Effects of microdosing alcohol on liver performance and the ability to metabolize toxins
Has there been any research on microdosing of alcohol? I did a cursory search but it didn't yield any viable information.
Putting regular stress on various parts of the human body and its systems seems to have an overall strengthening effect. Working out builds stronger muscle, microdosing poison gets you some immunity to poison, bone microfractures lead to denser and stronger bone and so on, gradually and continuously working out various parts and systems of the body appears to have a beneficial effect on their performance.
So what would be the effect of subjecting the organism to continuous alcohol microdosing? And I don't mean "drink a little once a day" but adding a minuscule amount of alcohol to water and other consumed liquids, dosed according to the liver's performance so that the alcohol level doesn't exceed the legal limits you can drive a vehicle with, perhaps even significantly lower than that.
If poison microdosing builds up immunity to poison, and I am only assuming that it is being metabolized by the liver and thus improves its ability to metabolize poison, wouldn't alcohol microdosing too make up for a stronger liver?
I've also read about studies which show conflicting results, while some appear do indicate there are some benefits to drinking a little alcohol (but not microdosing), others claim that drinking any amount of alcohol is detrimental to the health, but again, that means drinking recreationally, not microdosing.
EDIT:
Now that the question gets input, it mandates a clarification be made, that I am specifically interested in liver performance and ability to metabolize toxins, in case it wasn't clean enough. And to clarify the need for this clarification:
There is a problem with mortality rates, due to the extremely uneven distribution of causes of death. When the bulk of deaths are not liver function related, it just doesn't seem like an indicative metric. Not that liver function related deaths are necessarily indicative. Just that mortality rate is a rather rough metric, and when less than 2% of deaths seem to be liver function related, and liver failure related deaths not really being indicative of the effects on "strengthening" the function of healthy liver, mortality rates don't really answer a question on "effects of micro-dosing alcohol", but a rather specific yet deprived of specific information question on "effects on microdosing alcohol on mortality rates".
It seems to me that such a metric would completely stifle say a 10% improvement of metabolism of toxins if the bulk of the test subjects die of unrelated conditions or even already deteriorated liver function, and that is such a case, mortality rates are about as indicative as the effects of microdosing alcohol on the chance of getting struck by lightning.
Maybe there are more isolated and focused studies that have tested liver samples from test subjects, or a study involving the introduction of toxins to the body and measuring the speed and efficiency at which they are being handled?
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What are effects of microdosing alcohol on the liver's ability to metabolize toxins?
There seems to be no effect.
Alcohol can induce the enzyme system CYP2E1 in the liver, which can speed up the metabolism of toxins thus making some more and others less toxic. But according to niaaa.nih.gov:
...CYP2E1 only is active after a person has consumed large amounts of alcohol...
What are effects of microdosing alcohol on the liver performance?
There seems to be no studies about the effects (beneficial or harmful) of microdosing alcohol (1-2 g alco/day) on liver function, but light drinking (up to 17 g alco/day) can show signs of impaired liver function, such as increased blood levels of the liver enzymes (PubMed).
What is the relation between microdosing alcohol and mortality?
In a systematic review of 87 studies including 3,998,626 individuals (PubMed, 2016), no significant reduction in mortality risk was observed for low-volume drinkers (1.3-24.9 g ethanol/day) and occasional drinkers (<1.3 g ethanol/day):
...low-volume alcohol consumption has no net mortality benefit compared
with lifetime abstention or occasional drinking.
Another analysis of several surveys including 333,247 individuals (JACC, 2017):
Light and moderate alcohol intake [up to 2 drinks or 28 g ethanol/day]
might have a protective effect on all-cause and cardiovascular
disease-specific mortality in U.S. adults.
According to both reviews, microdosing (consuming 1 g or similarly small amount of alcohol per day) is not associated with significantly lower mortality than abstention (see the graph with a J-curve in the 2nd review).
Can microdosing alcohol improve your immunity like antivenom can protect you against venom?
No, not likely. Mithridatism - practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts (Wikipedia):
...immunity generally is only possible with biologically complex types
[usually proteins] which the immune system can respond to... In some
cases, it is possible to build up tolerance against specific
non-biological poisons. For some poisons, this involves conditioning
the liver to produce more of the particular enzymes that deal with
these poisons (for example alcohol).
But, according to rcpe.ac.uk, p. 140, this increased liver alcohol clearance (alcohol tolerance) develops only after
prolonged use of alcohol in substantial doses.
Concluding from studies that included larger amounts of alcohol, microdosing alcohol does not seem to have any significant beneficial or harmful effects on the liver, but there is a lack of direct evidence.
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