Lindsay Lohan and Kombucha

Not the most popular of drinks when you think of hitting the bar, but it's making the press now that a celebrity is involved. Sometimes that fame factor really does help to bring things to attention.

I first encountered Kombucha, a fermented tea, when it was sent for analysis to the laboratory I was working at. We all hovered around the bottle, grimacing at the "floaties" and nearly gagging at the smell. But supposedly some people actually like to drink it...for some reason.

Kombucha is a tea made with bacteria that has a host of claimed health benefits and also a host of health hazards associated with it. I won't bore you with the details, mostly because I find the details disturbing. Here's the important stuff. It's fermenting. When you have fermentation you have alcohol.

You'll note that the tea is not pasteurized to preserve any apparent health benefit from the bacteria but because of that fact, the alcohol in the beverage continues to be produced. Although the tag lists less than 0.5% alcohol that is not always the case over time. It's been a difficult subject to deal with for liquor control authorities because of this changing alcohol concentration. If it's less than 0.5% at one point is that good enough even if it goes over later?

It's a difficult thing to decide, but I'm willing to cut Lindsay some slack on this one. Maybe anyone who can actually swallow the stuff deserves the alcohol that goes with it.

At Home Forensic Fun

In honor of a beautiful Friday I'm sharing this link of Forensic Fun you can do at home or in the classroom. I have to admit it's pretty creative.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Artificial Sweeteners and Alcohol Absorption

Thank you to Christine Seivers with Radiology Technician Schools.net who reminded me of this topic. Check out their recent article on diet soda here.

I consider myself to be pretty casual with calorie counting, living by the theory of everything in moderation, but even I have to hesitate at times when it comes to calories, especially with Vermont's latest effort of posting the calorie counts on their menus. (Yikes!) So what better way to deal with the extra calories in alcohol then by mixing it with a diet soda?

Well, you may want to wait a minute there. Turn out that combining alcohol with an artificial sweetener increases the speed of gastric emptying and thus the speed of absorption in the blood stream. The faster the absorption, the higher the blood alcohol concentration reached since there is less time for the alcohol to undergo first pass metabolism.

In a study performed by Christopher Raynor et al at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia, observed that drinks containing an artificial sweetener had faster gastric emptying times than those that were regularly sweetened. The speed difference was significant with the diet versions emptying 42% faster resulting in quicker times to peak and higher peak blood alcohol concentrations (BAC).

Not only is it important to note the higher peak alcohol concentration obtained, but also to note that the speed of absorption can affect the level of impairment. This is best described as the Mellanby affect where there is more impairment observed at a given BAC as concentration increases than at the same BAC as it decreases. This is acute tolerance. With concentration rising more rapidly, a higher level of impairment can be observed because there is less time for this acute tolerance to develop.

One way to counter this is to add food while consuming your diet cocktails. The presence of food in the stomach, especially fatty food slows alcohol absorption because it slows gastric emptying resulting in a longer time for absorption and lower blood alcohol peak.

Of course then you've just negated the whole point of drinking the diet cocktail in the first place...

Why is Marijuana Illegal when Alcohol is Not?

It almost seems cyclical when the proposals come up for legalizing marijuana and it isn't just in this country, the world itself seems to question why it's not legal when alcohol is typically legal. You never see the same argument arise for cocaine or methamphetamine, with good reason! Legalizing an addictive drug just leads to trouble. I mean imagine if nicotine was legal? Oh wait...

Marijuana and alcohol have every similar effects. Both are impairing. Both can be harmful to your health, marijuana has similar effects on the lungs as tobacco and alcohol is known to damage the liver. So why is alcohol legal and marijuana is not?

Well, if you remember your history, the government did try to ban alcohol during prohibition. And we all know how successful that was. Alcohol was too fully enmeshed in our culture to be eradicated. Speakeasies were popular and people continued to drink though the health risks from homemade alcohol is always a bit higher than when it's made in nice clean regulated facilities. The interesting thing is what ultimately pushed the repeal was economic factors. The stock market fell, the Great depression started and people needed jobs. Prohibition was repealed and alcohol was once again legal to manufacture and tax.

Is it any wonder that economic downturns always lead to talks of legalizing marijuana?

At this time, marijuana was still legal. It's use and sale was allowed. So why didn't the government follow suit and develop the industry? Well in 1937 taxation began on marijuana with the Marihuana Act of 1937 which did nothing to criminalize it, but rather taxed those who dealt commercially with marijuana. In fact, the American Medical Association argued against the bill, not because they wanted to see harsher penalties, but because the bill did not exempt doctors who were prescribing marijuana for treatment purposes.

Eventually of course marijuana did become illegal, but there is more evidence that this was due to societal prejudice and competition with the paper industry who had more powerful lobbyists than it was to any scientific or health information.

I'm not saying whether or not it should be legal as that really is the point here. Besides which the argument is out there and repeated constantly. It's just an interesting thing to really examine why our laws are the way they are.