| So glad to see this stated so clearly will take one exception which is to:
~Acetaldehyde causes irreparable DNA damage~ This is not 100% we all repair this damage all the time (usually) however not needing to repair excess damage is preferable. Note: ethanol is not the only source of aldehydes in our diet even if it is a potent one, paraphrasing a medical researcher friend "anything that tastes good will metabolize through an aldehyde phase" Our genetics, the dose and blind luck will determine if the damage is repairable. For an example of genetics and ethanol mediated DNA damage/repair see Asian Flushing syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction Yeast produced ethanol as a toxin to inhibit other things from eating what they were eating, it was only ~10M years ago something was hungry enough to eat the poison and lucky enough to have mutated to derive nutrition from the toxin. but hey, oxygen use to be a toxin too. |
It still is. Oxidative stress is a major threat to cells. There’s a lot of expensive machinery to keep the damage in check but it’s not foolproof.