186 Achieving pH Balance to Treat Specific Ailments
blood remain high, the adrenals will direct the liver to raise blood sugar
excessively and insulin will respond by reducing it precipitously.
Eventually the liver can’t comply with the adrenal hormones’ request
for more glucose because it no longer has any. (The liver stores glucose
in the form of glycogen.) One reason for this is that the drinker, prefer-
ring alcohol to food, doesn’t supply the liver with the carbohydrates,
protein, and fat it needs to make glucose. Another is the presence of fat,
which should pass out of the liver into general circulation but can’t
because of alcohol’s destruction of the B vitamin choline. (The absence
of choline prevents fat from being converted by the liver into phospho-
lipids, which can pass through phospholipid molecules in the cellular
membrane of the cells in the liver into the bloodstream.) So fat mole-
cules, remaining in the liver and needing a place to park themselves, fi ll
up the spaces in the liver that are designed to store glucose. Fatty
deposits also replace liver cells that have been destroyed by the alco-
holic by-product, acid aldehyde. As if that weren’t enough, metabolic
wastes and acid aldehyde infl ame the liver by destroying oxygen.
Infl amed tissue develops scars, just like a wound or incision does. But
scar tissue on the surface of the skin is harmless, whereas scar tissue in
the liver destroys its ability to function by impeding circulation. An
almost nonexistent blood supply turns the liver tissue into hard fi bers,
a sign that the liver has developed cirrhosis, a disease that, without early
nutritional intervention, is fatal.
Can the recovered alcoholic heal the brain damage caused by the
brain’s inability to generate energy? Studies conducted by researchers
at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University using
MRI images reveal that long-term abstinence from alcohol does bring
some cognitive recovery.^4 The most primitive part of the brain, how-
ever, never recovers. This is the limbic system, made up of the amygdala,
where fear and aggression originate, and the hippocampus, where long-
term memories are stored. The ability of the amygdala, even in the
long-term abstinent alcoholic, to supply the necessary neurons that
enable humans to recognize what facial expressions mean, is perma-
nently lost. Yet giving up alcohol does result in the partial recovery of
the most recently evolved part of the brain—the cerebral cortex.