Original observation? Chromium deficiency impairs alcohol tolerance

Q: You wrote in Lifting Depression: The Chromium Connection that chromium supplementation changed the way alcohol affected one of your patients. Are you the first person to make this discovery?

A: No.

In the 1990s, when I first observed that chromium supplementation decreases craving for alcohol and softens hangovers, I thought I had made an original observation. Moreover, I inferred that chromium deficiency impairs the body's ability to metabolize alcohol. Recently, I learned that my observation was not original.

I was talking by phone with my friend-in-science, Patrick Holford, in England. He is Director of The Institute for Optimum Nutrition and author of a must-read book on nutrition.

During our talk, Patrick and I exchanged various ideas and facts relating to natural treatments of depression. He asked if I was familiar with a chapter on chromium in a book titled Mental and Elemental Nutrients: A Physician's Guide to Nutrition and Health Care by Dr. Carl C. Pfeiffer, Ph.D., M.D. that was published in 1975. Although I had read thousands of articles about chromium, I had somehow missed this one. Patrick generously agreed to send it to me. In the chapter, Dr. Pfeiffer wrote that one of the earliest signs of chromium deficiency in pregnant women is "complete alcohol intolerance"(p.290).

So much for my original observation!

I would like to repeat here that chromium is not THE treatment for alcoholism. Alcoholism is a complex disorder that requires multiple treatments including but not limited to AA, medical treatment, and nutritional supplementation. You must not say to yourself, "Oh. Now all I have to do is take chromium and I can drink without a hangover." Please don't do that.