Speaker 1: I'm Kristin Conger and I'm Caroline Irvan, and we're a
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Speaker 1: Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff Christian Sager here.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't drink, you know all about the
Speaker 1: symptoms from TV, film and maybe your friends headaches, malaise,
Speaker 1: loss of appetite, fatigue, nausea, dehydration, and more. If you
Speaker 1: are or were a drinker, then at some point in
Speaker 1: your life, the odds are that you have had a hangover.
Speaker 1: More than seventy percent of alcohol consumers have had a
Speaker 1: hangover at least once, and have had one about once
Speaker 1: a month. Of college students feel the symptoms. Weekly hangover
Speaker 1: is like the street name for the more formal term
Speaker 1: vasal gia. It derives from cavice a Norwegian word that
Speaker 1: means uneasiness after drinking, and algaea, the Greek word for pain.
Speaker 1: But what happens during a hangover? How does alcohol make
Speaker 1: you feel so bad the next morning? While scientists still
Speaker 1: aren't certain about all the causes, they have a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea. So let's talk about what happens when you're
Speaker 1: consuming alcohol. It enters your blood stream and causes the
Speaker 1: pituitary gland in the brain to block the creation of vasopressin.
Speaker 1: Vasa pressin is an anti diuretic hormone, and without it,
Speaker 1: your kidneys send water directly to your bladder instead of
Speaker 1: reabsorbing it into the body. This is why when you're
Speaker 1: drinking you need to pee so much. Drinking about two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty milli liters of alcohol makes your body
Speaker 1: expel about eight hundred to one thousand million liters of water,
Speaker 1: one to four times as much liquid lost as gained.
Speaker 1: This helps create that hangover, which leads us to dehydration.
Speaker 1: After a period of heavy drinking, your body desperately wants
Speaker 1: water and sends you all the signals it can to
Speaker 1: indicate this. A dry mouth, even a headache. Headaches are
Speaker 1: frightening stuff in this scenario that headache is the result
Speaker 1: of water thieves inside your body. See when you're de hydrated,
Speaker 1: the other organs in your body try to compensate by
Speaker 1: stealing water from your brain. This makes your brain shrink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it physically shrinks. It pulls on the membranes connecting your
Speaker 1: skull to your brain, and boom, massive pulsing pain. Quote.
Speaker 1: Breaking the seal and urinating frequently can also expel potassium, magnese,
Speaker 1: seum and salts needed for nerve and muscle function. Without them,
Speaker 1: you can get fatigue and nausea. Lack of glycogen can
Speaker 1: also contribute to weakness and lack of coordination. However, a
Speaker 1: study found no correlation between this and hangovers, so the
Speaker 1: hypothesis is contradicted by the data, at least in one case.
Speaker 1: There are a few other factors at play here, such
Speaker 1: as a settled to hide and glutamine rebound which sounds
Speaker 1: like a band but it's not. When your liver breaks
Speaker 1: down an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, it creates something called
Speaker 1: a settled to hide. This is a nasty customer, and
Speaker 1: it's more toxic than the alcohol itself. Luckily, the liver
Speaker 1: uses another enzyme called a settled to hide de hydrogenase
Speaker 1: and a substance called glutathione to change this stuff into
Speaker 1: non toxic acetate in a short amount of time. If
Speaker 1: you've only had a few drinks, that is, when you
Speaker 1: drink more booze, your liver runs out of glutoth ione,
Speaker 1: and that toxic a settled hide can cause some serious
Speaker 1: headaches and vomiting. Studies actually show that women have less
Speaker 1: glutoth ione and actyla hyde dehydrogenase, making their hangovers potentially worse.
Speaker 1: You know how, if someone sleeps while they drank too much,
Speaker 1: they won't sleep as soundly as normal. That's because of
Speaker 1: glutamine rebound. Alcohol suppresses glutamine, one of the body's natural stimulants.
Speaker 1: When the party's over and you stop imbibing, your body
Speaker 1: tries to compensate by making glutamine more than normal. This
Speaker 1: stimulates the sleeping drinker's brain, keeping him or her from
Speaker 1: the deepest levels of slumber. This also contributes to fatigue
Speaker 1: and possibly to tremors, anxiety, restlessness, and increased blood pressure.
Speaker 1: And there's your stomach lining. Alcohol gets absorbed directly through
Speaker 1: the stomach and that irritates your stomach cells. Alcohol also
Speaker 1: promotes hydrochloric acid, like don King promotes boxers. Eventually, your
Speaker 1: nerves have had enough and they tell your brain, hey,
Speaker 1: get this booze out of here. Boom you vomit. It's
Speaker 1: true that vomiting can lessen some hangover symptoms, but it's
Speaker 1: by no means a good life decision. Finally, hangover sufferers
Speaker 1: have been found to have high levels of cytokines, which
Speaker 1: your immune system normally uses to trigger fever or inflammation
Speaker 1: to battle and infection. It seems that too much alcohol
Speaker 1: can trigger cytokine release, causing symptoms like muscle ache, nausea, fatigue,
Speaker 1: memory loss, and more. And you've probably heard that some
Speaker 1: drinks can cause worse hangovers, and this is true. It
Speaker 1: all goes back to the byproducts of fermentation known as congeners.
Speaker 1: Congeners are essentially various impurities and a given type of
Speaker 1: alcoholic beverage. They combine to create some severe hangover symptoms.
Speaker 1: Red wine and dark liquors think like bourbon, brandy, tequila,
Speaker 1: and so on, have the highest amounts of these toxins,
Speaker 1: while white wine and clear liquors have a smaller amount.
Speaker 1: Of People who drank an amount of bourbon relative to
Speaker 1: their body weight reported severe hangovers, while only three percent
Speaker 1: of vodka drinkers experience symptoms. So that's how I hangover works.
Speaker 1: What actually happens when booze meets the body. The severity
Speaker 1: of hangovers doesn't just depend on the booze, though. Studies
Speaker 1: show that your genes, your gender, your body weight, and
Speaker 1: more can all play a role in whether you wake
Speaker 1: up with a pounding headache or just hit the snooze
Speaker 1: button a few times. There are ways to manage a hangover,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those things it's easier to prevent
Speaker 1: than to remedy. First, you can drink in moderation or
Speaker 1: you know, you could abstain entirely. Second, if you do
Speaker 1: decide to drink, stay hydrated, and eat something. Check out
Speaker 1: the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.