What do alcohol, vinegar and vegetable oils have in common?

You will probably be tapping your forehead, what am I making this up again. Surely they have nothing to do with each other, right? Well, take your time, something will be found. It's festive time and a lot of alcohol is drunk at this time, let's take a look at its metabolism.

Effect of alcohol on glucose metabolism. Note increased insulin secretion from the first minute of glucose infusion, i.e. immediate insulin resistance.

Alcohol is the fourth macrobiotic fuel. It is not usually mentioned separately, we consume carbohydrates, fats and proteins for energy. But alcohol is another separate fuel. Due to the fact that it is not normally available in nature, we have developed basically no braking regulatory mechanisms, and the body therefore handles it as quickly as the enzymes allow it. This is exactly what we are looking for, we will feel the effects almost immediately, that is what we like about alcohol.
As an immediate effect, an excess of cellular energy appears in particular, we start to feel hot, the body tries to radiate this excess energy to the surroundings as heat. In a moment we will talk about how it works in the cell and in the body. Depending on the amount of alcohol consumed, the fuel used for our functioning changes practically immediately. The burning of carbohydrates, fats and proteins will decrease, and over 50% of the necessary operating energy will be supplied by alcohol. Interesting. Even in the brain, which is said to process only glucose and partially ketones.

Looks great so far, we need energy, fast energy can come in handy. But if more than half of the energy is taken from alcohol, what happens to the unburned carbohydrates and fats that we eat at that time? Oh well, they will be saved. They cannot stay in the blood. It is clear. And how quickly does the body return to normal metabolism? We all know that, it's not right away, the morning hangover tells us. Our cells suffer from a lack of energy, it takes time for the enzymes that process fats and glucose to reactivate. Yes, a small amount of alcohol can really cure a hangover, but it will probably slow down the recovery process.

The rate of alcohol breakdown is approx. 0.016% per hour for men (male) and 0.018% per hour for women (female). To reach 0.08 % (the limit for driving in the USA), the average man drinks 0.9 g of ethanol per kg of body weight, the woman 0.84 g per kg of body weight, and both sober up in about 5 hours after the end of consumption.

That's the case for one event, but what about regular consumption? Yes, there will be permanent changes, the body simply adapts to the energy from alcohol, suppresses the processing of everything else, and without alcohol a person will feel terrible. Changes will take place in the whole organism. It is not easy to correct them, former alcoholics know this well.

Now let's go on a field trip to the different cells, see what causes alcohol in them and why I mentioned vinegar and oils in the title.

Hepatic ethanol metabolism, red arrows show increases or decreases, changes associated with alcohol. The cell produces acetate and at the same time new saturated fats and malonyl-CoA, which blocks the entry of fats from the cytoplasm into the mitochondria, fats cannot be burned.

The liver is the first to be hit. Alcohol from the digestive system goes directly to the liver, there is no detour, no filter. The liver is quite equipped for this if it is healthy. First, alcohol is processed in the cell cytoplasm into acetaldehyde and then enters the mitochondria to convert the aldehyde into acetate. And look, we have the vinegar salt.

What does acetate do? It immediately increases the sensitivity of insulin secretion, i.e. if we have a healthy pancreas. From now on, when we eat something sweet, or even just carbohydrates, we have more insulin in our body than usual. We are heading towards type 2 diabetes because new theories say that increased insulin levels could be one of the root causes. Acetate alone will help us keep the blood glucose level within reasonable limits and suppress the reluctance of the cells to capture glucose via increased insulin, but it will still have to be stored somehow. The recommendation to add vinegar to food works similarly. It probably won't be as beneficial as is generally thought. Vinegar will help lower blood glucose levels but at the cost of increased insulin, it's like going under the gutter from the rain. I don't know which is worse. Vinegar is not the answer, although new studies suggest a fairly strong positive effect of adding sodium acetate to the diet of mice.

We still have to mention fats, i.e. especially polyunsaturated vegetable oils. These activate peroxisomes, so they produce exactly the same acetate in the liver, which is also released to the body. In addition, omega-6 linoleic acid overloads the cell by using the DECR enzyme by additionally restoring NAD+ and thus accelerating the processing of alcohol, which causes a higher production of new fat and its storage in the liver. According to research, saturated fats have a protective effect. Perhaps because they are metabolized in the mitochondria and do not increase acetate.

Metabolism of muscle cells affected by alcohol, increased intake of acetate suppresses the AMPK enzyme and the ability to burn fat.

So when we consume alcohol, polyunsaturated oils and vinegar, we have an increased level of acetate in our blood, which is fuel for the whole body, including the brain. It is precisely the increased level of acetate that suppresses the metabolism of carbohydrates and fats and manifests itself even in tissues that almost do not metabolize alcohol, such as muscles or the brain. Excess energy in the form of ATP molecules will limit the enzyme AMPK, the main enzyme for controlling energy production.

Metabolism in the nerve cell of the brain, acetate from alcohol suppresses the entry of glucose and limits the formation of glutamine and neurotransmitter glutamate.

Suppression of AMPK causes many negative effects.

Suppression of AMP phosphorylation by the enzyme AMPK is the root problem of alcohol consumption. It is the result of overload, the delivery of excess energy to the mitochondria. If it happens often, the body will adapt and will require about 50% of energy from alcohol instead of energy from regular food. This results in a deficiency of minerals, vitamins and amino acids. In addition, alcohol/acetate is composed of only two carbon molecules and does not allow the formation of glucose, glutamate and other necessary molecules. Energy alone is not enough to live, so be the master of the situation, consume only sparingly, do not let alcohol control you!

Supplement:

It seems that in small concentrations (about 3% alcohol in water) alcohol can protect against the negative effects of a high-fat diet, at least in mice. The administration of such treated "water" not only completely suppressed the negative effects of a fatty diet containing 45% of energy from fat, but even extended the mice's life by approx. 5%. But for abstainers, I can point to a similar study that achieved practically the same effect by adding sodium acetate to the diet of mice (5% by weight), there was an increase in resting energy expenditure and an increase in fat burning through a decrease in PPARγ expression in adipose tissue. So my opinion is that the positive effect of alcohol is due to it being metabolized in the liver to acetate and what we are seeing are the positive effects of the acetate, not the alcohol itself. In the case of polyunsaturated fats, the situation is quite complicated. At a low concentration, metabolism in peroxisomes is activated and the positive effect of acetate probably prevails, but at higher concentrations the metabolic system is overloaded, HIF-1 and NADPH oxidase (NOX2) are activated and the negative impact related to pseudohypoxia prevails. Activation of peroxisomes by means of medium-chain fats (MCTs) through omega oxidation, i.e. also by fasting, obviously has positive effects. Acetate seems to be able to very effectively down-modulate the PPARγ factor in adipose tissue so that more fat is burned and less is stored.