Low Carb Beer: A bad idea?

[velo]

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So the other morning in what is essentially our Biochem lecture, I managed to snap out of a nap just in time to hear the bit about ethanol metabolism. Ethanol is metabolized in the liver to acetaldehyde and NADH, and acetaldehyde is futher metabolized to Acetate and more NADH. The end result is an overproduction of NADH, and since NADH is a common intermediate in many metabolic pathways, its overproduction causes a shift in the equilibrium (and subsequent inhibition) of pathways such as fatty acid oxidation and, therefore, gluconeogenesis.

The bottom line is that ethanol metabolism inhibits the ability of the liver to synthesize glucose for the brain. So, if one were to deplete both the blood glucose and liver glycogen reserves, they would become hypoglyemic and die. In fact, hypoglycemia is one of the underlying causes of death in alcohol poisoning.

So, wouldn't it stand to reason that low carb beer, while not especially dangerous, is at least a bad idea? Considering a very special case--A person who binge drinks on an empty stomach--wouldn't the person drinking regular beer be better off, as they would at least start with higher blood glucose from the beer?

Just a little academic excersise in my continued crusade against the low carb fad....

 

[Ramoray]

Low carb doesnt mean no carb, one low carb beer probably still has enough carbs to supply our brain for a day, not to mention systems may be slowed slightly but they are still turned on if we need glucose. Also not to mention if you drank enough low carb beer to inhibit the system, then you would have drank so many you got AMPLE supply of carbs. so either way you look at it, i dont think it matters

 

[omarsaleh66]

So the other morning in what is essentially our Biochem lecture, I managed to snap out of a nap just in time to hear the bit about ethanol metabolism. Ethanol is metabolized in the liver to acetaldehyde and NADH, and acetaldehyde is futher metabolized to Acetate and more NADH. The end result is an overproduction of NADH, and since NADH is a common intermediate in many metabolic pathways, its overproduction causes a shift in the equilibrium (and subsequent inhibition) of pathways such as fatty acid oxidation and, therefore, gluconeogenesis.

The bottom line is that ethanol metabolism inhibits the ability of the liver to synthesize glucose for the brain. So, if one were to deplete both the blood glucose and liver glycogen reserves, they would become hypoglyemic and die. In fact, hypoglycemia is one of the underlying causes of death in alcohol poisoning.

So, wouldn't it stand to reason that low carb beer, while not especially dangerous, is at least a bad idea? Considering a very special case--A person who binge drinks on an empty stomach--wouldn't the person drinking regular beer be better off, as they would at least start with higher blood glucose from the beer?

Just a little academic excersise in my continued crusade against the low carb fad....

If u look at the calorie content, low carb beer isnt that low carb. How u can u have a drink with 2 g of carbs, 0 protein, 0 fat, and be 100 calories. They have their own definiation of carb, and market it. So u think u are drinking low carb (2 grams - 8 calorie drink) when u are really drinking like a 100 calories.

That's energy whether its defined as carb or not, ur still getting fat.

 

[velo]

Low carb doesnt mean no carb, one low carb beer probably still has enough carbs to supply our brain for a day, not to mention systems may be slowed slightly but they are still turned on if we need glucose. Also not to mention if you drank enough low carb beer to inhibit the system, then you would have drank so many you got AMPLE supply of carbs. so either way you look at it, i dont think it matters

Just an academic exercise, but one low carb beer certainly wouldn't have enough to supply the brain for a day. The brain uses about 70mg glucose/hour...lets say about 2g in a low carb beer...not all the glucose goes to the brain of course...doesn't work out.

so no I don't think low carb beer is at all dangerous...but if you were to get alcohol poisoning and your beer supply was low carb it certainly wouldn't help. As I said before, alcohol poisoning results in hypoglycemia...If at some point your liver found it necessary to mobalize fat stores and perform glyconeogenesis for the brain its ability to do so would be severly inhibited.

