Everyone turns red if they drink enough; for many folks of East Asian ancestry, the "enough" is much lower. But if you start turning red on first sip, it may be a warning sign for heightened risk of cancer, says a report this week from the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine journal:
Lots of people turn slightly red if they imbibe too much. At issue here is facial flushing from a small amount of alcohol. It's due to a deficiency in an enzyme that helps metabolize alcohol, called ALDH2.
People with a severe deficiency of the enzyme usually don't drink because it makes them feel too bad; in addition to flushing they feel nausea and a rapid heartbeat.
But people with a partial deficiency — they inherited one bad copy of the enzyme-producing gene instead of two — may put up with the flushing. A series of studies by Dr. Akira Yokoyama of Japan's Kurihama Alcohol Center found that those people are six to 10 times more likely to develop esophageal cancer than people who drink a comparable amount but aren't enzyme-deficient.
Scary stuff, but important to note.
h/t EHE.
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