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This sounds too good to be true: a natural substance that keeps you sober no matter how much you drink, neutralises hangovers, and breaks the cycle of alcohol addiction. Extracts of a Chinese variety of the oriental raisin tree (Hovenia dulcis) have been used for 500 years to treat hangovers in China. Now dihydromyricetin (DHM), a component of the extract, has proved its worth as an intoxication blocker in a series of experiments on rats. It works by preventing alcohol from having its usual intoxicating effects on the brain.

"DHM will reduce the degree of drunkenness for the amount of alcohol drunk and will definitely reduce the hangover symptoms," says pharmacologist Jing Liang of the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the research team. "In time, it will reduce their desire for alcohol." Liang first tested whether DHM blocks the clumsiness and loss of coordination caused by drinking too much. To do this, she measured how long it took for treated rats to right themselves after being laid on their backs in a V-shaped cradle.

After she injected rats' abdomens with a dose of alcohol equal to 15 to 20 beers in 2 hours for a human, they took about 70 minutes, on average, to right themselves. However, when an injection of the same amount of booze included a milligram of DHM per kilogram of rat body weight, the animals recovered their composure within just 5 minutes. Rats given heavy doses of alcohol cowered away in corners, whereas those given the extract with their alcohol behaved normally and were as inquisitive as rats given no alcohol at all.

People find alcohol sweeter in noisy environments, which might drown out our ability to judge how much we are drinking. Research conducted by Dr Lorenzo Stafford, a psychologist from the University of Portsmouth, was the first experimental study to find out how music can alter the taste of alcohol. The research built on earlier research which found that people drank more alcohol and faster if loud music was playing.

In Dr Stafford’s study, participants had to rate a selection of drinks varying in alcohol content on the basis of alcohol strength, sweetness, and bitterness. They were given one of four different levels of distraction, from no distraction to loud club-type music playing at the same time as reading a news report. The study found that drinks were rated significantly sweeter overall when participants were listening to music alone.

In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities, and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms.

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Alcohol causes nearly 4% of deaths worldwide, more than AIDS, tuberculosis, or violence, the World Health Organization warned. Rising incomes have triggered more drinking in heavily populated countries in Africa and Asia, including India and South Africa, and binge drinking is a problem in many developed countries, the United Nations agency said. Yet alcohol control policies are weak and remain a low priority for most governments despite drinking's heavy toll on society from road accidents, violence, disease, child neglect, and job absenteeism, it said. Approximately 2.5 million people die each year from alcohol related causes, the WHO said in its "Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health."

If you really want help overcoming a hangover, drink a cup of coffee with an aspirin. Scientists have found the caffeine in coffee and the anti-inflammatory ingredients of aspirin and other painkillers reacted against the chemical compounds of ethanol, or pure alcohol. Ethanol brings on headaches thanks to a chemical acetate it can produce.

In the Congolese village of Mont-Belo, we met a bright fourth grader, Jovali Obamza, who is about to be expelled from school because his family is three months behind in paying fees.

Jovali's dad, Georges Obamza, weaves straw stools that he sells for $1 each. He said that the family is eight months behind on its $6-a-month rent and is in danger of being evicted, with nowhere to go.

"It's hard to get the money to send the kids to school," Mr Obamza explained, a bit embarrassed. But Mr Obamza and his wife, Valerie, have cellphones and spend a combined $10 a month on call time.

In addition, Mr Obamza goes drinking at a village bar, spending about $1 an evening on moonshine. That adds up to about $12 a month -- almost as much as the family rent and school fees combined.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/opinion/23kristof.html

Women who drink wine are actually less likely to gain weight than those who are teetotal, according to a new report. Researchers found that regular moderate female drinkers were less likely to become obese after a 13-year study of more than 19,000 women.

The more women drank the less weight they gained. Those who drank red wine gained the least weight. The report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, said there was no clear connection between alcohol consumption and weight gain.

The finding seems to contradict assumptions that alcohol consumption leads to weight gain. It is thought that alcohol is broken down by the liver using a different metabolic pathway to create heat, rather than fat. The benefits of red wine have been documented.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7391232/Wine-doesnt-make-women-fat-report-claims.html

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

One of the program's most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, chief medical examiner of New York City in the 1920s, said it was "our national experiment in extermination." During Prohibition, however, an official sense of higher purpose kept the program in place. As the Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1927: "Normally, no American government would engage in such business. It is only in the curious fanaticism of Prohibition that any means, however barbarous, are considered justified."

http://www.slate.com/id/2245188/pagenum/all/