If u look at the calorie content, low carb beer isnt that low carb. How u can u have a drink with 2 g of carbs, 0 protein, 0 fat, and be 100 calories. They have their own definiation of carb, and market it. So u think u are drinking low carb (2 grams - 8 calorie drink) when u are really drinking like a 100 calories.

That's energy whether its defined as carb or not, ur still getting fat.

Once again, just an academic exercise

But, in my hypothetical the only think that would matter is the sugar, as the brain can only use glucose. I'm not sure where the other energy comes from, but if it doesn't come from glucose its no good to the brain. Maybe some comes from the booze, ethanol does get metabolized to NADH...

 

[omarsaleh66]

My bad dude,

let me add some academic stuff to ur exercise. Yeah i guess alchohol is bad also cus u got high levels of LDH - that can be toxic, u are also generating heat, - alcholics develop hypoglycemia and hyperthermia. VERY bad to drink on a hot day.

Then u got low carbs, i dont know if u will die, even if u deplete liver glycogen, cant u use amino acids in gluceogenesis (I forgot alot of biochem). How do people on low carb diets do it? Sure brain needs glucose, but it can also use ketoacids if there's no glucose right (Again I forgot if this actually can happen). When u dont have no glucose u are releasing other hormones like cortisol and glucagon to make glucose. I know glucagon acts on the liver but I remember cortisol breaking down proteins and fats to generate energy.
Again man I apologize, I dont think much of what i said is right but it might help u with ur school or thought process anyways.

PEace

Omar

 

[velo]

My bad dude,

let me add some academic stuff to ur exercise. Yeah i guess alchohol is bad also cus u got high levels of LDH - that can be toxic, u are also generating heat, - alcholics develop hypoglycemia and hyperthermia. VERY bad to drink on a hot day.

Then u got low carbs, i dont know if u will die, even if u deplete liver glycogen, cant u use amino acids in gluceogenesis (I forgot alot of biochem). How do people on low carb diets do it? Sure brain needs glucose, but it can also use ketones if there's no glucose right (Again I forgot if this actually can happen). When u dont have no glucose u are releasing other hormones like cortisol and glucagon to make glucose. I know glucagon acts on the liver but I remember cortisol breaking down proteins and fats to generate energy.
Again man I apologize, I dont think much of what i said is right but it might help u with ur school or thought process anyways.

PEace

Omar

Hey, thanks for playing along this is fun! So, people on low carb diets do it by trying to mobilize the glyconeogenesis pathway in the liver. Producing glucose, of course, requires energy and the liver gets that energy from fatty acid oxidation. Glyconeogenesis also requires AAs, which you can get from muscle breakdown or from dietary protein. Hence the low carb/high protein diet...glyconeogenesis to burn fat, and high protein diet to prevent muscle breakdown.

However, as I described before alcohol metabolism inhibits fatty acid oxidation (the NADH surplus causes an equilibrium shift) so the liver has no energy to run glyconeogenesis (make glucose from AAs).

The brain can also get energy from ketone bodies, but it usually takes a couple of days for this pathway to really get up and going (starvation causes rise in ketone bodies after ~2days) so that probably wouldn't help our hard-drinking friend.

I think if he drinks enough (level of alcohol poisoning) to inhibit the pathways for a long time, passes out, and hasn't really eaten anything...our boy might be in trouble...

 

[ddmo]

Most drink low carb beer because they are braindead, not the other way around. 😀

 

[Discobolus]

The stupidity of low carb beers lies in the calorie content of alcohol itself. A lot of people don't know this but ethanol has an energy value of 7 Kcal/gram. This is opposed to only 4 Kcal/gram in carbohydrates. That is where your "phantom" calories come from, the alcohol.

That is why I find all these beer commercials where they talk about burning off all the carbs channel surfing very misleading. Sure you will be able to burn the calories from the carbs very easily but they only represent a small fraction of the total calories in the beer.

