Reddit reviews Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine

http://www.amazon.com/Buzz-Science-Lore-Alcohol-Caffeine/dp/0140268456

Is a really good book on the topic (and caffeine). It explains everything in a technical way, and they goes over it again at like a 10-year-old level.

I realized today that a lot of people in this subreddit need to read this book, as the pervasiveness of lore and hokum in this thread is alarming.

Buzz is by Stephen R. Braun (amazon link here).

I feel that I've gotten a lot of value out of 23andme, and even more by feeding the raw data from 23andme through Promethease -- which pulls in a lot edgier research references through SNPedia than 23andme would touch (they're understandably conservative in the reports they choose to highlight on their web site). I signed up for the service as part of my research into sensitivity to cholinesterase inhibitors, since they test for some of the SNPs I'd seen in the research literature. However, it also turned up other stuff that turned out to be useful and that I wasn't expecting, such as the slow caffeine metabolization. The discussions on their forums are also surprisingly good, and discussions with other members have led to several important insights for me.

My one warning is that people who tend to get stressed and miserable when contemplating nebulous possible future health dangers (cancer, alzheimers, etc) may want to think twice about getting a test such as this. If you're prone to such unhealthy ruminations and one of these comes up as "increased risk" it could be a problem for your peace of mind. It's good to think through these what ifs in deciding whether or not to do these sorts of tests.