[Itchybottom]

Originally Posted by Hasbinbad [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm sorry, maybe I woke up and am now in a new dimension in which Alcohol isn't described as a CNS depressant?

Alcohol is without a doubt a depressant, no one is arguing the validity of that observation.

Most cells (damaged or not) have an effect on the central nervous system. I was refuting the non-sense that it had something to do with fluid loss in it specifically --

Originally Posted by Hasbinbad

You're ignoring the fact that the symptoms of a "hangover" are directly tied to fluid loss in the CNS rather than the general system of the body.

There is far more depression being caused in your endocrine system, than your central nervous system; unfortunately in the case of most sciences (psychology, comes to mind as a prime example) labels are often in need of review for years before they've been updated. I don't think it's the case that alcohol needs reclassification, but it's effects need to be more widely published and not just available to those of us forking money over for peer reviewed articles. I tried to give you a heuristic evaluation of the biological reaction of ethanol in the body, and ultimately the "real" cause of hang-over and you're replying with word play. I do not appreciate being led by uncritical acceptance of invalid understanding. The current theory in the field, differs greatly (and thereby falsifies) the original postulation that the public layman likes to harp about hang-overs, the newer evidence which has been published by medical journals provided by Acta Neurologica Scandinavica (published by Wiley-Blackwell, as I mentioned in my first post), The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism and similarly (though not as in depth) in part the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs greatly differs from our understanding of the past. What I'm basically saying is, a decade ago I would have been agreeing with you (aside from the obvious problem with fluid in the nervous system being depleted) -- now, not so much.

I'd like to re-iterate, medical science does not spend much time on alcoholism, other than it's prevention. The timeline for study and break-through on the subject is longer than it should be.

A similar discovery in another field (toxicology) as an example, is the monitor lizard. For the longest time, we thought the bite of the lizard, due to the amount of bacteria in it's mouth is what slowly disabled it's prey. As it turns out, it actually has venom sacks. How was this missed? It is absurd to think bacteria would work that way, which in turn lead Dr. Brian Grieg Fry (PhD, not MD) to take a closer look. It's been causing a big storm in peer-reviewed journals for the last few years, and PhD candidates all over the place are examining lizard species of all walks (last I checked, there were about 1,700 of them with venom, and that was 2009) to break ground with. The amount of those creatures [monitor lizards] that have been dissected over the years, and no one noticed a venom sack pretty much describes my feeling on public opinion turning into fact in sciences and often makes me roll my eyes on Internet forum posts without citation, or full grasp of the concept at hand.

Ideas != hypothesis or theory, yet somehow they still hold just as much water in some circles.

Originally Posted by Hasbinbad [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You seem to know so many details, yet your grasp of the the bigger picture seems somewhat less than complete.

So you're insinuating that I am making a compositional fallacy, or ignoring the common cause? Because in both cases, just no. This conversation seems to have de-evolved into a semantics debate (language barrier, terminology) rather than anything constructive. I didn't challenge your idea of "pickling" the brain, because of this. Did you mean cerebral edema or "wet brain" associated with alcoholism? I didn't see how the two processes (pickling and edema) could relate, but I did see mention of the term used for alcohol dementia in non-medical texts which descriptors lead me to edema. That's beyond the scope of hang-over and in most cases end-stage cirrhosis - academically that dives pretty deep down the hole into glial cell membranes and other cytolytic activity.

There's a gastroenterologist locally to me by the name of Dr. Lin Huang MD, he's often referred to as #2 in this field per peer recommendation and I've had conversations with him in length on the subject. What fascinates me the most about his work, is that he actually found when it comes to glycine production and liver function (primarily in the scope of cirrhosis prevention, but would also apply to causation of hang-overs) that you could use bacteriophage activated escherichia coli to boost glycine levels in the body. Not dissimilar to treating hepatitis C by infecting the person with A (mortality rate is 40%, which means 60% chance get better according to the German study) That [glycine boost] would certainly insulate you from some of the effects of hang-over, especially if it was treated with the proper protocol to lessen the a-typical symptoms associated with viral stage infection (of potent e.coli). Of course, this wouldn't relate to compound infections (hepatitis, cirrhosis, diabetes, and/or other immunologic-suppression) or late stage cases, but it could give people a fighting chance when caught early. Then again, last I checked people aren't to keen on using tape worm for dieting either.... So it might not be so great presenting such a treatment to your patient. There are also some specific toxins being studied that alter the endocrine and nervous system directly, that could be applied to future methods of therapy (and abuse by college kids.)

If people think things like Four Loko are bad now (clearly if it's being banned), wait until a "supplement" from some random herbal remedy company comes on the market that enables you to drink more than you should. It's already working well enough (sales volume anyhow) with a placebo from Merck -- in the case of South America and Hepabionta. I'm shooting myself the moment a "low toxicity" gin or scotch come out though.