that the difference between "Esau" and "Jacob" is nothing more than a small DNA change that makes the morning after drinking more difficult for Jacob.
The mutation that East Asians get from alcoholism
In East Asians, a gene that affects the next enzyme in the chain is common: the one that breaks down acetaldehyde into vinegar. These people will react to alcohol with a series of side effects such as flushing, fever, dizziness, nausea, headache and weakness. This mutation protecting Asia from Europe's alcoholism epidemic is a biological puzzle. Why did natural selection prefer a genetic change that causes the accumulation of a toxic substance like acetaldehyde in the body? It is possible that the reason for this is that acetaldehyde is more toxic to parasites than to humans and its presence in the body protects against amoebae that cause severe intestinal infection.
But with all the abundance of genes that affect alcohol consumption there is no way to determine from a DNA test if a person will become a chronic drinker. The environment has a great influence on the way our genetic load will be expressed: the drinking habits in the environment, tensions and pressures in childhood and adulthood and depression from various sources may push us to the bottle. In most countries of the world, alcoholism is mainly a disease of the poor and the poorly educated. From Chekhov's pathetic peasants to to the sharp increase in alcohol consumption during the corona epidemic The wise man's words are fulfilled in man: "Give wages to the lost and wine to the troubled. He will drink and forget his wealth and his work will be remembered no more" (Proverbs XNUMX).
thanks to:
Dr. Etienne Quertemont, Dr. Michael Köhnke, Dr., Ming D. Li, Dr. David Goldman for their help
Did an interesting, intriguing, strange, delusional or funny question occur to you? sent to ysorek@gmail.com
2 תגובות
Is there a garden of ignorance, corruption and egoism for Mizrahim?
Yoram Yakiri, you were wrong in particular and the author is (roughly) right. These are two different stages and it was correct to write: the faster the oxidation of the alcohol to acetaldehyde, the less the effect of the alcohol (ie, it will take more alcohol to make a person drunk) - the slower the oxidation of the acetaldehyde to vinegar, the longer and more excruciating the hangover (an aggravation to the followers of the Academy). There are people who get drunk faster (some who get drunk from less content than a glass of drink) if they lack the first property of the liver (turning alcohol into acetaldehyde) and there are those who are affected by the aggravation due to damage to the second property (although in any case it is not necessarily related to the Russians).