For the purposes of low-carb dieting the real goal is to get rid of substances that have an adverse effect on insulin levels (the most apparant being carbohydrates). I'm not sure of the effect of alcohol on insulin levels but would like to find out.

 

[deleted29780]

I find this topic to be quite medically entertaining. You guys are really applying your biochemistry. The beauty is that the high levels of NADH <you see instead of glycolysis and krebs cycle producing the 38 ATPs collectively, ethanol goes through a simple 2 step reaction to produce NADH - which can use the malate-asp shunt to produce 3 ATP> accounts for the unusual burst of energy that regular alcoholics display...well that is if they have not taken too much - then they disturb the cerebellum. They subsequently display a wide gait, and we all know what happens subsequently. 🙂 . Alcoholic intoxication sometimes has some benefits . i.e. during cases of oxalic acid poisoning instead of oxalic acid using the dehydrogenase enzyme, good old ethanol competes with oxalic acid and prevents the adverse effects of oxalic acid poisoning. Well this is a good reason for being a teetotaller, you will never experience oxalate poisoning. half of you should be 😴 by now

 

[velo]

I find this topic to be quite medically entertaining.

Thanks, that was the idea!

 

[dtreese]

I wouldn't think that low carb beer would be dangerous if you can do shots of liquor & be relatively okay. There's a reason that hangovers feel like you've been poisoned, though.

 

[Garuda]

Low carb beer is just watered down beer. It has less alcohol content as well.

 

[lattimer13]

So the other morning in what is essentially our Biochem lecture, I managed to snap out of a nap just in time to hear the bit about ethanol metabolism. Ethanol is metabolized in the liver to acetaldehyde and NADH, and acetaldehyde is futher metabolized to Acetate and more NADH. The end result is an overproduction of NADH, and since NADH is a common intermediate in many metabolic pathways, its overproduction causes a shift in the equilibrium (and subsequent inhibition) of pathways such as fatty acid oxidation and, therefore, gluconeogenesis.

The bottom line is that ethanol metabolism inhibits the ability of the liver to synthesize glucose for the brain. So, if one were to deplete both the blood glucose and liver glycogen reserves, they would become hypoglyemic and die. In fact, hypoglycemia is one of the underlying causes of death in alcohol poisoning.

So, wouldn't it stand to reason that low carb beer, while not especially dangerous, is at least a bad idea? Considering a very special case--A person who binge drinks on an empty stomach--wouldn't the person drinking regular beer be better off, as they would at least start with higher blood glucose from the beer?

Just a little academic excersise in my continued crusade against the low carb fad....

forgive me if this is incorrect...but doesn't the brain use ketones as it's source of energy when no/low carbs are available for the brain? hopefully i remember at least one thing from biochem. 😉

 

[velo]

forgive me if this is incorrect...but doesn't the brain use ketones as it's source of energy when no/low carbs are available for the brain? hopefully i remember at least one thing from biochem. 😉

Yes, but this pathway takes a while to "warm up" for lack of a better term. In cases of starvation you don't see a pronounced rise in ketone bodies until ~day 2.

 

[raptor5]

I would say it would be dangerous if the individual drinking low carb beer is already in ketosis (no liver glycogen and muscle glycogen is used already). I would imagine the muscle cramps and headache would curtail drinking though. Plus I think that the carbs in the beer would be shunted to lipolysis when ETOH causes a surplus of NADH. The brain should work on ketones, but it may suck if the individual has not been in ketosis long enough for the brain to adapt. I am thinking that if the individual has just entered ketosis, and started drinking low carb beer that they would so hypoglycemic that they would pass out, die, or keep drinking. Depends on the individual. Alcoholics tend to defy normal biochem due to compensatory mechanisms and up/down regulations of certain pathways to keep them alive, so in a chronic case where someone is used to being ketotic and used to being drunk all the time it may not kill them, but I were to fast until ketones showed up in my urine and then started beer bonging low carb beer it could lead to problems, but I think it would happen with any ETOH beverage.
Just my thoughts, I really am not sure. My logic is probably faulty somewhere.

