ALCOHOL AS ENERGY PRODUCER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 67, 20 March 1937, Page 27

ALCOHOL AS ENERGY PRODUCER

What JiupiJOMs to alcohol after a stiff j drink? Of course, the 'philologists are familiar with the blea!/ eye and Uie reeling gait. But what of the process of burning up alcohol, as we bum up food? It is still a puzzling question and because it is puzzling Dr. Francis G.- Benedict more than twenty years ago began to look for the answer in the Nutrition Laboratory that the Carnegie Institution of Washington has established in Boston, says >i writer in the "New York Times." Working with Dr. Benedict is Dr. Thorne M. Carpenter, physiological chemist. From Dr. Carpenter this deDartment learns that alcohol differs from nearly everything else that man eats or drinks. Swallow it or breathe it and it mixes rapidly with the body's tissues and fluids. Net only that, but it is easily recovered and identified after it 'ias run down the throat. Eat a piece of steak or a forkful of peas and the gastric juices at once begin to tear down proteins and starches so that the original steak or peas are no longer recognisable as such. One of the sugars, dextrose, can also be followed in this easy fashion, but if you ask Dr. Carpenter he will tell you that physiological chemists are not sure that the dextrose recovered is that originally given.. The body has a way of making its own sugars. Alcohol furnishes energy, but it is not so good an energy producer as fat, which is best of all, or so poor as the starches and sugar, which are the worst. No organ actually stores alcohol. The amount depends on the amount ofblood that circulates'through the particular tissue examined.

I Old soaks think it possible to "work off" a nip or two of whisky by exorcise. They can't. It makes no difference whether Ihejr "sleep it off" or "work it off." Alcohol disappears in its own good time. On the other hand, there is a basis for the prevalent notion that the effect of alcohol is more marked on an empty stomach than on a full stomach. "There is not so great a rise in the alcoholic content of the blood when food is eaten." explains Dr. Carpenter. Dr. Carpenter has found some evidence that alcohol either takes the place ' fat in the process of "burning up" in the body or is itself converted into something like fat. So the reducing squad is right in leaving whisky and wine alone. Inject insulin and rlcohol disappears rapidly. In fact, ,the disappearance is so rapid that Dr. Carpenter finds it hard to believe that the alcohol is all burned up. A great chemical mystery remains;to be solve.d. Co he is all for determining the amount of alcohol in the body fluids and then the exhaled air and the amount of energy generated by a drink of whisky. Theseeond of these tasks is performed by treating the body just as if it were a combined boiler and steam engine. In other words, a measured drink is given (the equivalent of shovelling a known amount of coal into a firebox) and then the human engine is made to drive a stationary bicycle. The air inhaled and exhaled is carefully metered, and in this way the energy generated is determined. What the results may be Dr. Carpenter is not yet ready to announce.-