my incidental find on asian glow

Journal article I found. Yeah... this isn't peer reviewed. It's like one step above a blog post, I guess. In any case I'm half basing it on lectures we've had, and half basing it on the article.

Quick medicoscientific basis:
1) Alcohol
2) Enzyme called ADH converts it to acetaldehyde
3) Enzyme called ALDH oxidises this into excretable acids so your kidneys help you piss it all out

Everyone, unless they be majorly messed up, has adequate ADH floating around
But something like 10% of Caucasians and 60% of East Asians are missing that important ALDH enzyme.

As far as I can tell it's not the ethanol itself causing symptoms of facial flush, nausea, increased heart rate, headache, feelings of shittiness, and other Asian/hangover style symptoms. Rather, it's the buildup of acetaldehyde that causes these annoying symptoms.

This article claims that ALDH-deficient individuals are at greater risk of oesophageal cancer, since acetaldehyde meddles with your DNA and shit which is like recipe for cancer. However, it doesn't state what the increase in risk is, as a percentage, nor does it cite any articles to support how it came to the conclusion that this is true (this is what you get when it's not peer reviewed). However, if you're curious about how acetaldehyde affects DNA in your lymphocytes, which is linked to oesophageal cancer by ??? mechanism, you can always look up T. Matsuda et al., Chem Res. Toxicol. 19, 1374-1378 (2006) or H. Ishikawa et al., Mutat. Res. 615, 134-142 (2007). I can't be bothered because I don't care that much, and also who the hell cites with the shortened journal names wtf.

The article does vouch for the effectiveness of Zantac and other "antihistimines" [sic] in reducing the facial flush, although obviously this does nothing for the acetaldehyde levels. Yeah this article wasn't so much of a great find after all... I shoulda just done a search on MEDLINE about acetaldehyde buildup.