 

[InductionAgent]

If u look at the calorie content, low carb beer isnt that low carb. How u can u have a drink with 2 g of carbs, 0 protein, 0 fat, and be 100 calories. They have their own definiation of carb, and market it. So u think u are drinking low carb (2 grams - 8 calorie drink) when u are really drinking like a 100 calories.

That's energy whether its defined as carb or not, ur still getting fat.

The calories are coming from alcohol - 7kcal/g

You make a good point that all alcoholic beverages have the potential to be fattening. Nonetheless, a regular Budweiser for instance has 140 calories vs. the 100 cal of the low-carb beer. If you drink a 12-pack, that's a 480-calorie difference. The flipside is that the heavier a beer is, the slower one tends to drink it. That's why Guiness is great for the liquid diet. You don't get as trashed as fast, and also get usable carb calories, and I would expect some degree of nutrients not present in the standard (much less light) lager.

The big thing missing from the alcoholic liquid diet is thiamine, needed to avert Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome. There have been proposals to supplement alcoholic beverages with thiamine. Here is an in-depth link regarding this:

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/article/2036-2534.html

and a short beer-news link:
http://www.realbeer.com/news/articles/news-001675.php

The argument against supplementation of alcoholic beverages is on the basis that this would be advertising them as health supplements is ludicrous. The argument is akin to the notion that not providing condoms to kids will keep them from having sex. A warning such as "The supplementation of this beverage with thiamine is intended to decrease the incidence of Korsakoff's psychosis, a permanent neurologic syndrome resulting from chronic alcohol ingestion" should disabuse the purchaser of this notion.

Besides, how cool would it be to market the thiamine-enriched, brand-name Korsakoff Vodka?

 

[ridirkulous]

As long as you have plenty of glycogen to begin with (didn't just run a maration). You should be fine.

 

[UnderDoc]

An interesting academic spinning of the wheels, but lacking on an evidentiary basis. Having done some high level weekend research on this very topic, I can assure you that low carb alcoholic beverages do not result in dire hypoglycemia in otherwise healthy folks. Also, hard alcohol, like vodka, contains negligible carbs and about 40% ethanol. Chronic use of vodka, or any alcoholic beverage for that matter, may produce hypoglycemia via the mechanisms alluded to, not to mention the undernutrition from which many alcoholics suffer. However, the occasional weekend binge, while not necessarily wonderful for one's hepatocytes, shouldn't land a healthy person in hypoglycemic shock.

 

[velo]

An interesting academic spinning of the wheels, but lacking on an evidentiary basis. Having done some high level weekend research on this very topic, I can assure you that low carb alcoholic beverages do not result in dire hypoglycemia in otherwise healthy folks. Also, hard alcohol, like vodka, contains negligible carbs and about 40% ethanol. Chronic use of vodka, or any alcoholic beverage for that matter, may produce hypoglycemia via the mechanisms alluded to, not to mention the undernutrition from which many alcoholics suffer. However, the occasional weekend binge, while not necessarily wonderful for one's hepatocytes, shouldn't land a healthy person in hypoglycemic shock.

Oh I didn't mean to imply that it would. This was meant to just be a fun little academic exercise. Its great that so many people are playing along, its been fun.

I think the take home message is just when you drink its a good idea to take in some carbs too.

 

[azzarah]

I am allergic to most carbs....I break out in fat. The body can metabolize fat/protein to make sugar for your brain...therefore, low carb beer + chicken wings= good idea.

 

[velo]

I am allergic to most carbs....I break out in fat. The body can metabolize fat/protein to make sugar for your brain...therefore, low carb beer + chicken wings= good idea.

well yeah....but like we were just saying, alcohol inhibits your liver's ability to metabolize fat/protein into glucose. The alcohol in just a couple of beers won't shut this pathway down, but it will slow it down. Plus you're metabolizing the alcohol, so that'll make ya fat too.

however, I will say that beer + chicken wings= delicious 👍