Does Alcohol Really Make You Fat, Which Alcohol Is Healthiest, Hidden Ingredients In Alcohol &...

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield. And if you want to know whether alcohol really makes you fat, what alcohol is the healthiest hidden ingredients in alcohol and a whole lot more. Do I have a good episode for you today. This is the ultimate alcohol damage mitigation guide with my friend Thomas DeLauer. Now, this one's gonna blow your mind as far as some of the cool things you'll learn about alcohol and when to drink and all that jazz. If you're not into boozing, I'm sorry, just send this to somebody who is. In the meantime, though, this podcast is brought to you by one of my favorite companies, Onnit. Onnit. O n n I T. You get a big old fat discount on anything from Onnit when you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com onnit that knocks 10% off of everything. They have these amazing MCT oils. They have this savory MCT oil I've been dumping on my salad. It is basically herbes de Provence. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but you get all the benefits, all the ketone producing benefits of MCT oil, but it tastes like herbs. It's this cool, savory MCT Oil. They do like a coconut one. They've got a pumpkin spice one that you can blend into a cup of coffee with a little cinnamon and cacao. Tastes amazing. Just saying. That's my recommendation for an Onnit recipe. A whole bunch of other fun goodies, functional foods, supplements, amazing maces, kettlebells, club bells that you can order along with your emulsified MCT oil. If you like to have MCT oil and then go hit heavy stuff, slam a mace into a tire, you name it. Onnit.com BenGreenfield Onit.com BenGreenfield you get 10% off. This podcast is also brought to you by an equally tasty website, four Sigmatic. So what four Sigmatic does is they produce these amazing coffee blends. I actually just had some coffee. It's the afternoon while I am recording today's podcast and I had coffee. But what they do is they make this one coffee blend that takes coffee and they blend it with Tulsi, which is it's an herb that generally reduces a lot of the stress or the jitteriness that might be accompanied by a little bit of coffee. And then they also blend it with Astragalus, which is a longevity herb that when paired with all the antioxidants in coffee, is match made in telomere longevity enhancing heaven. So it's like you're making yourself live longer and decreasing stress all at the same time. That's just one of the many blends they have. That one's the Tulsi astragalus coffee blend. They call it adaptogenic coffee, so you can check that out and any of the other four Sigmatic blends over at four Sigmatic's website. The code is Ben Greenfield. Ben Greenfield will knock 50% off of 80 any four sigmatic purchase. And it's F O U r Sigmatic. Sigmatic is S I G M a t I c 4sigmatic.com check them out in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

So it's kind of funny when we think about it, that the body takes something that's poison and makes more poison out of it. It's kind of weird and twisted when you think about it. That's where more of the research is done in terms of what makes someone a chronic alcoholic from versus someone that can flip a switch and turn it off and on. And it has to do with that catalase inside. The more distilled the better. That's just plain and simple. It's pure. The purer the better at that point.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I know pretty much nobody that listens to this podcast has any interest in alcohol or red wine or cocktails whatsoever. But I figured, heck, just in case anybody might ever think about touching the stuff, I should probably have a guide for you about whether alcohol really makes you fat and what kind of alcohol is the healthiest and hidden ingredients in alcohol you may not have thought about. I figured, you know, why not have some audio out there that could give you the ultimate alcohol d damage mitigation strategy. And so that is what today's podcast is. It's not just me, though. I decided to get a guy on the show who I respect because I had him on the show before and we talked about curcumin and quelling inflammation. We talked about ginger oil, we talked about vegan fish oil options. He's a real wealth of knowledge in the area of nutrition. Real wealth of what I respect as research based knowledge. His name is Thomas DeLauer. And Thomas is not only one of the leading experts in the world of chronic inflammation, he's also studied up on the low carb diet quite a bit. He used to, as you could hear if you went back and listened to my previous podcast with him, be a 280 pound overweight corporate executive. And then he became health and fitness magazine cover model. And he's been all over Ironman magazine, muscle and performance, natural muscle magazine, Platform magazine, all these different type of magazines you see at the grocery store. You may have seen Thomas flexing on the COVID of. His actual background is in sports psychology, but now he's all over the place. He's actually working on a project that's in the second phase of trials over at UCLA to identify a strain of bacteria that can help to modulate inflammation within the body. He does a lot of kind of like formulating and supplement creation in the natural products industry. He actually has a company called Core Factor that he, he creates some of these, some of these products for. And I'll link to all this stuff in the show Notes as well as the previous podcast that I did with Thomas. If you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com alcohol podcast that's Ben N. GreenfieldFitness.com alcohol podcast so, Thomas, welcome to the show. And of course, the million dollar question that I should probably just, just start things off with right away here is what do you drink, man? What's your, what's your cocktail of choice here?

Well, everything's going to make sense after I explain some more of the science and we dive deep. But whenever possible, just go with Everclear. It's just, it's, it's going to be the stuff that has the least, least impact on your body. And we can go into a lot more of the detail of how it works, but basically there's less. It's so distilled. There's just less that can happen in your life.

Oh my gosh. All considerations of taste and enjoyment out the window. We're talking pure health. Go with Everclear. You heard it here first from Thomas. Well, Thomas, I personally have Everclear. I typically use it as a mixing agent for, you know, putting together little volumetrically dosed psychedelic beverages. For example, you can, you can use it to place like 100 microgram blotter of LSD in. And then, you know, if you had 10ml of Everclear to that, and then you use a little dropper bottle and you take 1 milliliter of the Everclear with the LSD in it, you're getting 10 micrograms of LSD, meaning that you'll get a good cognitive boost without actually, say, tripping all day long. That's. That's about all I use Everclear for, is to mix illicit and illegal psychedelic drugs. But for me, for me, dude, I'm a. I'm either an organic biodynamic red wine guy. I use this stuff called, called Fit Vine Wine that uses these old world micro filtration methods to get rid of that 80 plus different preservatives and chemicals that are allowed in wine these days.

Yeah, you know, I grew up in. I'm from Sonoma originally. Sonoma County Wine Country. Oh, man. So you're, you're speaking my language there. Like.

Yeah.

The amount of stuff that was even in our water. We just found out. I don't mean to interrupt that this, I had to say this. Like, we just, I just, just read something this last week that Sonoma county has some of the highest rates of cancer in the country. And it's all just probably because of all the sulfites and all this stuff is just coming out of the vineyards. But anyway, I guess.

Yeah, exactly. Like, like the, the Fit vine or the other one is Dry Farm Wines, right? They do like a monthly shipment to your house. I just go with the Fit vine because A, they sponsor me as an athlete for my competitions, and B, I, I kind of like to know what I'm like. Dry Farm Wines does the same thing. Like a good organic biodynamic, low residual sugar, low toxin, low sulfate wine. But it's like a different set of bottles that you get to your house each month. Whereas the Fit Vine Wine you just get. I get my basics right. They've got a Cabernet Pinot Noir Zinn. I don't really do a white, but I've just got kind of the basic three sets of bottles by going with them. However, I should mention too, that I'm a big Moscow Mule guy. Like, that's, that's pretty much it for me. I'll either do a Moscow Mule, especially if I'm at a, at a bar or restaurant. Moscow Mules all day long, right? A little ginger lime, little vodka or gin and a touch of mint. Or the red wine, that's, that's my Poison, man.

There you go. There you go.

All right. So speaking of poison, let's do this. Alcohol. So my first question for you. I've got a lot of questions for you, dude, because I know you're the guy who understands the biochemistry of this inside and out. How is alcohol actually metabolized? That's a big question I get. Like, what happens from the time this stuff hits your lips to the time that it's actually kind of surging through your bloodstream and spinning a few dials in your brain?

Yeah, no, it's. It's funny. It's one of the most common questions.

That I get, too.

