Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Instant sobriety

Sober up (almost) instantly
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Human drinks alcoholic drink

Alcohol enters metabolic system

Human gets drunk

Reason for Human to be sober

Problem: takes time for metabolic pathways to remove alcohol from system

Proposition: backpack mounted blood circulation system holds an equal amount of blood as human body. In normal operation, blood circulation is regulated to ensure backpack reservoir is constantly refreshed and circulated. At the start of a drinking session, the interface valves are shut. now the human can drink until they are sloshed, retaining a whole body's worth of alcohol free blood in the backpack unit. To sober up, simply (a) stop drinking, and (b) adjust the valves to extract the alcoholic blood and replace with alcohol-free blood.

pocmloc, Jun 16 2022

Autologous and Directed Donations https://www.redcros...cted-donations.html
[a1, Jun 17 2022]

Alcohol metabolism doubling with Dinitrophenol https://reader.else...tion=20220622151050
[bs0u0155, Jun 22 2022]

[link]






       Bit of a mishap at the pub last night. Blood everywhere ... so much blood!
pertinax, Jun 16 2022
  

       Where does one... obtain such a quantity of type-compatible human blood?
21 Quest, Jun 17 2022
  

       A... type-compatible human? Preferably more than 1, but do what you gotta do...
neutrinos_shadow, Jun 17 2022
  

       If it were a call-in service you could call it Dial-Assist.   

       *Slowly rolls up newspaper while side-eyeing 2 fries*
21 Quest, Jun 17 2022
  

       It would be a whole lot safer, easier, and more realistic to have something that filters the alcohol out of the blood and returns it a bit at a time.
Voice, Jun 17 2022
  

       //type-compatible human blood//   

       Given reptilian* patience, surely you could achieve this by regular self-donation over a long period. If we go with six donations a year, of a little under half a litre each, to get to five litres in total, the job is done inside two years.   

       No, wait; I read now that platelets in donated blood are only good for 5 days, and red cells for 42 days. So, yes, it looks as if you would have to go full Elizabeth Bathory to maintain this device in working order.   

       ... unless the valves could somehow keep the platelets and red cells inside the body while letting the fluid go through into the reserve tank. Hmm; we wouldn't want a sludge of red cells, etc, to build up at the valve, so, maybe, instead of being kept inside the body, they could be strained out of the alcoholised fluid just outside the body, and fast-tracked around the circuit to the re-entry point in a harmless saline carrying fluid.   

       *or possibly arachnid
pertinax, Jun 18 2022
  

       Why not have 2 separate circuits? One for the brain and second for the body? Brain is drunk while body is sober. Flip the two circuits with a switch, let your liver filter out alcohol and repeat
ixnaum, Jun 18 2022
  

       [ixnaum]; that's pretty clever. Not sure about the volume balance, or the effect duration of any alcohol that's passed beyond the blood into the brain itself (not a drinker OR a doctor, so don't know if that's even a thing...).
neutrinos_shadow, Jun 19 2022
  

       //takes time for metabolic pathways to remove alcohol from system//   

       It does. But it's understood, and manipulating this is the way to go.   

       Swapping out blood, even with your own blood is tricky, expensive and dangerous. It would help, but not completely. Alcohol wanders around fairly freely. So it's in every part of the body, it even likes the membranes/fats somewhat. Swapping the blood gets you probably 10%. Dialysis would work better. But Dialysis has problems, problems that are a bit like a week long hangover.   

       The clever way, might be to go with a metabolic + dialysis like system. We know the metabolism of alcohol well. We know the bottlenecks (fnar!). Ethanol is metabolised to acetaldehyde by alcohol dehydrogenase. This is followed by acetaldehyde to acetate by ALDH2. This reaction is another dehydrogenase reaction. Both need to get rid of the H+, so they use a cofactor NAD+>NADH.   

       The limiting factor here is the NAD+ gets used up and we have a large pool of NADH to get rid of. NADH is a fuel-type intermediate, a reducing agent, like fat, sugar etc, we need to do something with it. The liver pulls 2 main tricks in the alcohol adapted liver to achieve this. 1. It makes fat. By taking something quite reducing and making something VERY reduced out of it, you get a net oxidizing effect, giving you some of your NAD+ pool back. The downside is a fatty liver. 2. The other trick, which half of alcohol research still thinks is a problem, is a clever little enzyme called Cytochrome p4502e1. This dangerous little fellow can react with O2. Not many enzymes can. But, by doing that, it takes alcohol directly and makes H2O2 out of it, this then ultimately consumes NADH into NAD+. It uses the problem molecule to solve the problem, with a slightly worrying reactive oxygen species intermediate.   

       What you could do, is build an alcohol-burning immobilized enzyme chain and do very limited dialysis with that. You'd need ADH, ALDH2 NAD+ and a way of regenerating NAD+ from the NADH. I'd suggest the water-generating NADH oxidase from whatever bacterial species it was found in.   

