Reducing Toxic Effects of Alcohol
Cysteine has been proposed as a preventative or antidote for some of the negative effects of alcohol, including liver damage and hangover. It counteracts the poisonous effects of acetaldehyde, which is the major by-product of alcohol metabolism and is responsible for most of the negative aftereffects and long-term damage associated with alcohol use (but not the immediate effects of drunkenness). Cysteine supports the next step in metabolism, which turns acetaldehyde into the relatively harmless acetic acid. In a rat study, test animals received an LD50 dose of acetaldehyde (the amount that normally kills half of all animals). Those that received cysteine had an 80% survival rate; when both cysteine and thiamine were administered, all animals survived. There is not yet direct evidence for or against its effectiveness in humans who consume alcohol at normal levels.
Read more about this topic: Cysteine
Famous quotes containing the words reducing, toxic, effects and/or alcohol:
“It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“America today is capable of terrific intolerance about smoking, or toxic waste that threatens trout. But only a deeply confused society is more concerned about protecting lungs than minds, trout than black women.”
—Garry Wills (b. 1934)
“The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)
“[T]ea, that uniquely English meal, that unnecessary collation at which no stimulants—neither alcohol nor meat—are served, that comforting repast of which to partake is as good as second childhood.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)