It's. It's like we kind of been. We have this preconceived notion that we just consume alcohol, and alcohol does this thing to ourselves that makes us feel good and. Or loopy or whatever. But it's a pretty intense process. And when you start understanding how laborious it is, it gives you a new appreciation for what your body is doing, gives you a new appreciation for the alcohol that you're drinking, and actually turns how you might look at alcohol. So basically, as soon as alcohol, which realistically is just ethanol, it enters the body, it's immediately absorbed. So unlike typical foods that have to be broken down and then we absorb the nutrients, the effects of alcohol end up being felt immediately because it's immediately absorbed, because we end up having these enzymes that start breaking it down before it ever even hits the stomach. We actually start converting alcohol into what's called acetaldehyde immediately. So even our saliva can start to break it down. So the enzyme that does that, we have an enzyme that's called alcohol dehydrogenase. And basically, if you break down the word dehydrogenase, it means that it's breaking down and removing hydrogens. So it's literally just breaking down that component that ends up going through the small intestine, and then it absorbs. And then obviously from there, it's going into the liver doing a multitude of other things. But what we don't always realize is alcohol, once it's broken down and turns into this acetaldehyde, this acetaldehyde can really travel many places. And even in the smallest capillaries that we would normally not have a lot of nutrients going. Some of these capillaries are so small that we're really encompassing our entire liver. So our liver has a series of very, very small micro capillaries, obviously, because it's filtering blood. Well, the interesting is acetaldehyde can go into these micro capillaries and really encompass the entire liver. So then the liver actually metabolizes it even further by two additional enzymes. Everything with alcohol is an enzymatic process. So you think about even the fermentation in creation of alcohol in the first place. It's all enzymatic everything. And I know Ben, you talk about the importance of specific enzymes all the time. We forget that every function in our body is a response of enzymes. And so of course we have the alcohol dehydrogenase, which actually has an effect not just in the liver, but then we also have the aldehyde dehydrogenase, which first metabolizes alcohol into the acetaldehyde and then it further metabolizes it into what is called acetate. So basically you're taking something that's already fairly pure, like ethanol is already pretty pure, and you're breaking it down into these even more pure forms. Then it's ultimately metabolized into water and carbon dioxide and thusly eliminated. So that's kind of the soup to nuts kind of process of what happens in your body.

Okay, now, now one thing you mentioned was alcohol dehydrogenase. And I've got two, two possible rabbit holes to go down. First of all, in terms of the genetics of alcohol metabolism and the role of alcohol dehydrogenase, there's of course this, this stereotypical Asian businessman who gets super red faced after a couple of beers and gets this alcohol flush reaction and, and a horrible hangover the next day because of a low amount of alcohol dehydrogenase production. Is that fact, is that myth? Do certain people actually produce less alcohol dehydrogenase?

So I haven't found anything that confirms or denies that. But what ends up happening a lot of times is when alcohol dehydrogenase actually turns alcohol into acetaldehyde, it's bound to nicotinamide adenine. I can't, just can't remember the full name. But it's a form of one of.

The nicotine molecules, the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. Nad.

Yeah, nad. So it's taking it into nad. So what ends up happening is it's how much of the acetaldehyde can actually bind to that is what causes someone's ability to process alcohol. So if they're getting red faced or they don't have enough, quote unquote, don't have enough alcohol dehydrogenase, it's usually that that's the issue. I don't know if we have like this predefined like repository of alcohol dehydrogenase. That's just like sitting there, ready to go. A lot of it has to do, and we'll get into this. But you probably have heard of like the different cytochromes, like cytochrome P450, which is kind of the. Yeah, that's another part of the process. And I think it has more to do with that than the dehydrogenase. So I think when you hear people that have sort of a superficial understanding of the biochemistry and what's happening in your body, they're going to lean on just alcohol dehydrogenase because it's semi common and people know about it. But you really got to take it a little bit further because there's really even more enzymes that are. That are coming into blood.

That surprises me because I know cytochrome P450 metabolizes some amount of ethanol, but I actually was under the impression that these dehydrogenases, I think the two main ones are the alcohol dehydrogenase and then the aldehyde dehydrogenase. I was under the impression there was a pretty significant amount of genetic influence on those particular alcohol digesting enzymes.

And you honestly could be right. I mean, I haven't dove really deep into that world, so I mean, that's something that I want to dive into a little bit more anyway, because we always hear there's going to be people that are lightweight, some people that aren't, people that can handle more. And perhaps it has something to do with different things that we consume. Right. Because we do build up tolerances to alcohol and the opposite. So that would almost cause me to think that perhaps there are certain enzymatic functions in our body that allow us to become preconditioned or just the opposite, to be able to withstand or not withstand alcohol. So that's something I want to dive into a little bit more.

It's interesting too, because a lot of those genes, I know that there's a strong association between specific alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenase genes. Genes and risk for alcoholism, meaning like coding variants in those genes would either increase or decrease alcoholism risk based on how quickly you break down ethanol. I think the idea is that if ethanol gets oxidized more rapidly or the acetaldehyde, I think, gets broken down more slowly, you would actually have increased risk of alcoholism, which makes sense because you need more to get the same effects, kind of similar, like a fast coffee oxidizer. They have a greater propensity to be, like, addicted to caffeine just because they burn through the stuff. So Quickly, you know, I fall into that category where, you know, I'll. I need four espresso shots or a huge giant ass 24 ounce cup of coffee to kind of, kind of get me going from a coffee standpoint because I break the stuff down so freaking fast.

I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent, but I'm curious, based on what you're saying, that do you find that you crash from coffee being the way that you oxidize it, or do you just need more to get the effect but you don't crash? I'm curious because I'm, I'm that way. Like, I don't really crash from caffeine.

I don't crash. I'm also very careful. You know, I drink a very, you know, kind of like, you know, low mold, high antioxidant, only moderate. So I use like a medium, kind of a blondish medium roast. So I'm not getting super duper concentrated sources of caffeine. I don't have any of those confounding variables that I think are actual true confounding variables for people when they say they don't do well with coffee or they crash after coffee.

Thank you.

Meaning. Meaning there's a lot of coffee with a lot of mold, a lot of acrylamides, a lot of carcinogens, a lot of artificial flavors added in. I mean, there's a lot going for coffee aside from just the caffeine. So I think that with a, with a pure moderate caffeine medium, roast low, and mold, preferably organic, you can definitely have your cup of coffee and drink it too, so to speak. Especially if you're a fan, fast coffee oxidizer.

Yep, you're speaking my language. That's exactly what. Well, and then we get back to jumping back to.

Moderation and those that can handle alcohol and those that can't. I mean, there have been instances where they've been able to find that, that cytochrome P450 is much more active in metabolizing alcohol in chronic heavy drinkers. So, like, talking about like the tolerance that someone might have whether they are genetically predestined to be able to handle alcohol or not, the fact is, is that as you drink more, you handle more because of the cytochrome. And then you think about it, it's not just alcohol that the Cytochrome P450 has to work on, anything that's still causing kind of that same effect in the body and even some foods that still have forms of alcohol in Them can elicit that same result. So it really like I'm from the belief that what you eat has a big factor in how you metabolize alcohol. And I'm not just talking about in the short term. I'm talking about how you have conditioned your body. And it makes sense that someone that is highly athletic and is working out a lot and is really pushing themselves, even if they are a heavy drinker, they probably have less of that cytochrome P450 because they're still very, very sensitive People like to pin it all on dehydration. Dehydration does play a role, but it plays a role with more so the congeners, which we'll get into a minute as to why people end up feeling the ill effects of alcohol so much more when they're dehydrated already anyway.

Yeah, I want to dive into that stuff. But before we do, just to come full circle to that rabbit hole on alcohol dehydrogenase. My one question was about the genetic propensity for certain people to produce more or less, which it sounds like is actually true. But it also has to do with some of those cytochrome pathways, which I suppose would also correlate to your mitochondrial health to a certain extent. You know, the healthier mitochondria, the more equipped you might be to be able to to handle alcohol if the Cytochrome 450 pathway is also part of that metabolism. But the other question that I had for you related to these dehydrogenase enzymes responsible for digesting alcohol, is this idea kind of like these gluten digesting enzymes that exist out there. What do you think about supplements that are sold as dehydrogenase supplements? You know, like anti hangover supplements, things that would help your body to somehow clean up the acetaldehyde more quickly or.

Increase the availability of a dehydrogenase enzyme?

