After a night out drinking a lot of us wake up the next morning feeling terrible. However, a new gel being developed by materials scientists at ETH Zurich, could prevent a hangover before it ever even begins.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 After a night out drinking, a lot of us
00:05 wake up the next morning feeling like this.
00:07 However, a new gel being developed
00:09 by materials scientists at ETH Zurich
00:12 could prevent a hangover before it even happens.
00:14 It's made of milk proteins and gold nanoparticles.
00:17 And preliminary tests in mice show some extremely promising
00:20 results.
00:20 So how does it work?
00:22 The researchers say that the gel shifts the breakdown of alcohol
00:25 from the liver to the digestive tract.
00:27 In contrast to when alcohol is metabolized in the liver,
00:30 no harmful acetaldehyde is produced
00:32 as an intermediate product.
00:33 And acetaldehyde is why you get nausea, headaches,
00:36 and other hangover symptoms.
00:38 In their lab tests, researchers were
00:39 able to reduce the blood alcohol levels in intoxicated mice
00:42 by an astounding 40% in just 30 minutes,
00:45 with the gel breaking down alcohol
00:47 with a far less toxic byproduct, acetic acid,
00:50 instead of acetaldehyde.
00:51 They also discovered the daily ingestion of alcohol,
00:54 along with the gold nanoparticle gel,
00:56 resulted in less weight loss and better fat metabolism
00:59 in the livers.
01:00 They say this could mean the gel was preventing damage
01:02 to multiple organs as well.
01:04 The one caveat?
01:05 The gel must be ingested before the alcohol leaves
01:07 the digestive tract and enters the bloodstream.
01:11 (upbeat music)
01:13 (upbeat music)