Japanese Have a Low Tolerance for Alcohol

Rikako Fujita , Japan

Generally speaking, Japanese are not strong for alcohol. We can drunk quickly. On the other hand, people from Europe and Latin is really strong. Sometimes, I see them drinking wine straight from bottle. If Japanese do same thing, we will die by acute alcohol intoxication.

What is Acute Alcohol Intoxication.



Alcoholic drinks menu

As a result of examining the genetic information of Japanese people, it was found by RIKEN which is Japanese science organization. That “evolution” has occurred for thousands of years to increase the number of people with weak constitution to drink. Although detailed cause is unknown, weak constitution of alcohol seems to have worked advantageously for adapting to the environment for some reason. It announced to the English scientific journal Nature Communications of 24th.
Two types of metabolic enzymes, “ADH1B” and “ALDH2”, are involved in the alcoholysis in the body. Each enzyme has strong and weak types, with 75% of ADH 1 B and 25% of ALDH 2 being weak in Japanese. On the other hand, Westerners and others are known to have strong types for most two types.

Analysis of the total genetic information of 2200 Japanese people revealed that there are many mutations that are rarely found beside genes that produce weak type enzymes. When genetic information is inherited to offspring, it indicates that the mutation accumulated without being lost together with this gene, and it is considered to be one of the evidence that having a weak type of enzyme worked advantageously. They also found that Japanese with weak type of enzymes increased over the past 100 generations.

This is why, Japanese have a low tolerance. When Japanese drink with friends who is from foreign countries, they must care about amount of alcohol. They DO NOT drink same like friends.

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