Yeah, I've been seeing more of those pop up. I mean, the hard part is they're very fragile, so I don't know the sustainability of them. Something that I'd have to research a little bit more too. But that seems difficult because it's such a fragile process. And it's not like you could just orally or even intravenously really just load up on a bunch of dehydrogenase and have it have enough effect. There's other pathways in the sense that detoxing occurs. Obviously we've got the very broad scale ones like glutathione and then we've got some more of these other ones. There's even catalase. Have you heard of catalase before?

I've heard of catalase, but it's actually being sold as an alcohol enzyme.

No, but that's the thing is catalase makes more sense to be sold as an alcohol enzyme to me simply because that's what actually turns the alcohol into the acetaldehyde. You know, very, very, very first thing before the alcohol dehydrogenase. So it would make sense when you think about it that alcohol dehydrogenase occurs throughout the entire continuum of the process, whereas catalase is a little bit more in the beginning, which leads me to believe that it's probably more stable or can at least be something that you could. Would be a consumable. I'm totally speculating here. It's just, just based on the fact on kind of the fragility of things.

But yeah, that makes sense. And while we're on the topic of hangover pills and hangover remedies, I know that you've got a few ideas of how glutathione synthesis or glutathione availability could affect this process that I want to ask you about a little bit later on. But just, just a complete aside on the. For. For the Men's Health magazine website, I actually did a whole story on hangover cures. They had me get. This was around the holidays, five different popular hangover remedies that contain milk thistle extract. Some of these things that supposedly increase dehydrogenase enzyme activity. Other popular hangover remedies like vitamin C, high dose vitamin B, et cetera. And they had me try out each of these different hangover remedies including.

An iv. Right. Just like a basic Myers cocktail type of IV for both hydration and vitamin availability. And just about everything didn't really seem to put a drop in the bucket for the holiday drinking that I was unfortunately assigned as my job to partake in. Except the IV. I found these morning after push IVs. Literally. I had a company called Fast Vitamin IV sent them up to me and just did a cubital injection, just a self injection of the push IV couple of mornings. And that really, really seemed to help. But I realized not everybody's gonna give themselves an iv. So pay attention to what Thomas has to say later on anyways though. So back into alcohol metabolizing. So we've got all this acetaldehyde that builds up. What else do we need to be aware of when it comes to how alcohol is actually metabolized?

I think simplifying. Excuse me, the fact that alcohol itself is. Alcohol itself is toxic. But what's really toxic is the acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is 10 to 15 times more toxic than the ethanol itself. So it's kind of funny when we think about it, that the body takes something that's poison and makes more poison out of it. It's kind of weird and twisted when you think about it. But at the same time, it's important to know this and we also have to know what ends up happening. As far as a priority goes. I think we tend to forget that our body has a unique ability to sort of triage things. Like it knows what is important and what's not important at that point in time. So if we have a high level of acetaldehyde that's surging at a certain point in time, the liver's going to prioritize that, which means that other phases of digestion slow down, other phases of liver processing and metabolism slow down so that the liver can process the alcohol or in this case, the acetaldehyde. So it's pretty interesting. I feel like that's what people need to know, is that when you are drinking, it's not saying that drinking is bad. I'm saying that when you are drinking, you have to know that your body at that very point in time is prioritizing that alcohol. And that means that the old school thought of eating a bunch of food to help absorb the alcohol doesn't really do much other than make you feel a little bit sick. Because the liver, as we all know, processes everything. It doesn't just process the alcohol, it doesn't just process poisons and pharmaceuticals and everything. It's processing everything you're eating and it's processing, breaking down fatty acids. It's doing what it needs to do. And if you are making the liver process alcohol, then all that other stuff has to take a back seat, at least temporarily. And that is actually more hard on your body than anything else. So we can get into some tactics because I definitely have some takeaways for people, just what kinds of alcohols and like some little processes that I've created in terms of like, if I'm going to drink, here's what I eat and here's how I eat and here's how I try to structure it. And I think we're all from the same vein here that like, you know, we'll do whatever we can to make it a little easier on our body. We're not just all out, willy nilly, let's just go Have a good time and throw it all out the window. If there's a process, then we can make it better.

But there's one other thing that you've heard of, like, there's actually. Researchers have really looked at what makes people tick as far as the brain goes with alcohol and developing addictive personalities to alcohol or addictive relationships with alcohol, I should say. And a lot of it has to do again, back with that catalase enzyme. So we've got the whole liver metabolic function, but then there's actually a whole brain function that happens as well. And that's where catalase actually has its bigger effect. And that's actually what works in terms of stimulating these different. These different tetrahydros that actually allow the brain to either become addicted to alcohol or not addicted to alcohol. And it can really distinguish addictive drinkers from social drinkers. That's where more of the research is done in terms of what makes someone a chronic alcoholic versus someone that can flip a switch and turn it off and on. And it has to do with that catalase enzyme. So that's why I was so interested in like, okay, when is someone going to take this catalase and start looking at it a little bit differently in terms of potentially an addiction treatment protocol, an addiction treatment enzyme. But that's kind of the other side of the metabolism, which we can talk about a little bit later. But basically that's the liver component and then there's the brain component. And I've kind of touched on both there. But that's how it goes from the body into giving you the effect.

Okay, now one question I have that you alluded to there was that the alcohol would be burnt prior to burning the other substances, such as glucose or lipids or amino acids from a carb, fat or protein content of a meal. Is that actually true? Because it's very difficult for me to understand how the body physiologically would burn one primary source of fuel. When we look at ketosis, sure, you're shuttling ketones through the metabolic pathways, but at the same time, you are engaged in some amount of glycolysis, some amount of. Of breakdown of creatine phosphate, some amount of beta oxidation and free fatty acid utilization, or if you look at exercise, you're never at a point, very rarely, where you're burning pure carbohydrate or pure fat. It's always a mixture of fuels that includes some amount of nitrogen utilization and, you know, amino acid utilization as well. So when we look at alcohol, is it truly Is it truly true, I guess, to use the highly scientific term, truly true, that you really are just burning ethanol and nothing else?

Kind of. So it's a two part thing. So you're dead on. And I'll actually touch on this for one second because, yes, as someone that talks about the keto diet all the time.

You can imagine how many people get upset with me when I talk about different glucose metabolisms that are occurring. Your body's always finding a way to burn glucose and it's always finding a way to create glucose no matter what. It's no matter what. Whether you're on a ketogenic diet or not, your body needs glucose. You always are running on a combination. The interesting thing is that with ethanol, it doesn't necessarily force all glucose metabolism back. So glucose metabolism is showing to be limited, but the big thing ends up happening when it stops the beta oxidation. So basically it's stopping that. So ethanol blocks the fatty acid beta oxidation process because it inhibits what's called the peroxisome proliferation. So that peroxidone proliferation is this whole process that allows fats to go through the natural peroxidation that occurs. So basically you hear of lipid peroxidation where a fat reacts with an oxygen molecule and becomes quote, unquote toxic. Well, it's not that it necessarily becomes toxic. It says reacting with ros and it's kind of doing just a natural thing in the body. Well, ethanol stops the good process of that occurring. So it stops that whole beta oxidation process temporarily. So it blocks it now. Now, that beta oxidation process can happen at multiple areas. It can happen throughout your body. It doesn't just happen in one spot. So if it's stopping it in the liver, then sure, that makes perfect sense. Ethanol is prioritizing that. But ethanol is only processed in the liver. It's not processed in the cells in other places. It can process in the brain, but it's broken down into something different. So the point is there's still some glucose metabolism going on throughout the course of your body, but the liver is having to focus on that. And then it's also blocking adenosine monosphate. So when we have that, that's another precursor to really be able to create energy. So you're ultimately using a different energy source. And when we back it out, we literally look at things. You have carbohydrates that utilize a certain number or, you know, are 4 calories per gram, you have fats that are 9 calories per gram. Then you have alcohol Here, randomly, that's seven calories per gram. It's actually right there showing that. Okay, wait a minute. Like it's almost a separate macronutrient. Like ethanol is treated slightly different. It's kind of in the same vein as how medium chain triglycerides are 8 calories versus normal fats being 9. They are metabolized slightly different. So although I don't want to say the body is a one trick pony, the body or at least the liver is treating alcohol or ethanol in this case as a macronutrient. So it has a whole different subcategory of processing that occurs.

