Why does my whole body turn red when I drink alcohol

Whenever there is a gathering for dinner, there will always be wine on the table. Drinking is not only a common tool for us to entertain guests, but also an essential item for us to maintain relationships. As the saying goes, there is nothing that cannot be solved by a glass of wine. Drinking itself is not a bad thing, but if the drinker drinks too much it can easily lead to safety accidents. People have different reactions after drinking. Some people turn red all over after drinking. What is the reason for this?

This is an alcohol flush reaction, caused by a malfunction in acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, which leads to excessive accumulation of acetaldehyde. Symptoms include flushed face, dizziness, and vertigo. Some people can drink a lot, but in fact it is just that this enzyme is relatively sufficient. For people with less enzyme, alcohol cannot be metabolized quickly, causing acetaldehyde accumulation.

Alcohol flush reaction, also known as Asian flush syndrome. It refers to the local or systemic reddening reaction caused by the metabolism and degradation of alcohol into acetaldehyde and metabolic by-products after drinking. People who have this reaction drink alcohol regularly, which increases their risk of esophageal cancer. Even small amounts of alcohol can have adverse effects on the body. The reason why you blush after drinking is that alcohol causes your capillaries to dilate after consumption, causing your face, neck, shoulders, and even the entire body to turn red.

Blushing is often thought to be caused by an inability to metabolize alcohol. In fact, the opposite is true. About 80% of Asians (less common in Thailand and India) have a version of alcohol dehydrogenase called ADH1B, and most Chinese and Koreans have another gene called ADH1C. These genes will cause the dehydrogenase that converts alcohol into acetaldehyde to mutate, which can quickly convert alcohol into acetaldehyde (the conversion rate will increase by 40-100 times when the ADH1B gene is present). About 50% of Asians have another mitochondrial variant gene, ALDH2, which inhibits the activity of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, resulting in the inability to decompose acetaldehyde to produce acetic acid. As a result, people affected by these genes metabolize alcohol faster but continue to drink mostly because of the side effects of acetaldehyde.

Genetics/Alcohol Flush Reaction:

Alcohol flush reaction is well known to occur in people of Asian descent. According to the Human Genome Atlas Project, the rs671 allele of the ALDH2 gene that causes blushing is very rare in Europeans and Africans and even rarer in Mexican Americans.

About 30% to 50% of people of Chinese and Japanese descent have at least one ALDH2 gene, and this gene causes the alcohol flushing reaction that is common in East Asia and southeastern China. The ALDH2 gene may have originated among the Han Chinese in central China and has been actively passed down. Another related analysis suggested that the origin of this gene may be related to the spread of genes from rice cultivation in southern China.