WEBVTT - What Happens When I Have A Hangover?

0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:03.600
<v Speaker 1>I'm Kristin Conger and I'm Caroline Irvan, and we're a

0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:06.400
<v Speaker 1>host of the podcast Stuff Mom Never told you. That

0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:08.920
<v Speaker 1>gets down to the business of being women from every

0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:14.400
<v Speaker 1>imaginable angle. That's right. Kristen and I skillfully decode the biology, psychology,

0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.000
<v Speaker 1>and sociology of ladies and gents from their evolutionary past

0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.880
<v Speaker 1>a millennial present to better understand all of that stuff

0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:25.360
<v Speaker 1>Mom never told you. No offense moms, Now be sure

0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:32.240
<v Speaker 1>to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to brain

0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:40.280
<v Speaker 1>Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff Christian Sager here.

0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:43.120
<v Speaker 1>Even if you don't drink, you know all about the

0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:47.639
<v Speaker 1>symptoms from TV, film and maybe your friends headaches, malaise,

0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:52.920
<v Speaker 1>loss of appetite, fatigue, nausea, dehydration, and more. If you

0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.280
<v Speaker 1>are or were a drinker, then at some point in

0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.400
<v Speaker 1>your life, the odds are that you have had a hangover.

0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.080
<v Speaker 1>More than seventy percent of alcohol consumers have had a

0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:06.800
<v Speaker 1>hangover at least once, and have had one about once

0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:12.880
<v Speaker 1>a month. Of college students feel the symptoms. Weekly hangover

0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.400
<v Speaker 1>is like the street name for the more formal term

0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:21.640
<v Speaker 1>vasal gia. It derives from cavice a Norwegian word that

0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:26.400
<v Speaker 1>means uneasiness after drinking, and algaea, the Greek word for pain.

0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:29.920
<v Speaker 1>But what happens during a hangover? How does alcohol make

0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:33.080
<v Speaker 1>you feel so bad the next morning? While scientists still

0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:36.080
<v Speaker 1>aren't certain about all the causes, they have a pretty

0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:38.920
<v Speaker 1>good idea. So let's talk about what happens when you're

0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:42.680
<v Speaker 1>consuming alcohol. It enters your blood stream and causes the

0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:47.480
<v Speaker 1>pituitary gland in the brain to block the creation of vasopressin.

0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:51.160
<v Speaker 1>Vasa pressin is an anti diuretic hormone, and without it,

0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.960
<v Speaker 1>your kidneys send water directly to your bladder instead of

0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:58.040
<v Speaker 1>reabsorbing it into the body. This is why when you're

0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:01.840
<v Speaker 1>drinking you need to pee so much. Drinking about two

0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.320
<v Speaker 1>hundred and fifty milli liters of alcohol makes your body

0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.960
<v Speaker 1>expel about eight hundred to one thousand million liters of water,

0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:14.200
<v Speaker 1>one to four times as much liquid lost as gained.

0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:19.040
<v Speaker 1>This helps create that hangover, which leads us to dehydration.

0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:23.040
<v Speaker 1>After a period of heavy drinking, your body desperately wants

0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:25.840
<v Speaker 1>water and sends you all the signals it can to

0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:30.040
<v Speaker 1>indicate this. A dry mouth, even a headache. Headaches are

0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:33.840
<v Speaker 1>frightening stuff in this scenario that headache is the result

0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:38.079
<v Speaker 1>of water thieves inside your body. See when you're de hydrated,

0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:41.120
<v Speaker 1>the other organs in your body try to compensate by

0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.960
<v Speaker 1>stealing water from your brain. This makes your brain shrink. Yeah,

0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.440
<v Speaker 1>it physically shrinks. It pulls on the membranes connecting your

0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:54.160
<v Speaker 1>skull to your brain, and boom, massive pulsing pain. Quote.

0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:59.960
<v Speaker 1>Breaking the seal and urinating frequently can also expel potassium, magnese,

0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:04.280
<v Speaker 1>seum and salts needed for nerve and muscle function. Without them,

0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:08.000
<v Speaker 1>you can get fatigue and nausea. Lack of glycogen can

0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:12.640
<v Speaker 1>also contribute to weakness and lack of coordination. However, a

0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:18.760
<v Speaker 1>study found no correlation between this and hangovers, so the

0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:23.280
<v Speaker 1>hypothesis is contradicted by the data, at least in one case.