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So coming back, big picture, then we've got ethanol. When you consume ethanol, it's broken down pretty much in the liver primarily by alcohol dehydrogenase. That transforms it into acetaldehyde, which is technically toxic but relatively short lived. And that can be broken down into acetate by aldehyde dehydrogenase. And the acetate then gets broken down to carbon dioxide and water, usually in tissues other than the liver. That's the basics of the alcohol metabolism.

Exactly.

Okay. And then we have these enzymes, cytochrome P450 and catalase, that also help to a certain extent break down the alcohol.

To acetaldehyde. But some of those enzymes would really only be required if you were drinking a larger amount of alcohol.

That's correct. You nailed it. Exactly. Exactly.

Okay. And then finally, when it comes to this idea of lipid peroxidation and the idea that alcohol consumption increases oxidative stress and leads to this lipid peroxidation, one other thing I want to throw out there, total hypothesizing. Would you be able to then say a, not only should you not drink alcohol in the presence of a lot of other calories, because that ethanol is going to be burnt as a macronutrient prior to and in favor over some of those other things that you're consuming, but you should also include either polyphenol or flavanol rich beverages for your alcohol consumption or something that's flavanol or Polyphenol or antioxidant rich along with it to undo the damage of some of that peroxidation that's occurring as you're drinking the alcohol. And hence something like a glass of red wine being a good choice.

Yeah, so I'm a. Exactly. So I am a big proponent of that. I do think that something that is going to be a fast acting ROS inhibitor that's going to at least allow your body to take a little bit of the brunt off of the liver is definitely effective. Because in my opinion, this is purely my opinion, but we have sort of these two areas of quote unquote detoxing. As far as antioxidants go. We have like a phase that occurs after liver processing and then we also have a phase that occurs before liver processing. And I'm hypothesizing here too, but it's based on things that I've looked at and things that I've seen. So what you're saying coincides with exactly what I think, that we have this process that we could actually encourage a little bit of the sort of negative byproducts or possibly the acetaldehyde that sort of self destructs into acetate before it's ever really processed as just a waste product. Because that's kind of what's been shown too. It's very similar to like ketone production. When we have ketone bodies, we have acetoacetate that's created and that acetoacetate turns into acetone. These names sound quite similar, don't they? Acetoacetate to acetone, acetaldehyde and acetate, very similar processes. What happens is acetone is just like a just abrupt self destruction of.

The acetoacetate in the case of ketosis. Well, the same thing can happen with alcohol where it's like it's kind of almost skipping this effect, the acetaldehyde and just self destructs into acetate, which is just basically goes from being alcohol that you're consuming directly into something that's just toxic. So by having antioxidant rich beverages or anything like that, you are stopping those from having an effect immediately. And those are the ones that probably aren't getting you any kind of positive effect out of your alcohol. Those are the ones that are just going straight to making you feel like garbage. So I actually think not only is it good for your health to have high flavanols, but also I think that it could make the buzz that you get from alcohol cleaner and better.

Hmm, interesting. And could you also say, based off what you've just described in terms of ethanol and its similarity to ketones in that you are getting some acetoacetate production, that it would be able to put you into a state of ketosis? Or is this kind of like when you're trying to be on a ketotic diet or in a state of ketosis and you're not burning the ketones? Generally, they'll show up as acetone. Bodies in the urine.

Is a usable form of ketone, such as a beta hydroxybutyrate, pretty much impossible as a side product of alcohol metabolism. If you're seeing ketones in your urine, it's just completely unusable ketones from the alcohol.

Well, acetone is expelled through the breath. Acetoacetate is actually what you're talking about, acetoacetate.

So, yeah, that's interesting. I mean, that's a whole nother conversation. But in short, yeah, if you're showing high levels of acetoacetate, it means that you're already having excess levels of ketones. So if you have extra beta hydroxybutyrate coming in at that point, unless you are planning on doing a very intense hybrid mix of anaerobic. Anaerobic activity, I don't see a whole lot of benefit. So, like, especially if you're already showing a lot of acetoacetate. So if you're already showing that your body doesn't know how to handle all these ketones, because it happens with people that first go into ketosis a lot, they show heavy amounts in their urine because their bodies just haven't developed the mitochondrial machinery to understand how to process all this fat. So it's like the livers are processing it and they know what to do with it. But then the cells are like, what do we do with this? And so you just excrete it. And then they become keto adapted. And all of a sudden they're like, I'm not showing on the strips anymore. And they freak out. And it's like, no, your body just became adapted. That's what's happening. So if you get to a point where you're showing it on the urine strips again, something has changed. Either your athletic activity has gone down, you're more sedentary, your fats have increased, and you're an indicator that you're actually not necessarily consuming too many fats, but you're probably just creating excess ketones. So by supplementing beta hydroxy. Beta hydroxybutyrate at that point in time, it needs to be Sort of a preamble to I'm about to go have some combination of anaerobic. Anaerobic activity, like a mud run or something like that is a perfect example. Right. Like where you actually are going to. And I think, actually come to think of it, you and I kind of talked about that a little bit. Like, you have explored with some exogenous ketones, like when you're doing that kind of activity, right?

I have. I've used ketone esters and I've also used beta hydroxybutyrate salts and found both to be effective for exercise. Absolutely. I think that that's something that a lot of people are aware of nowadays. I guess my main thought pattern here was when drinking alcohol, are you going to somehow. Because alcohol can produce a form of ketone. I mean, we know ketonuria, for example, ketones in the urine, is something you observe quite a bit in alcoholics and heavy drinkers. Could you use alcohol consumption as a way to enhance a state of ketosis, I guess, is what I'm saying, or is that just a. A faulty thought pattern?

Actually, I haven't even thought about that.

I mean, because you're getting acetoacetate and some amount of beta hydroxybutyrate.

You definitely are. So it's like you could either. That might explain why. Might explain why people tend to say that when they're on a ketogenic diet and they're drinking alcohol, that they end up feeling more cognitively aware and actually more like these almost astute feelings when they drink, when they're in ketosis versus the opposite. But they also say that they're hangovers, a lot of times are worse. So it's kind of interesting. So it's like, does that mean that they're just producing more. I don't know. That's an interesting thought. It gets me thinking on that.

Yeah. Well, if you're listening in and you have some experience with alcohol consumption and ketosis, let us know. But, yeah, I know probably engaging in a heavy amount of drinking to the point where you're producing a significant amount of acetoacetate and beta hydroxy butyrate bodies would result in enough acetaldehyde toxicity to where it probably wouldn't be a good strategy for getting into ketosis, in my opinion. I'm just throwing that out there. So what about when it comes to the actual choice of alcohols? Like we talked about red wine as an antioxidant rich beverage that could decrease the amount of lipid peroxidation that occurs from for example, the metabolism of alcohol that you've described, Thomas. But are there other forms of alcohol that are not quite as labor intensive on the body or that help to undo some of the potential aldehyde or acetaldehyde toxicity issues with alcohol?

Not so much in the way of the acetaldehyde issues. Because the thing is that.

Alcohol is alcohol, ethanol is ethanol. And how we are going to process that is pretty, pretty straightforward. But what we do have to look at is the other things that come into play when it comes down to how alcohols are made. There's, of course, congeners, which we can talk about. We talked about a little bit with wine, like the sulfates and everything like that. Those are pretty powerful in terms of what they do with your liver. And again, liver is prioritizing this acetaldehyde at that very point in time, no matter how small of a process it is and how small of a window of time. We could be talking nanoseconds here. But when you have other things that are in play. And the fermentation process of foods in general can yield a very positive effect, but can also yield a very negative effect that can be hard on the body depending on what kind of enzymes are created and what kind of process it goes through. So when you're creating alcohol, depending on where that alcohol is rooted makes a big, big difference. You know, when you have grains, whiskey, vodka and things like that, if it's not processed all the way, if it's not distilled multiple times, you still have prolamins. So you still have these prolamins that can have an effect on the body, that can still raise TBO antibodies in the body. So you can have, for example, celiac like effects on the body. If you're consuming consistent amounts of a grain that's coming from an alcohol that's coming from a grain.

