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Drinking alcohol is like borrowing happiness from tomorrow.
喝酒就是预支明天的快乐。
Assuming all goes well, you and your friends have a good time,
假设一切顺利，你和你的朋友们玩得很开心，
and then the next morning you’re paying that debt back in the form of a hangover.
第二天早上你就得以宿醉的形式偿还这笔债务。
And trust me, the older you get, the steeper the interest rate.
相信我，年纪越大，这笔债的利率就会越高。
Why isn’t there some miraculous pill I could take that lets me do what I want without any consequences?
为什么就没有一种灵丹妙药能够让我随心所欲却不承担任何后果呢？
It turns out there might be, the catch is it’s only for mice at the moment.
事实证明，这种药可能还真有，只不过目前还停留在只给老鼠用的阶段。
First let’s talk about hangovers, just to get it out of the way as soon as possible.
首先我们来说说宿醉，说说如何尽快摆脱宿醉的办法。
Don’t worry, I’ll dim the lights and talk quietly.
别担心，我会把灯光调暗，然后小声跟你们说话。
Alcohol plays a number of tricks on your body that set you up for a rough morning.
酒精有很多办法捉弄我们，让我们度过一个艰难的早晨。
It tells your pituitary gland to stop producing vasopressin, a hormone that helps you retain moisture.
它会让你的脑下垂体停止产生加压素，加压素是一种能够帮助我们的身体维持水分的激素。
Without it, your liquids go to your bladder, which is why you have to pee all the time when you’ve been out drinking.
没有了它，你的体液就会流向你的膀胱，这就是你在外饮酒时会不停上厕所的原因。
Fast forward to the next day, and you’re dehydrated like the plants in my house I keep forgetting to water.
快进到第二天，你的身体呈现出脱水的症状，就像我家里那些被我一直忘了浇水的绿植一样。
You’ve peed away things your cells and muscles need to function -- like salt, magnesium, and potassium.
你的细胞和肌肉工作所需的那些营养物质——比如盐，镁和钾——都已经被你从小便中排出去了。
And your other organs have stolen water from your brain,
而你体内的其他器官会偷走你大脑部位的水分，
causing it to literally shrink and pull on the membranes that attach it to your skull.
你的大脑就会缩小并拉扯将它附着在你头骨上的皮肤。
Consequently your head feels like it’s being crushed by a Mountain, it’s like being Oberyn Martell.
因此，你的头就会有被大山碾碎的感觉，就像奥柏伦·马泰尔（在《冰与火之歌》中被“魔山”活活捏爆头骨）那样。
Now on top of all that, there’s a byproduct of alcohol that can make hangovers even worse.
最重要的是，酒精的副产品会让宿醉变得更加难受。
The most common way your liver breaks alcohol down is a two step process, and unfortunately the first step turns alcohol into acetaldehyde.
肝脏吸收酒精时通常需要完成两个步骤，不幸的是，第一步肝脏会将酒精转化为乙醛。
Acetaldehyde is highly toxic and makes your headache and nausea worse.
乙醛毒性很大，不仅会导致你头痛，还会让你恶心得更厉害。
Oh, and it’s a known carcinogen.
对了，它也是一种已知的致癌物质。
If you’re drinking at a moderate pace, your liver can break it down into the more benign acetate.
浅斟慢饮时，我们的肝脏可以将其分解为危害更小的醋酸盐。
But drink too much and the enzymes can’t keep up, so we get a buildup of this nasty acetaldehyde.
但如果喝得太多，酶跟不上的话，这种令人讨厌的乙醛就会越积越多。
So with that in mind researchers have been trying to give your liver a hand.
考虑到这一点，研究人员一直在为帮助我们的肝脏消化酒精而努力。
Inspired by how the liver cells work, they created a combination of three enzymes to neutralize alcohol:
受肝细胞工作原理的启发，他们将中和酒精的三种酶组合了起来：
alcohol oxidase (AOx), catalase (CAT), and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH).
这三种酶分别是醇氧化酶（AOx），过氧化氢酶（CAT）和醛脱氢酶（ALDH）。
The first two break the alcohol down to acetaldehyde,
前两种酶能够将酒精分解为乙醛，
and the last one is the same enzyme your body uses to turn acetaldehyde into acetate.
后一种则是我们的身体将乙醛转化为乙酸的酶。
These enzymes are nothing new,
这些酶并不新鲜，
but the real trick was figuring out a safe and effective way to get them to the liver where they could provide reinforcements.
但真正的技术是找出一种安全有效的方法将它们送到他们需要它们支援的肝。
The researchers chose to wrap each of the enzymes in a protective shell that’s already FDA approved,
研究人员用已经获得FDA批准的保护壳把三种酶裹了起来，
creating nanocapsules of enzymes that would build up in the liver.
从而制出了一种可在肝脏中累积的酶纳米胶囊。
You can’t go straight to testing something like this in humans, so the researchers used drunk mice instead.
这种东西我们是不能直接在人类身上测试的，所以研究人员用了醉酒的老鼠来做实验。
Now I don’t know how they got the mice drunk, but I like to imagine teeny tiny shot glasses were involved.
虽然我不知道他们是怎么把老鼠给灌醉的，但我想应该是给它们来了那么一小杯儿吧。
Anyway once drunk and passed out, the researchers injected the mice with their triple enzyme elixir.
不管怎样，一旦老鼠们醉的不省人事了，研究人员就给它们注射了含三种酶的灵丹妙药下去。
In four hours the blood alcohol level of the treated mice dropped 45% more than the untreated ones,
4小时后，相比没有接受治疗的小白鼠，接受了治疗的小白鼠血液中的酒精含量降低了45％，
and acetaldehyde levels stayed extremely low.
乙醛水平也是相当低。
This could be a major boon, not just for the shambling Sunday morning masses, but for emergency situations like alcohol poisoning too.
这可能成为一个重要的福音，这不仅仅是那些周日早晨需要忍受漫长的聚会的人的福音，也是大家遇到像酒精中毒这样的紧急情况时的福音。
Right now treatments for alcohol overdose mostly rely on the body’s own pathways to break down alcohol.
目前，针对饮酒过度的治疗主要依靠的还是身体自身分解酒精的机制。
The fast elimination of the carcinogen acetaldehyde could reduce the risk of cardiovascular and liver cancer as well.
快速消除致癌物质乙醛也可以降低患心血管疾病和肝癌的风险。
The next step is making sure these nanocapsules are safe with no unforeseen side effects.
研究人员的下一步工作就是确保这些纳米胶囊安全且没有不可预见的副作用。
If testing goes well on animals, clinical trials on humans could start as soon as 2019.
如果在动物身上的测试进展顺利，那么人类的临床试验将有望在明年展开。
Until then, just remember what’s lurking for you tomorrow if you don't drink responsibly today.
不过，在此之前，希望大家谨记，今日饮酒不负责任，明日你将承担怎样的后果。
A saline drip is supposedly a miracle hangover cure since it rehydrates you intravenously,
吊盐水瓶被人们认为是一种神奇的宿醉治疗方案，因为它可以通过静脉注射给身体补充水分，
but it turns out the saline we use is based on terrible science.
但事实证明，我们使用的生理盐水依赖的科学理论其实非常站不住脚。
Find out why here.
答案就在这期视频里。
Did you know darker liquors can cause more severe hangovers because of the impurities called congeners that give them their color.
你知道吗，颜色更深的酒造成的宿醉可能会更厉害，问题就出在能给酒带来颜色的被称为“同源物”的那些杂质身上。
Thanks for watching, I'll see you next time on Seeker.
感谢大家收看本期的《科学探索之旅》，我们下期再见。
