A lot of that is still controversial or at least we should say is ongoing in terms of the research . But nonetheless , when you ingest ethanol , N ad and related biochemical pathways are involved in converting that ethanol into something called acetyl aldehyde . It's broken down into acetyl aldehyde .
But they are cells and they are exposed to the seed , allow to hide in the conversion process . And so cells within the liver really take a beating in the alcohol metabolism events . So the key thing to understand here is that when you ingest alcohol , you are , yes , ingesting a poison .
And if you thought ethanol was bad acetyl aldehyde is particularly bad acetyl aldehyde is poison , it will kill cells , it damages and kills cells and it is indiscriminate as to which cells it damages and kills . Now , that's a problem obviously , and the body deals with that problem by using another component of the N ad biochemical pathway to convert ace aldehyde into something called acetate . Acetate is actually something that your body can use as fuel .
And N AD and if we want to get technical , it's the N AD to N A DH ratio . And that chemical step is the rate limiting step to ethanol's metabolism . What does that mean for you ?
Goes into the stomach . The liver immediately starts this conversion that we talked about before of ethanol to acetyl aldehyde , to acetate and some amount of acetyl aldehyde and acetate are making it into the brain , it crosses the blood brain barrier . Again , the brain has this fence around it that we call the blood brain barrier or the BBB .