Okay, so pro. Prolamines are like these plant storage proteins. You find them in wheat, barley and rye and all these other grains. Now what you're saying is that those prolamins stay intact during the process of fermentation.

So it's been speculated that when you process, when you go through fermentation process, that some of the proteins in general stay intact. That's what's actually. So that's where you're talking about, like the proof of an alcohol, how much is pure ethanol and how much is still remnants of whatever has been fermented. You know, so they'll say, like with, with fruit, for instance, there's still elements of fructose that are there, there's still elements of protein that are there. And if there's elements of protein that are there, you basically have these prolamins which are carriers of that. Now, that's whether or not you want to look at it from the side of how it's going to affect your immune system, which I'll talk about in a second. It's still additional particles that your body's breaking down. So it comes from the school of thought that although there isn't a whole lot of research into backing a lot of this up, up, the more distilled the better. That's just plain and simple. It's pure. The purer the better at that point.

Hence your initial recommendation, foreverclear.

Some will argue that you're missing out on some of the health benefits of the antioxidant properties that actually might remain too. That's a good question to look into a little bit more like, okay, for example.

If we were to take wine and just, just go all the way and continue to bring it into as pure of an alcohol as we could from wine, would some of the antioxidants still remain? Even if we got it, Even if we took grapes and got it down to a. Let's say we got it down to like a 160 proof or something, would it still carry the resveratrol? Would it still carry the antioxidants? You know, maybe it carries remnants of them and your body can piece them together. But that's kind of a gambler. Like, when you know that you can just have a distilled version of it and just get it down as clean as possible, then you know that all your body has to worry about is that alcohol dehydrogenase catalase process a lot easier.

Now. I mean, it's. Again, it all depends on who you talk to. But the prolamins. Potato patata. Some people say prolamins, some people say prolamins, but they're carrier proteins. And what ends up happening is like you have different prolamins that carry protein, and whenever you consume a grain, you have these prolamins that react within your body. And the hard part is the body sometimes has a hard time differentiating these different prolamins if you have a sensitivity to, say, gluten or if you have a sensitivity to another prolamin. So when they're broken down, it can be hard on the immune system, because the immune system is basically trying to trigger a response with TPO antibodies and other antibodies to these various essentially protein structures. It's the Same way that someone that has a celiac problem, celiac disorder, would actually be affected by gluten. It's just happening at a different scale, a different magnitude. And whether you feel it or not, that's extra heck that is being put on your body. So that's why I'm such a big fan of going as distilled as possible. So with that, you know, there's some out there, there now that are like quadruple distilled vodka. You know, that's always good to go. You know, gin is really, really good if it's as much as you can possibly get it in a pure form.

Very dry wines whenever possible. And I hadn't heard of the brand that you talked about, but that sounds phenomenal because again, coming from Sonoma, like, I'm used to these wines that are just full of chemicals and so up and so that, that's interesting. I'd actually, on a personal note, like to know a little bit more about that one. Is it, is it pretty dry, by the way?

It's very dry. It has a longer fermentation process, so it's not quite as sweet. And although I'm not aware of the, the prolamin content of it, just the fact that the starting source is a grape rather than a grain gives me a pretty good feeling about it. It is considered to be a dry red wine. And you know, dry red wines typically range in like the 4 to 5 grams of net carbs per glass. So it's, it's relatively low in sugars too. You know, a lot of people call these things keto wines. But the other thing regarding the alcohol that I wanted to ask you about is, of course, when we're talking about grains, the elephant in the room is beer. And there's now these beer companies, you know, omission is one. And I'll put a link if you guys go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com alcohol podcast. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Alcohol podcast omission. And some of these smaller microbreweries, they're now advertising what is called gluten removed beers where they're using some kind of a special enzyme to break down the gluten protein. Not to remove it, but to break it down. Do you have any opinion on any of these popular gluten free beers?

Yeah, I mean, I haven't. I have an opinion. And that's, you know, you can take it for what it's worth, but you know, when you're breaking, breaking down gluten you're still having remnants of gluten. So it's. The immune system is smart. At first, it sounds like the immune system is stupid because we say that it has a hard time differentiating between these different prolines, but.

It'S also smart in the sense that it's still going to elicit a response and try to piece things together. So although you may not have the intense effect, you might still have the antibody response if you were someone that is gluten intolerant.

Right. Like a celiac cause. I know. So, you know, anytime we're talking about an enzymatic reaction, all you're doing is taking a large protein and break it down into smaller proteins. And if you have something like celiac disease, that's a pretty intensive reaction to gluten. And so all you're essentially saying is, I've got a large gluten molecule. I'm making it a really small gluten molecule, but it's gluten nonetheless. Here you go. I would say, you know, if you're just one of those people who avoids gluten because you're kind of trying to be careful due to brain fog or, you know, the so called grain brain issue or something like that, that I wouldn't be as concerned. But something like celiac disease, you're still drinking a bunch of gluten in these gluten free beers.

Yeah, I think I would argue that they probably can. They even get the designated gluten free certification.

I don't think the US Government allows them, based on what I just described, to have an actual gluten free cert.

Yeah, that's. That's what I thought, you know, because they're going to look at it and they're going to say there's still gluten in this. And you know, sometimes say what we want about the US government, but sometimes, sometimes it's fairly black and white and sometimes that's how we have to look at things. And that is kind of like. So it's. Yeah, that's interesting to really think about a little bit more. You're probably not going to have the same effects that you would if it was a full gluten molecule. But gluten isn't always the issue. That's the hard part is people have reactions, these crossover reactions where sometimes they think that they have a gluten intolerance because like there's five prolamines that are mainly, mainly there, mainly existent. And a lot of times in any given grain or gluten or anything like that we have three of these prolamins that are always crossing over. And if you do the math, if you really back it out, that there can be situations where gluten is sharing the same common denominator as all these other grains. So what ends up happening is you get these crossover reactions where people think they have an issue with gluten, but maybe they have another issue with one of these other protomines, and it just so happens to constantly show up in gluten.

But they're really getting similar effects even when they have rice or even when they have a very specific. And that's the crazy thing with brolamines, is this can change from every different grain. Like, you know, a different strand of basmati rice versus a short chain. They can all be different and you just don't know. And the general population is, of course, I mean, this is no fault to them, is not going to be in tune with their body enough to know that when I eat basmati rice, I get diarrhea, but when I eat short grain rice, I don't. I mean, it's just we as people that are listening to this podcast, and you and I, Ben, like, we would probably point it out, we'd probably figure it out, but the thing is, we can't expect everyone in the world to, like, be thinking about their diet that way.

Right.

And so I guess my point is that I just wouldn't trust it if you have a medical condition. But I do like that there's an effort there. Some of these hard ciders might be a better option for people like that, though.

Right. That makes sense. And I also want to ask, of course, about things other than the acetaldehyde and the gluten or the grains or the prolamins. What are some other things in alcohol that we should be careful with? And that would lead you to want to look for something like a quadruple distillation method.

Yeah, well, I mean, of course, obviously you're going to want to look at the sugar. I mean, that's a. That's a pretty big one. I mean, if there's added sugar into the process, too, we have to remember that de novo lipogenesis is accelerated a lot more when you're in. When you're drinking. So whenever you're. That means sugar is going to turn to fat a lot easier. Fructose is going to turn to fat a lot easier. Fruity drinks, things like that, that have higher fructose content, that fructose, which can, by the way, fructose can only be metabolized by the liver to begin with.

So when we are already taxing the liver, anything that's going to have some fructose in it is definitely something that you'll want to avoid. So mixing alcohol with fruit or fruity beverages is a big no no. Especially if you're looking at moderating your waistline a little bit.

