Querce You, Red Wine Headaches!

New lab research from late 2023 found a most likely culprit, and human trials are set to begin in 2025. And it's none of the usual suspects!

I don’t know how many people actually caught this news back in November of 2023, but I sure didn’t, and I hadn’t seen coverage of this on the wine media I regularly ingest, so thought maybe this could use an additional write-up.

Plus I just plum found this cool.

So back in November 2023, a paper was somewhat unceremoniously published titled "Inhibition of ALDH2 by quercetin glucuronide suggests a new hypothesis to explain red wine headaches." Exciting, I know!

I sincerely appreciate that this dude is already suffering, meaning he’s already had one glass, yet still poured a second glass nearly to the rim. That is my people right there.

Turns out, it is kinda exciting: we've long heard a number of possible causes for red wine headaches: sulfites, biogenic amines, phenolics, tannins, yada yada yada. But in all such cases:

...no chemical constituent has been clearly implicated as the primary trigger of red Wine headache. Nor has a mechanism for eliciting the headache been proposed. (from the paper)

This led researchers Apramita Devi, Morris Levin, and Andrew L. Waterhouse to seek out a detectable chemical mechanism. They reached out to governments and major wine industry groups alike, yet no one was interested in funding such research. (Say what? Bastards.)

But they were able to crowdfund enough to begin laboratory tests. (So once again, consumers paid additional out-of-pocket for their own health needs - what even are taxes?)

On that note, if you want to contribute to the upcoming human trials, you can donate here.

So What Did They Discover?

Alcohol aka Ethanol is processed in the body via a 2-step process:

• Step 1: Alcohol is converted into Acetaldehyde via the enzyme Alcohol Dehydrogenase (ADH).

  • This can occur in both the liver and the stomach, though greater than 80% of all alcohol consumed is processed in the liver.

  • Acetaldehyde is a highly toxic chemical, so this isn't where we want the process to end!

• Step 2: Acetaldehyde is converted into harmless Acetate via the enzyme Aldehyde Dehydrogenase (ALDH).

  • Most folks' livers produce plenty of ALDH, though our stomachs suck at this, often leaving that <20% of alcohol to remain in our system as the toxic Acetaldehyde.

  • Build-up of acetaldehyde causes facial flushing, headaches, nausea, essentially what happens when we excessively drink and our bodies can't keep up with the intake. Aka…hangovers!

Cool Chemistry Lesson, Bro. Where Does Red Wine Come In?

Knowing that red wine was the biggest culprit of alcohol headaches - not hangovers due to excessive drinking, but with red wine a single glass could trigger the same effect - researchers looked to the grape skins. Because, as we (should) know, maceration aka soaking the juice on the skins is the only difference between red and white wines.

They soon found what they were looking for: grape skins contain an abundance of a flavanol called "quercetin", which our bodies turn into “quercetin-3-glucuronide”, and this mother fucker inhibits the activation of ALDH, thus allowing alcohol to be transformed into the toxic acetaldehyde, but not the non-toxic acetate! What the fuck, body!?!

In some people, it's possible that quercetin might inhibit their processing to the point that hangover results are achieved with only a single glass of red wine.

Why Do Only Some People Suffer From This?

Yeah, we don't know.

That's one of the key findings they hope to test for in the human trials scheduled for 2025. (Once again, you can donate to them at that link!)

What we do know, is that even outside of quercetin considerations, some people have a faulty ALDH gene (the ALDH*2 instead of the ALDH*1), a mutation that doesn't process ethanol the way those with ALDH*1 do. This affects 40% of East Asians including Han Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, hence the stereotype of the Asian who gets drunk far too easily and remains affected by booze for far too long.

Possibly, some of us have functioning ALDH enzymes up to a point, but then toss some quercetin into the mix, and we’re as good as an ALDH*2 carrier. Comparing this to being lactose intolerant might be helpful - "lactose intolerant" describes a wide range of actual intolerance. Some are affected slightly, some horribly. Lactaid can give relief to some, much less relief to others due to how extreme their intolerance (and lack of the necessary enzyme) actually is.

Fun Takeaways

1. If you suffer from red wine headaches or know someone who does, you/they can put this theory to the test by by trying orange wine - which should provide similar amounts of quercetin, so long as its an orange wine with red wine levels of maceration.

2. Roses and minimal skin contact whites/"oranges" will not have any sigificant effect, as this is too little maceration time for the juice to have extracted quercetin. Quercetin is a component that is extracted later, and not immediately.

3. Many other foods are high in quercetin - tomatoes (especially cherry tomatoes!), blueberries, kale, broccoli, onions, and apples. You can also put this to the test my eating a significant amount of any of the above, and then drinking any alcohol whatsoever! (Whee? Have fun?)

4. There are "prebiotic anti-hangover" drinks and pills, which adds ADHL to your stomach. Unfortunately, ingesting ADHL will only assist in processing the alcohol inside your stomach, the <20% that gets processed there. This is because ADHL operates on the mitochondria level. Anything you eat/drink, would be digested in full before it ever had the chance to settle into the mitochondria of your liver. But if you're only a mild sufferer, helping out with the stomach alcohol could make all the difference.

5. It's possible that cheaper red wine will cause fewer headaches! Yes! I know! Cheaper is HEALTHIER?!?

   

   Sort of: bulk wine is made with grapes from high-yield vineyards, meaning the amount of everything in every grape - sugars, phenols, flavonoids, etc. are spread out evenly amongst a lot more grapes. This of course means the concentration of quercetin will be less in the same 750ml of bulk wine vs. small batch artisan wine. Dammit.

6. Hysterically, quercetin is sold as a supplement for your immune system! No idea how accurate that use is, but if quercey gets solidified as the red wine headache culprit, then you'll have to be sure it’s not part of any “health”-focused supplement mix you’re taking!

And that’s all this non-scientist knows about it. But I found it pretty cool.

Do YOU suffer from red wine headaches? Does this sound like information that might be helpful? Sound off in the comments!