The Expert's Opinion

And the dose makes the poison

I like to see the Riedel glasses shine under the right light. It highlights the intense reds of Malbec and even makes a Pinot Noir more palatable if it is served in the glass destined for such a grape. What not many people know is that they created a special glass to drink CocaCola, designed to extract and enjoy all its properties. Something peculiar taking into account the increasingly frequent campaigns against the mythical drink, there is more and more awareness of the effects that its consumption can have.

I wonder if John Pemberton, a former Confederate soldier, would have imagined even half the repercussions of his creation, originally conceived as a life-long stimulant and aphrodisiac. At first, it was simply a type of alternative medicine to cure his addiction to heroin, which at that time could be bought in any pharmacy. Pemberton’s obsession was to create the final medicine and he decided to add to Coca-Cola nothing more and nothing less than cocaine (hence its name), however, when its addictive potential was discovered, it was replaced by caffeine.

Since then, Coca-Cola has gone from being a lowquality medicinal product to a refreshing drink and being demonized as unhealthy, a symbol of American hegemony and much more... Beyond how much we may hate or love Coca-Cola, to the extent of tasting it in Riedel glasses, it gives us an important lesson: what today is considered a novel medicinal product or a “superfood supplement”, in a few years can be repudiated, loved or destined for different uses. It all depends on the context.

Something that few people know is that everything we consume and even the air we breathe has a certain toxicity. The only way not to age would be not to breathe and that would kill us in a few minutes. Additio-nal toxicity will always be discovered from anything we consume because we have more and more refined methods and different measurement guidelines.

As the mythical alchemist Paracelsus, father of toxicology, said: “Dose sola facit venenum” or, “Only the dose makes the poison”. What do we have to do as consumers? have some common sense to consume medicines only when they are prescribed to us and avoid miracle products because they do not exist. Something so simple to say is much harder to achieve. We always like to take shortcuts to get results and that is impossible, deriving two scenarios from this. The first is the lack of information and education, which should be avoided at all costs. The second is that, although people have such tools, they prefer to ignore common sense with the proper consequences, that in my opinion is natural selection and cannot be stopped.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to enjoy a Riedel glass Coca-Cola from time to time.

Dante Alducin

QFB with the Specialization in Leading People and Teams program at the University of Michigan. He has 12 years of experience in Clinical Research. Founder of Blast! Academy and host of the podcast Ruido Blast!