Yeah, I would toss the exception in there for me personally and the way I kind of hack this is I will drink my alcohol in a relatively glycogen depleted state, meaning that the liver does contain the enzyme necessary for converting fructose into storage. Glycogen muscles don't. But for me, you know, I don't eat a lot most of the day. I do a lot of fats, a moderate amount of proteins. I have a pretty hard workout at the end of the day and by the time I get into about the 7pm 8pm hour, I know I've got some pretty serious muscle and some partial liver glycogen depletion going on. So I actually don't have wine or any alcoholic beverage with with dinner or after dinner. And if I'm offered one after dinner especially, I'll typically decline a post dinner glass of wine. I pretty much exclusively drink either in the early, early stages of a meal or in the 30 to 60 minutes leading up to dinner when I actually have slightly emptied liver glycogen levels.

It's actually really clever. That's a lot of what I would sort of say with my protocol anyway. So that's. But yeah, that makes sense.

And you've got, I mean honestly, let's face it, when you're hungry post workout and you have a glass of wine, you certainly get, if you're looking for the brain spinning effects of a small glass of alcohol, a lot more readily. And so you got to drink less as well.

It's very, very true. And some people don't always look at it like that. If you're trying to just get the effects of alcohol, then less is more. I don't know if it's necessarily something to be proud of to feel like it takes me a lot to get the effect of alcohol because that just yeah, more you have to put in your body.

And of course, when you wake up in an overnight fasted state, you also have somewhat empty liver glycogen levels. So the whole Bloody Mary thing for breakfast could be another time to have your daily serving of alcohol. Potentially.

Quite honestly, you're right.

So if you take anything away from this podcast drink everclear and drink it when you wake up in the morning.

What else? What are some other things in alcohol that you need to be looking for aside from the sugar?

Oh man.

I mean, and the prolamine?

Yeah, well, the prolonged means you're never going to really be able to, you know, truly identify, you know, you're not going to be able to. That's, that's going to be. You should know where it's coming from.

Well, they're not going to be on the label, but I mean, you know, if you're drinking a beer or some, some medium that's not very distilled at all and is derived from a grain, you pretty much guaranteed prolonging content.

Exactly, exactly. So, I mean, so we, you want, you also want to, of course, like we talked about, be careful of what you are combining it with. But you want to be looking at, you know, how long the actual fermentation process is, which, you know, you can usually do a simple search with whatever alcohol you're a fan of and find like how long their actual fermentation process is. Some of these companies have accelerated fermentation processes which, where they, you know, they're cranking out high quantities of products so they accelerate fermentation by either adding other, other components into it or by putting them in chambers where they'll ferment faster. A natural fermentation process is always best. Fermentation is a beautiful thing and it has the ability to, like I said earlier, cause so many amazing positive things in your body. But.

When it's altered, that's when we are kind of putting this man made spin on it. So usually if you go to a site or you just email their support, they'll usually tell you how long their fermentation process is. And like with alcohol, it's, it varies depending on what is actually being distilled and what's actually being fermented. And you know, with, with rice, I know it can happen a little bit shorter because the starch molecules are a little bit shorter. But some of these other ones that have like these other polysaccharides and fructose that are in them, they should be fermenting longer. So if, for example, if you know your favorite, I can't name any brands here or anything, but if you think of some of the, some of the gins or possibly even some of the tequila, since we're talking about agave and fructose.

If your actual tequila is fermenting for a lesser period of time than your vodka, you have a problem. So that's the kind of things that I would be really cognizant of. But for the most part, there's not a whole lot that ielts know of to look at when you're looking at an alcohol. I mean, it's really a pretty basic structure. I mean there's, there's things you should be cognizant in terms of like your glutathione production and your own body. But those are more so things that you can do with your exercise and your diet to kind of modulate yourself to help your body fight it off a little bit.

What about fillers? Like if you're getting something like vodka or tequila, gin, rye, pretty good distillation process, you're decreasing some of that prolamin content. Are there any like congeners, preservatives, any of these, you know, so called natural flavors added, other things that you need to look for that kind of fly under the radar?

Yeah, you know, sometimes they even put forms of like other minerals in there. So sometimes you'll see, you'll see forms of different calciums and things like that added in there just because they're trying to actually keep structure there. So like a lot of times minerals are good. Obviously we don't necessarily want to say that minerals are bad, but they're not. They're sort of acting as a preservative in this case because there's something that gives it a little bit more shelf stability without actually having to add a chemical to it.

It.

There are a multitude of different chemicals that people add into alcohols, so you always need to be cognizant of that. Preservatives in general, sulfates, sulfites, all those are exceptionally common, especially in the wine world. So whenever possible.

Unfortunately, it's becoming more common with kind of the local small scale breweries and things like that for them to put stuff into them too, just because they're moving less quantity. So sometimes there's like two sides of the coin. There's a side where they're accelerating the processing, accelerating the fermentation because they can't keep up with demand. But then there's also the side where it's like these smaller scale and they haven't quite determined their inventory control, so they make larger batches that they can't always sell off. So some of these smaller breweries and these smaller distilleries end up having problems where they create them and they have to sit on the shelf for a long time. And that's where they unknowingly are adding way Too much in the way of preservatives just to make sure that they're accommodating the fact that they. They aren't moving the quantity they want to move yet. So whenever possible, just make sure that it's pure. I mean, that's just what we have to look at. If there's anything that you can't pronounce in there, and it just goes back to the basics, it shouldn't be there. Alcohol is already a very sensitive process to break down, so why add more complication to it?

Okay, got it. Before we turn to enhancing your body's ability via something like glutathione production, anything else from the actual composition of the drink itself that we need to take into consideration?

I think we pretty much covered it. I mean, I can always go a little bit deeper with some other stuff, but it's usually just, again, at that point, congeners and everything like that, the mashed fermentation. But I think we're all good there.

Okay, got it. And then there's one other thing I should mention. I was talking about the best time of day to have, say, a glass of wine or a cocktail. You know, we shouldn't underplay the fact that from an ancestral standpoint, we see pretty significant use of a lot of these bitters and digestifs, often in the form of cocktails consumed prior to a meal to enhance, like, the first phase insulin response or digestive enzyme production. And so, you know, one. One really great one that I had the other day, it's fresh in my mind. I was at an Italian restaurant. They served me this thing called ebolibo. E B O L E B O. It's a liquor, and it's extremely bitter. It's derived primarily from yarrow root. And, you know, you see things like this. You see, for example, like I mentioned, there's a method behind the madness that I like a Moscow mule, because what is it? It's ginger. It's little lime that will, you know, the ascorbic acid in that will enhance some of the digestive enzyme production. It's got the mint, of course, another digestif. So I'm a fan of also strategically consuming your alcohol prior to or in the early stages stages of a meal for that reason as well. So, I mean, there's. There's more to just, like, spinning a few dials in your brain when it comes to alcohol. If we look at this from, like a digestive enhancement standpoint.

Totally. Yeah, it's. So I take it a little bit differently than you but still in the same vein. So what I usually recommend is consuming some kind of higher glycemic carbohydrate that is healthy. You know, I'm going to use the example of a rice cake, even though it does have. It is a grain, and some people may have that problem in response. So it all depends on who you are. But a rice cake's a great example just because it's so high glycemic. When you go take a right starch and you put it through the puffing process, that puffing process separates glucose molecules and makes them higher glycemic. So I usually recommend having some small thing to eat, like a couple of rice cakes that's going to digest fast. Possibly even if you're someone that utilizes whey protein or even pea protein, that can still elicit an insulin response that's fast and quick. You know, controlled insulin spikes are not bad. Right. Like, that's the thing is everyone's like, don't spike your insulin. Well, don't spike your insulin if you don't know what you're doing by eating just a Snickers bar. Spike your insulin the right way and understand your body and understand the peaks and valleys. So by having a couple of rice cakes prior to drinking, you actually allow you to have a little bit of glycogen in your tank. So you're not kind of in this situation where the alcohol can completely decimate you, but you're also putting a little something in your stomach, too. So you're getting kind of the. Okay, some of the remnants of starch are still going to be in your stomach. So if you're someone that is sensitive when it comes down to alcohol consumption, and as far as kind of the burning feeling, I do talk to a lot of people that they feel like they have to eat whenever they drink simply because it can be hard on the stomach, especially if you're not drinking something that's pure, because then you have all these different enzymatic functions that go on. So, yeah, a couple of rice cakes or something that's relatively high glycemic, that will just not keep your glycogen level or not elevate your glycogen levels, your liver glycogen levels, and won't stay digesting for a long period of time. So still in the same. The same concept of what you're saying, just slightly different.

