A gel made from milk proteins and gold nanoparticles may prove the ultimate hangover cure – by preventing the dreaded alcoholic aftermath from even occurring in the first place.
The gel shifts the breakdown of alcohol from the liver to the digestive tract. In contrast to when alcohol is metabolized in the liver, no harmful acetaldehyde is produced as an intermediate product.
Acetaldehyde is the culprit behind many hangover symptoms, including nausea, headaches, dry mouth, lower blood pressure, an increased heart rate, a higher skin temperature and facial flushing.
The team showed their gel could catalyze the breakdown of alcohol in the gut into the less-toxic acetic acid, rather than acetaldehyde.
Gels naturally take longer for the gut to digest, and the gold nanoparticles also extend digestion time. This gives the gel’s components time to convert harmful alcohol into less-toxic acetic acid, which our bodies can then break down further into water and carbon dioxide.
But it only works while the alcohol is still in the digestive tract. Once in the bloodstream, alcohol’s toxic effects are out of the gel’s reach.
So for it to work, I can’t get drunk?
I already have a tool which works like this, called not drinking. Useful sometimes but not always.
Well what’s nice about it is once you feel you’re drunk enough and want to sober up, using this gel would at least prevent you from getting too drunk.
I’m picturing the well-prepared drunkard stumbling to a chair where he sits down and pulls out a tube of anti-drunkness gel to remediate his condition. Does he squirt out a spiral mound of gel onto his palm and eat it, or eat directly from the tube?
Definitely cheese whiz straight into the mouth
Up the ass, I’d imagine.