0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.600
<v Speaker 1>There are a few other factors at play here, such

0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:31.320
<v Speaker 1>as a settled to hide and glutamine rebound which sounds

0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:34.160
<v Speaker 1>like a band but it's not. When your liver breaks

0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:39.160
<v Speaker 1>down an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, it creates something called

0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.360
<v Speaker 1>a settled to hide. This is a nasty customer, and

0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.360
<v Speaker 1>it's more toxic than the alcohol itself. Luckily, the liver

0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:51.280
<v Speaker 1>uses another enzyme called a settled to hide de hydrogenase

0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:56.000
<v Speaker 1>and a substance called glutathione to change this stuff into

0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.440
<v Speaker 1>non toxic acetate in a short amount of time. If

0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:02.160
<v Speaker 1>you've only had a few drinks, that is, when you

0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:05.400
<v Speaker 1>drink more booze, your liver runs out of glutoth ione,

0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:09.160
<v Speaker 1>and that toxic a settled hide can cause some serious

0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.880
<v Speaker 1>headaches and vomiting. Studies actually show that women have less

0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:18.480
<v Speaker 1>glutoth ione and actyla hyde dehydrogenase, making their hangovers potentially worse.

0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:21.960
<v Speaker 1>You know how, if someone sleeps while they drank too much,

0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.440
<v Speaker 1>they won't sleep as soundly as normal. That's because of

0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:31.080
<v Speaker 1>glutamine rebound. Alcohol suppresses glutamine, one of the body's natural stimulants.

0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.440
<v Speaker 1>When the party's over and you stop imbibing, your body

0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.760
<v Speaker 1>tries to compensate by making glutamine more than normal. This

0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:42.520
<v Speaker 1>stimulates the sleeping drinker's brain, keeping him or her from

0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:46.680
<v Speaker 1>the deepest levels of slumber. This also contributes to fatigue

0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:52.320
<v Speaker 1>and possibly to tremors, anxiety, restlessness, and increased blood pressure.

0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:57.159
<v Speaker 1>And there's your stomach lining. Alcohol gets absorbed directly through

0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:00.800
<v Speaker 1>the stomach and that irritates your stomach cells. Alcohol also

0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:06.240
<v Speaker 1>promotes hydrochloric acid, like don King promotes boxers. Eventually, your

0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:09.000
<v Speaker 1>nerves have had enough and they tell your brain, hey,

0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:13.479
<v Speaker 1>get this booze out of here. Boom you vomit. It's

0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.120
<v Speaker 1>true that vomiting can lessen some hangover symptoms, but it's

0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:22.080
<v Speaker 1>by no means a good life decision. Finally, hangover sufferers

0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:25.520
<v Speaker 1>have been found to have high levels of cytokines, which

0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:30.080
<v Speaker 1>your immune system normally uses to trigger fever or inflammation

0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:33.520
<v Speaker 1>to battle and infection. It seems that too much alcohol

0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:39.360
<v Speaker 1>can trigger cytokine release, causing symptoms like muscle ache, nausea, fatigue,

0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:43.760
<v Speaker 1>memory loss, and more. And you've probably heard that some

0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:47.320
<v Speaker 1>drinks can cause worse hangovers, and this is true. It

0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:51.320
<v Speaker 1>all goes back to the byproducts of fermentation known as congeners.

0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:55.279
<v Speaker 1>Congeners are essentially various impurities and a given type of

0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:59.600
<v Speaker 1>alcoholic beverage. They combine to create some severe hangover symptoms.

0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:03.520
<v Speaker 1>Red wine and dark liquors think like bourbon, brandy, tequila,

0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:06.520
<v Speaker 1>and so on, have the highest amounts of these toxins,

0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:10.000
<v Speaker 1>while white wine and clear liquors have a smaller amount.

0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:14.479
<v Speaker 1>Of People who drank an amount of bourbon relative to

0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:18.839
<v Speaker 1>their body weight reported severe hangovers, while only three percent

0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:23.400
<v Speaker 1>of vodka drinkers experience symptoms. So that's how I hangover works.

0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:27.120
<v Speaker 1>What actually happens when booze meets the body. The severity

0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:30.800
<v Speaker 1>of hangovers doesn't just depend on the booze, though. Studies

0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:33.640
<v Speaker 1>show that your genes, your gender, your body weight, and

0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:35.920
<v Speaker 1>more can all play a role in whether you wake

0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:38.760
<v Speaker 1>up with a pounding headache or just hit the snooze

0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:42.360
<v Speaker 1>button a few times. There are ways to manage a hangover,

0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:44.760
<v Speaker 1>and it's one of those things it's easier to prevent

0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:48.440
<v Speaker 1>than to remedy. First, you can drink in moderation or

0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:51.720
<v Speaker 1>you know, you could abstain entirely. Second, if you do

0:06:51.839 --> 0:07:02.360
<v Speaker 1>decide to drink, stay hydrated, and eat something. Check out

0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:04.560
<v Speaker 1>the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this

0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:21.400
<v Speaker 1>and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.