Yeah, yeah. I think you can only buy that Ebo Lebo stuff. I mentioned fringe Italian website. So I think you'll probably be an alcohol Importer to get it, but I'll link to in the show notes if you want to check out the stuff you're curious about these bitters and Digestifs over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com AlcoholPodcast.

Now, Thomas, I know you're in the same way that you're pretty good expert in the realm of chronic inflammation, which I suppose could be why you got interested in this in the first place. You know quite a bit about glutathione production and glutathione absorption. So I'd like to turn to that because that's certainly something that we see talked about quite a bit in the whole alcohol damage mitigating discussion. So in terms of glutathione production, that's kind of an interesting process in general. How does it coincide with alcohol? Yeah.

So the short answer is glutathione is going to ultimately be what stops the process of alcohol really creating the oxidative effect on the body that that reactive oxygen species having that negative oxidative stress. So we've got a few different forms of glutathione that are naturally occurring in your body, and they all are in a process of basically nullifying these different toxins. It all comes to the fact that glutathione is an electron donor, essentially. So you've got the reduced form where it's going to basically donate an electron, just like in any other way where you are stopping a free radical. So any antioxidant essentially has this effect, but glutathione does it with a lot more depth. You have a free radical, then you have glutathione, which donates an electron. So what that means is that it has the ability to neutralize this free radical that's running throughout your body. And alcohol has a tendency to create a lot of them just through the processing. So what happens is the liver has this thing called glutathione. The glutathione will go ahead and it'll donate its electron to neutralize these free radicals and ultimately bring your body back to homeostasis. Hard part is that glutathione takes a little while to go through its cycle to where it creates again. So it goes through not only the part where it donates the electron, but then also the regeneration phase. So after glutathione donates its electron, or I shouldn't say the reduced form of glutathione donates its electron, then it becomes oxidized and it ends up leading to the formation of glutathione disulfide. So getting kind of, kind of advanced here. But basically what that means is it's the oxidized form when two reduced forms of glutathione come together after they've already given away their electrons. So here's how I kind of described it. You have a glutathione molecule, it sees a toxin, so it donates an electron. Then you have another glutathione molecule that's done the same thing. So I'm kind of crass here, but basically think of these two glutathione molecules that have both given up their electron. Think of them as two divorced people that just gave up their significant others. They just had to just release them for whatever reason. Then they travel around and they meet each other and they're like a new couple. And they're like, hey, guess what? Let's do this again. Let's start this relationship. So they do and they become one glutathione. And that glutathione again goes off along its merry way and eventually will donate an electron. So it's constantly this dysfunctional process of giving away the spouse, then coming together, giving it away. So you can see how eventually you run out. You start with, with. You start with six, go down to four, down to two, because eventually they've all donated an electron and become kind of this. No longer the reduced form, but basically this GSSG or the regenerated form of glutathione. So through that process, and I hope everyone's tracking with me, because it's kind of complex, but I'm trying to simplify it, you ultimately end up with reduced amounts of glutathione in the body, and eventually your body can restore that. But after, after it's stuck to a protein, it really binds to a protein for a while. So you have to wait for a certain amount of time for your liver to rebuild. And that's what ends up happening in the case of alcohol, is because it's so toxic and we have this alcohol dehydrogenase, it's already broken it down. The glutathione is required to really essentially neutralize the acetaldehyde. Well, basically it's giving up all its quote, unquote spouses very rapidly, and eventually you run out. And it's the depletion of glutathione that essentially is leading to the hangover effect. Because you have no glutathione or very limited glutathione. I shouldn't say no. You have very limited glutathione left to recover from natural processes. So the next day your glutathione levels are starting to replenish. But the problem is they were so exhausted in fighting off the alcohol that now they're having a hard time fighting off just the DDTs and the toxins that we're getting from the air and just natural cellular waste. So you're not feeling the effects of the alcohol generally with a hangover. In fact, you're not at all. You're feeling the effects of your body without glutathione or without the ability to detox. So if you didn't have glutathione, that's just how you'd feel all the time. So I always describe the fact that you have a miniature hangover going on in your body all the time. You're never in a situation where you don't have a little bit of a hangover, you just have a little bit of a hangover or a lot of bit of a hangover. And it all comes down to how that glutathione process works.

Okay, so basically we're all living in a state where we're constantly depleting glutathione. Now, I'm well aware of this. I'm actually a glutathione junkie. I do a glutathione injection once a week. Now I also do a glutathione IV once a week. I read a very interesting article about glycine and the fact that that the human race in general tends to be glycine deficient. That's probably kind of a rabbit hole because I know we're tight on time, but glycine I know, is one important building block for glutathione. And the fact that humans tend to be walking around in a glycine deficient state is something that of course also affects your glutathione levels, especially in light of the fact that this stuff is constantly depleted. Now I'll try and hunt down that article, by the way, on how humans are kind of hardwired to be a little bit glycine deficient. So we're always fighting an uphill battle against this glutathione issue. But when it comes to glutathione absorption, that's something that's talked about quite a bit in especially like the natural products industry and supplement formulation industry is we know we can get glutathione from sulfur rich foods, we can get it from whey. Protein isolate is another perfect example. But when it comes to Supplementing, you know, like getting a dense source of glutathione. Talk to me a little bit about actual absorption when it comes to glutathione.

Yeah. So in short, oral glutathione is very, very difficult to absorb. It requires a lot of different processes because it is just, like I mentioned earlier with other things, very fragile. It's very difficult to get in. And we know that our gut biome is harsh. That whole world is harsh. Lots of bacteria, lots of acids, lots of crazy. It's like a volcano of just chaos going on in there. So. So they got the stomach, which is hard in and of itself, but then you actually have the absorption. I mean, you actually have, like. You can't necessarily expect an antioxidant to just absorb through the enterocyte and just, like, get right into action. Like some. Especially something that is ultimately housed in the liver. Like, if that was the case, then everything that we would take would just be hanging out in the liver waiting to do its job and not going through the kidney and going through the standard excretion process. So glutathione is exceptionally difficult. That's why so many people go ahead and go with IV injections, which is still, you know, the gold standard. It's just not always practical. Not everyone has the ability to go and get an IV injection. So it's become a topic of increasing interest for people that are kind of not necessarily in the biohacking world, but they're just understanding that glutathione is sort of this tank that we have, and it gets drained whenever we do anything. That's exhausting, or, quite frankly, hardcore exercise will deplete your glutathione levels. It's not just alcohol. So absorption is very, very difficult. There are some ways that you can start allowing it to absorb a little bit better. And a lot of it has to do with.

Chelating iron in the gut, because what ends up being difficult is that iron is this massive, massive component that stands in the way of absorbing so many different things, simply because it's. Most pathogens and bacteria in general have a really strong affinity to iron. So it makes it so that whenever you have excess iron in the gut, which is exceptionally common, we can do a whole different topic, talking about how anemia is not really this common thing. It comes down to so many other processes in the body, but we have a lot of iron, and it tends to build up in our guts. So what happens is not only for the sake of good and bad bacteria, but. But the bad bacteria tend to be feeding off of iron. And so when you actually take specific kinds of things, like lactoferrin, for instance, lactoferrin is something that you can take along with a glutathione supplement that goes and scavenges that free iron. And then also it also binds to, like, the lipopolysaccharides that are in the cell walls of bacteria in general, making it a lot easier to actually absorb things because they're not getting fought off by bad bacteria all the time. That's a very simple way to put it. I mean, obviously, the gut biome is an exceptionally advanced, advanced thing to talk about that I think we've only scratched the surface of. But finding a way to absorb glutathione orally is something that I've really worked on over the last, really three years. In fact.

