(calm music)
- Hey, so have you ever been hungover?
Are you hungover now?
You don't have to tell
me but today's episode
is all about how hangovers work.
Now, we're all familiar with the symptoms.
Even if you don't drink,
you've seen TV or film
and we know that people
have horrible headaches.
Some people have tremors.
They're all dehydrated.
They have fatigue, restlessness, anxiety,
trouble getting proper sleep.
The list goes on.
But what actually happens?
What thing makes alcohol so dastardly
that it would turn a
wonderful Saturday night
into a horrible Sunday morning?
Hangover is the street name
for the more formal term, veisalgia.
So what happens when your drink alcohol,
one thing that occurs is
that your pituitary gland
stops producing something
called vasopressin.
Now, vasopressin is an
antidiuretic hormone.
Think of it like if your body
and the crazy party that
you're at or a road trip.
Vasopressin is like the
dad in the car who says no,
nobody gets out to pee
until we hit Orlando
but when you drink alcohol,
the vasopressin is gone.
It's a deadbeat dad.
So what are the numbers exactly?
Well, if you ingest 250
milliliters of alcohol,
your body will expel 800 to
1000 milliliters of liquid.
That's one to four times more
liquid lost than you gained.
One of the big symptoms of a
hangover is dehydration, right?
Because there's a massive
water shortage in your body,
all your other organs sort
of start betraying each other
and they become water
thieves like in Mad Max
and they are stealing
water from your brain.
What does this do?
It makes your brain
shrink and when it shrinks
then it starts pulling on the
membrane inside your skull
that attaches your brain to your skull.
So that headache is the
result of physical brain pain.
During drinking, your body
produces something more toxic
or more dangerous than alcohol.
It's a character called acetaldehyde.
Acetaldehyde is fortunately
only gonna be in your body
for a small amount of time
if you're drinking moderately
and that's because your
liver combines this toxin
with an enzyme called
acetaldehyde dehydrogenase
and a substance called glutathione.
When you drink more booze,
when you drink heavily,
your liver runs out of glutathione
and this acetaldehyde is able to excrete
and it causes these nasty symptoms
and in my opinion some of the
worst symptoms of a hangover
which would be nausea and vomiting.
Additionally, alcohol
promotes the secretion
of hydrochloric acid.
What this means is that
your body's producing
more and more acid and at some point
the cells in your body say,
hey, this booze thing
that you've turned us into
is out of control.
Get these guys outta here and then boom,
they get ejected out of the front door,
the same way that a lush
would get kicked out of a sleazy bar
but the door's your mouth
and the bar's your stomach.
You get it, it's gross, it's vomiting.
You probably also heard the idea
that not all booze is created
equally and that's true
and that applies to
hangover potential as well.
This goes back to a
thing called congeners.
See, congeners are a by-product
of the fermentation process
of different kinds of alcohol
and some sorts of alcohol
have many more impurities
or congeners than other types.
As a general rule, what you can tell
is that a red wine or a darker liquor
like brandy, whiskey, bourbon, tequila,
these would tend to have more
impurities, more congeners
and they'll lead to an
increased likelihood
of a more severe hangover.
The ones that have fewer congeners
are gonna be stuff like
white wine or vodka,
these more clear, light liquors.
So that's it.
So if you're hungover right
now and you're watching this,
that's what's going on
inside of your body.
Your next question is probably
how to cure a hangover.
How do I stop this from
ever happening again?
I never wanna see the sunlight.
I get it.
It turns out that hangovers
are easier to prevent
than they are to remedy.
Now, of course, the easiest
way to prevent a hangover
is to drink in moderation
or not drink alcohol at all
and you have to be conscious
of the various factors
applying to you as an individual
that will increase or decrease
the likelihood of your hangover
and the severity of it if you have one.
These are factors like your body weight,
your gender, your genetic
disposition and so on.
Now, as for hangover remedies,
we've been hearing a lot of things
that might be old wives' tales,
a lot of things that might
have science behind them.
You've heard of the stuff
like coffee and eggs
or a greasy bacon sandwich.
You've heard of weirder
stuff like gargling
with some God forsaken concoction
or the hair of the dog and stuff
but which of those are actually real
and which of those are bunk?
We'd love to follow this
up in another episode
and we'd also like to hear your ideas
so go ahead and subscribe, click Like.
Leave us your foolproof hangover
cure in the comments below.
It might end up on our next
episode and we'll see you then.