       You'd still have a good amount of acetate around (the mix of acetate and acetaldehyde is the smell on someone's breath, alcohol doesn't smell like that). Acetate is a ketone body that's burned in mitochondria around the body. You CAN accelerate that. Dinitrophenol is your answer there. Or a whole body ice water dunk, or both.
bs0u0155, Jun 20 2022
  

       >a whole body ice water dunk will encourage ketone metabolism

How?
Voice, Jun 20 2022
  

       You need heat, fast. Shivering is one mechanism, that's just firing a muscle - letting a load of ions equalize, and then burn fuel in mitochondria to to put them back repeatedly, the by- product being heat. Acetate is a perfectly acceptable substrate for that. The other method, in brown fat, is mitochondria short circuit/uncouple deliberately. They pump protons up a gradient, and they just slip back down. The futile circuit uses NADH and acetate is a perfectly acceptable substrate to replenish that.
bs0u0155, Jun 20 2022
  

       //One for the brain and second for the bod//   

       If the circuit for the brain doesn't extend at least as far as the lungs, then ebriety will be the least of your problems.
pertinax, Jun 20 2022
  

       //complicated biophysics//

Teach me, master
Voice, Jun 20 2022
  

       It's not biophysics, that's a whole underappreciated area of its own. This is just straight metabolism.
bs0u0155, Jun 20 2022
  

       //It's not biophysics... This is just straight metabolism.//

I fail to discern the difference.
Voice, Jun 20 2022
  

       So after a binge of drinking the acetate isn't confined to my liver but is in my bloodstream and enough exercise will make it go away faster? Part of a hangover cure is five minutes in a freezer or twenty minutes pumping iron?
Voice, Jun 20 2022
  

       Would a hot bath not speed up the metabolism more than a cold bath?   

       I mean, sure you're causing muscles to shiver and burn fuel in a cold bath, but blood flow slows.   

       I don't comprestand.   

       //acetate isn't confined to my liver but is in my bloodstream//   

       It's dissolved in all the body's water. Blood, lymph, all other extracellular fluids and all the water inside cells. Its one of the molecules the body can't really control the movement of. We have individual channels and transporters for water, sodium/ potassium/ magnesium/ calcium ions, fatty acids, amino acids etc.   

       Blood flow is unimportant, or at least peripheral bloodflow. Jump in ice water for a while and measure your heat/respiration rate. At an absolute maximum, it can approach 3000 calories/hour.   

       Generating heat is the biggest energy sink in most mammals, particularly related to small size like shrews. Humans are quite big and we heat our environments.   

       Humans in Antarctica burn a minimum of 1000 calories, lots of similar data from Scandinavian & Canadian northerly research stations, also Thule airbase on greenland.   

       However, heat will speed the evaporation of ethanol/acetaldehyde/acetate from the body.
bs0u0155, Jun 22 2022
  

       Well I'll be dipped.   

       As a small-ish Canadian boy who eats like a bird and detest the cold, I can confirm that them hairy dudes surrounding me who can go shirtless in the winter certainly seem to consume an excessive amount of calories... while also consuming a higher alcohol content than Southern countries.   

       huh... interesting   

       //As a small-ish Canadian boy who eats like a bird and detest the cold, I can confirm that them hairy dudes surrounding me who can go shirtless in the winter certainly seem to consume an excessive amount of calories.//   

       I always knew there was a (western) Canadian branch to my family, but it now turns out I have 4 adopted siblings who are some cousin-type (2nd cousin + some removed business) relation to me. They're Eskimo in origin, we got a Christmas video including 2 brothers, who look to be an easy combined 700lb, (with shirts) throwing, literally throwing a snowmobile into the back of a truck. I don't know what they eat, but they find it economical to farm their own beef.   

       Anyhow, it depends upon genetics, but a 2-4 day shock protocol of cold exposure can activate brown fat in adult humans. Throw on top of that an excess of amino acids (arginine particularly) and B-vitamins (niacin) and you can definitely make yourself feel toastier. That and sheer mass. Or DNP (link). That doubles metabolism at 50uM, which is about 300mg in a standard male. Bodybuilders go much higher, and they stack it with thyroid hormones, stimulants, and the usual anabolics, sometimes they die, of course. Generating the usual scare stories. But mostly because if they end up in hospital, the Drs don't understand and revert to standard supportive treatment: a glucose drip which makes things dramatically worse. Should be dantrolene, benzodiazepines and wheel them into the big refrigerator. At sensible doses, it's a perfectly safe, if slightly messy drug, the downside is that your body notices the increased metabolism and turns down the normal power level via thyroid hormone feedback, so cycling on/off is the standard protocol.   

       I am essentially never cold in any normal human environment. People continually buy me sweaters, presumably because they never see me wearing them? and there's no environment for which I can wear them. Inside, to hot. Outside, it is coat weather or it isn't.   

       I think there's an argument for a transcontinental heat pipe. I'd be happy to ship some of our typical July/August sweltering sweat-filled air.
bs0u0155, Jun 22 2022
  

       " If it were a call-in service you could call it Dial-Assist. — 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 17 2022   

       *Slowly rolls up newspaper while side-eyeing 2 fries* — 21 Quest, Jun 17 2022 "   

       Hands stack of this months newspapers to [21 Quest]
normzone, Jun 28 2022
  

       {Contemplates the mechanical limitations of rolled newsprint in a range of applications}
pertinax, Jun 28 2022
  
      
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