The patent that I have is called receptor cell mediated endocytosis. It's a patent that I'd worked on for the last two and a half years, came to fruition last year. And receptor cell mediated endocytosis is literally utilizing the power of lactoferrin and how lactoferrin can be an iron chelator, allowing the proper absorption of oral supplements. In this case, I'm talking specifically more about glutathione, because I felt that there was a need for it. Plus, glutathione can bind to lactoferrin naturally. So while lactoferrin can go in and actually stop some of the iron, it can carry the glutathione along with it, Whereas not everything can bind to lactoferrin. So glutathione has the ability to, probably because it's an electron donor, to sort of wear two hats where it can be like, hey, I'm good, the body needs me. But it can also wear a hat that says I'm a bad pathogen, so I'm going to bind to lactoferrin, much like these other bad pathogens things would. So that's kind of tip of the iceberg of how that process works.

But in general, this is very interesting because I take lactoferrin, I use colostrum as a supplement, and that helps babies to develop healthy immune systems. It's a protein we find in colostrum, and essentially it keeps the stomach lining healthy. What you're saying is you're taking this same lactoferrin stuff that you might find in something like colostrum, you're combining it with glutathione, and that's allowing the glutathione to bypass stomach degradation and then get absorbed. Conjugated to the lactoferrin.

Exactly. You nailed it. It's almost like you. Like you and I have talked about it before and we, honest to God have not. Yeah.

So I do have a master's degree in physiology. I sometimes forget to say that on the show. Well, that's really interesting. So essentially, when you take glutathione, you can buy with lactoferrin, that increases absorption. What about, you know, a lot of people will take glutathione in the mouth as like a liposomal delivery mechanism. Would that be a way to enhance this even more?

Yes.

So that's.

And that's what we've worked on. So that's. If you take. So liposomal micellar. I think we talked about this before in the other podcast.

Well, we talked about it when it came to enhancing curcumin. We geeked out on a lot. So, guys, if you're listening, guys and girls, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com AlcoholPodcast because we really got into liposomal delivery hardcore and how to actually make curcumin available to your entire body using a form like that. But you're doing the same thing with glutathione?

Well, same thing as far as liposomal micellar, but then we took it one step further. So the guys over at. We talked about curcumin and how we did it with curcumin. I had this technology and I worked with these guys that had this technology called receptor cell mediated endocytosis, where we had this lactoferrin bind and like, wait a minute, if we take this lactoferrin bind and we put it with liposomes and micelles, then we have something that can not only allow it to. So let me back up for one second. Like you said, the lactoferrin allows to bypass that stomach degradation. So basically it makes it so that it can be processed without getting hindered by the crazy hostility of the stomach. That lactoferrin is critical. Plus it carries it a little bit further into the small intestine, where it's not only having an effect at allowing the glutathione to potentially absorb more, but actually killing off bad bacteria in the process. So not only it's axial, acting as essentially an antibiotic for that bad bacteria and a probiotic, allowing the good bacteria to proliferate. So it actually has a double whammy that lactoferrin is powerful with that, but then putting it inside a micelle Where a micelle is actually involved in the emulsification process of fats. So it has this direct gateway through the enterocyte, through the intestinal wall and into the bloodstream where it can get delivered directly to where it needs to go. So it's like the liposome gets it one step, the lactoferrin gets it another step, and then the micelle is like delivery confirmation, knowing that it's getting there. So we have a three way process which has allowed us to massively, really just take the glutathione world by storm. Being able to say, wait a minute, this is a way that you can actually get it absorbed. And I'll go on record, I mean even as someone that has this patent and has created, I'm never going to say it's better than Ivy. You know, it's like that, that's like saying, you know, eating sugar is better than just infusing it in your blood. I mean it's, you have degradation that's going to occur naturally. So if you have access to an IV every single day, great. But the nice thing about, you know, what we've been able to do with this is something that you can take before you drink or after you drink to kind of help give you that, that natural process just expedited a little bit more.

You don't want to be taking it constantly like taking it massive amounts. I'm more of a fan of sustained small amounts just to make sure your levels and vary it depending on how your stress levels are and how much you're drinking and stuff like that.

Okay, so that's the stuff that you have over at the, what's your website? Core factor.

Yeah, core factor.

Okay, so a core factor. What you've done is the glutathione, you've made it.

This liposomal delivery, but then you've used the receptor mediated endocytosis to bind it to the lactoferrin. So essentially you're doing glutathione and lactoferrin simultaneously.

Exactly.

And that's, that's like an oral, is an oral dispenser, like, like you would normally see in like a glutathione. You know, a lot of people now, you know, bulletproof is one common example people refer to as like a liposomal glutathione. This is kind of like the same look as that. Like a syringe.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you're coming, coming in a syringe and it's just like a kind of a 1ml dose everything like that. Bulletproof changed their formula a while back because they had a little bit of an issue with trying to get that liquid emulsion. So I know they changed their formula because they couldn't nail the liquid emulsion. For some reason. I don't know what the full situation is. They couldn't get the stability. I think what we've been able to harness the technology with kind of that micellar stability is what's kind of made us unique. It's not easy to get a micelle to be, to react the way you want it to. You have to have a certain process of heating that occurs to naturally put it into an emulsion. And unfortunately, when most people go through this heating process, they're harming the molecule that they're actually working with. We have kind of a proprietary technology where we have a catalyst that's in there that takes the brunt of the heat so that we can actually still put it in an emulsion.

Interesting. Very cool. Well, I'll link to that in the show notes too. I know you, you're. You're hooking up everybody who's listening in with a, with a discount. So I'll put that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com alcohol podcast. I also will hunt down that idea behind because I didn't want.

To basically skim over this too quickly, although I know that our time was limited and still is limited, but that whole glycine thing, I didn't want to make it sound like humans are broken, but apparently the idea is that that over the course of evolution or over the course of human development, our collagen requirements went up quite a bit based on the growth of the human brain and the change in our gut capacity to digest plant matter. And our ability to synthesize glycine stayed the same. So essentially a glycine deficit is kind of an intrinsic part of the biology of large vertebrates. And our ancestors would have mitigated this by eating very colic, collagen rich diets needing, you know, the animal, you know, hoof to tail and that type of thing. But we don't get quite as much of that in our own diet. Hence the enhanced need for glutathione in the face of reduced glycine availability. I think Chris Masterjohn is the guy who had a big article about this. So I'll, I'll hunt that one down and I'll put that in the show notes as well. For those of you want to geek out on glycine and its relationship to Glutathione. But ultimately, Thomas, this is really interesting stuff, you know, especially this whole like glutathione absorption piece and the idea behind some of the mitigation strategies that allow you to get past that glutathione absorption. So I'll put a link to all this stuff in the show notes. I'll put a link to that fit Fine Wine I drink article I did on gluten free beer, that ebolibo digestif stuff I mentioned the Chris masterjohn podcast on glycine depletion, a whole bunch more over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

And I'll also put a discount there on a good form of glutathione that Thomas has available over there at the Core Factor website that you can grab as well if you want to have your cake and eat it too, so to speak, from an alcohol consumption standpoint. Anything else you wanted to cover here, Thomas? No.

This was, this was awesome. It's been a while since I've gotten to go this in depth with alcohol and yeah, it's, you know, and for those that want that core factory, I think we created a special link for you guys. Korfactor.com BenGreenfield so super easy. Way too.

It's K O R, right? Yeah.

K O R. K O R F A C T O R Core Factor.

Awesome. Awesome.

Yeah, this is, man, it's. It was. Now I want to. I'm going to dive in a little bit deeper and get back with you on some stuff. And we can update show notes later too, maybe I'm going to try to find a little bit more about.

Sort of a genetic, the genetic process with alcohol and everything like that. Because now you. I made a note to look into that because that'd be an interesting one to dive a little bit deeper on.

And I'm glad I gave you some homework, man. My homework is to go experiment with all these amazing drinks, from Everclear to Ebolibo to wine and gluten free beer and beyond. And I'll kind of let you know how that goes as I take a dive down the quadruple distillation rabbit hole.

Awesome. Sounds great.

All right, man. Well, folks, thanks for listening in. And until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Thomas DeLauer of Core Factor, the inventor of some amazing glutathione, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week and drink healthy. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting.

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