184 Achieving pH Balance to Treat Specific Ailments
into alcoholism, the craving for alcohol is strengthened whenever the
alcoholic takes a drink and the liver can’t neutralize the acid aldehyde
by-product of the alcohol. This continual onslaught on the liver causes
hangovers to become more severe—headaches, dizziness, irritability,
trembling, and a lack of coordination. The deeper the hangover, the
more intense the craving for alcohol, which explains why alcoholism
becomes worse with time.Alcohol and the Brain
After the liver, the brain is the next most vulnerable organ to the dam-
aging effects of chronic alcohol consumption because its energy needs
are greater than those of any other organ in the body. In advanced
stages of alcoholism, the brain doesn’t get the glucose and oxygen
needed for the production of energy. The alcoholic liver is not able to
supply the brain with these raw materials, and blockages in the small
blood vessels prevent them from delivering energy-generating oxygen
and glucose to the brain. These blockages occur because when the liver
is no longer able to process acidic wastes, they accumulate in the blood
and cause the red blood cells to stick together. Acidic waste in the blood
also attracts bacteria that feed on it. The result is clumps of agglutinous
material that clog the blood vessels throughout the body so that there
is very little space in the blood for glucose, oxygen, and other nutrients.
Without these raw materials needed to produce cellular energy and for
the repair and regeneration of the cells, brain function breaks down and
the neurons drown in their own metabolic waste.
There may be another factor in the brain of the alcoholic that pre-
vents it from generating energy. The brains of hamsters, put on a diet
of alcohol for experimental purposes, couldn’t use glucose as a fuel,
according to the scientist Mary Kay Roach, a colleague of chemist
Roger Williams, who conducted the experiment.^2 This indicates that it
isn’t always a lack of glucose that prevents the alcoholic brain from
meeting its energy needs but the inability of the brain to use it. How-
ever, there is a compound besides glucose that the brain can use for
fuel, and that is L-glutamine. After it crosses the blood-brain barrier,
L-glutamine is converted to glutamic acid. I suspect that the brain can