?The morning after a boozy night is usually very hard. Hangover comes with its nasty symptoms of dizziness, a throbbing head and a dry throat. At times like this the traditional advice is a shot of alcohol that will bring you back to normal in just a few minutes.
?The state of hangover is the fault of a more poisonous acetaldehyde rather than alcohol itself. It takes about 12 hours for a regularly functioning liver to completely resolve acetaldehyde by turning it first into acetic acid and then carbon dioxide and water. That is exactly when the head begins to hurt. Therefore the headaches are the result of the low level of blood sugar in the body that continues from the moment of drinking until the next day. That is why a shot of sake helps temporarily to raise the blood sugar level and thus brings the desired relief.
?Another question is why continuous consumption of alcohol leads to chronic alcoholism and eventually to mental disorders. The human body can completely resolve only a certain, limited amount of alcohol. For example, in a body of 70 kilograms the liver weights about 1.5 kilos. 0.1% of it, or 1.5 grams, is a matter called dehydrogenase which is capable to resolve 7 grams of alcohol at a time. It means one glass of beer or half a glass of whiskey. It takes from 12 to 15 hours to drive even this amount of alcohol out of the body. Consequently if one drinks alcohol often and in larger quantities it stays in the blood all the time and inevitably leads to alcoholism.
Another side effect to this process is the fact that B group vitamins assist dehydrogenase to make its functions more effective, and so are spent quickly.