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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Boke Obama and this is a classic episode

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Speaker 1: from former host Christian Sager. With the holiday season coming

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Speaker 1: to a close and lots of buzz about dry January

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Speaker 1: in the air, I thought this one would be appropriate

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Speaker 1: the topic what happens when I have a hangover? Hey

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Speaker 1: brain Stuff? Christian Sager? Here. Even if you don't drink,

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Speaker 1: you know all about the symptoms from TV film and

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Speaker 1: maybe your friends. Headaches, malaise, loss of appetite, fatigue, nausea, dehydration,

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Speaker 1: and more. If you are or were a drinker, then

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Speaker 1: at some point in your life, the odds are that

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Speaker 1: you have had a hangover. More than seventy of alcohol

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Speaker 1: consumers have had a hangover at least once, and fift

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Speaker 1: have had one about once a month. Of college students

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Speaker 1: feel the symptoms weekly. Hangover is like the street name

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Speaker 1: for the more formal term vasal gia. It derives from cavice,

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Speaker 1: a Norwegian word that means uneasiness after drinking, and algaea,

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Speaker 1: the Greek word for pain. But what happens during a hangover?

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Speaker 1: How does alcohol make you feel so bad the next morning?

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Speaker 1: While scientists still aren't certain about all the causes. They

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Speaker 1: have a pretty good idea, So let's talk about what

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Speaker 1: happens when you're consuming alcohol. It enters your blood stream

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Speaker 1: and causes the pituitary gland in the brain to block

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Speaker 1: the creation of vasopressin. Vasa presson is an anti diuretic hormone,

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Speaker 1: and without it, your kidneys send water directly to your

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Speaker 1: bladder instead of reabsorbing it into the body. This is

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Speaker 1: why when you're drinking, you need to peace so much.

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Speaker 1: Drinking about two hundred and fifty millileaters of alcohol makes

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Speaker 1: your body expel about eight hundred to one thousand million

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Speaker 1: liters of water, one to four times as much liquid

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Speaker 1: lost as gained. This helps create that hangover, which leads

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Speaker 1: us to dehydration. After a period of heavy drinking. Your

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Speaker 1: body desperately wants water and sends you all the signals

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Speaker 1: it can to indicate this, a dry mouth, even a headache.

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Speaker 1: Headaches are frightening stuff. In this scenario, that headache is

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Speaker 1: the result of water thieves inside your body. See, when

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Speaker 1: you're hydrated, the other organs in your body try to

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Speaker 1: compensate by stealing water from your brain. This makes your

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Speaker 1: brain shrink. Yeah, it physically shrinks. It pulls on the

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Speaker 1: membranes connecting your skull to your brain, and boom, massive

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Speaker 1: pulsing pain. Quote. Breaking the seal and urinating frequently can

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Speaker 1: also expel potassium, magnesium, and salts needed for nerve and

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Speaker 1: muscle function. Without them, you can get fatigue and nausea.

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Speaker 1: Lack of glycogen can also contribute to weakness and lack

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Speaker 1: of coordination. However, a study found no correlation between this

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Speaker 1: and hangovers, so the hypothesis is contradicted by the data,

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Speaker 1: at least in one case. There are a few other

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Speaker 1: factors at play here, such as a settled to hide

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Speaker 1: and glutamine rebound which sounds like a band but it's not.

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Speaker 1: When your liver breaks down an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase,

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Speaker 1: it creates something called a settled to hide. This is

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Speaker 1: a nasty customer, and it's more toxic than the alcohol itself. Luckily,

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Speaker 1: the liver uses another enzyme called a settled to hide

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Speaker 1: de hydrogenase and a substance called glutathione to change this

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Speaker 1: stuff into non toxic acetate in a short amount of time.

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Speaker 1: If you've only had a few drinks, that is. When

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Speaker 1: you drink more booze, your liver runs out of glutath ione,

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Speaker 1: and that toxic a settled to hide can cause some

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Speaker 1: serious headaches and vomiting. Studies actually show the women have

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Speaker 1: less glutathione and acetyla hyde dehydrogenase, making their hangovers potentially worse.

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Speaker 1: You know how if someone sleeps while they drank too much,

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Speaker 1: they won't sleep as soundly as normal. That's because of

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Speaker 1: glutamine rebound. Alcohol suppresses glutamine, one of the body's natural stimulants.

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Speaker 1: When the party is over and you stop imbibing, your

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Speaker 1: body tries to compensate by making glutamine more than normal.

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Speaker 1: This stimulates the sleeping drinker's brain, keeping him or her

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Speaker 1: from the deepest levels of slumber. This also contributes to

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Speaker 1: fatigue and possibly to tremors, anxiety, restlessness, and increased blood pressure.

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Speaker 1: And there's your stomach lining. Alcohol gets absorbed directly through

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Speaker 1: the stomach and that irritates your stomach cells. Alcohol also

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Speaker 1: promotes hydrochloric acid, like don king promotes boxers. Eventually, your

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Speaker 1: nerves have had enough and they tell your brain, hey,

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Speaker 1: get this booze out of here. Boom, you vomit. It's

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Speaker 1: true that vomiting can lessen some hangover symptoms, but it's

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Speaker 1: by no means a good life decision. Finally, hangover sufferers

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Speaker 1: have been found to have high levels of cytokinds, which

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Speaker 1: your immune system normally uses to trigger fever or inflammation

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Speaker 1: to battle and infection. It seems that too much alcohol

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Speaker 1: can trigger cytokine release, causing symptoms like muscle ache, nausea, fatigue,

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Speaker 1: memory loss, and more. And you've probably heard that some

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Speaker 1: drinks can cause worse hangovers, and this is true. It

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Speaker 1: all goes back to the byproducts of fermentation known as congeners.

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Speaker 1: Congeners are essentially various impurities and a given type of

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Speaker 1: alcoholic beverage, they combine to create some severe hangover symptoms.

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Speaker 1: Red wine and dark liquors think like bourbon, brandy, tequila,

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Speaker 1: and so on, have the highest amounts of these toxins,

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Speaker 1: while white wine and clear liquors have a smaller amount.

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Speaker 1: Thirty three of people who drank an amount of bourbon

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Speaker 1: relative to their body weight reported severe hangovers, while only

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Speaker 1: three percent of vodka drinkers experience symptoms. So that's how

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Speaker 1: I hangover works. What actually happens when booze meets the body.

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Speaker 1: The severity of hangovers doesn't just depend on the booze, though.

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Speaker 1: Studies show that your genes, your gender, your body weight,

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Speaker 1: and more can all play a role in whether you

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Speaker 1: wake up with a pounding headache or just hit the

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Speaker 1: snooze button a few times. There are ways to manage

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Speaker 1: a hangover, and it's one of those things it's easier

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Speaker 1: to prevent than to remedy. First, you can drink in

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Speaker 1: moderation or you know, you could abstain entirely. Second, if

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Speaker 1: you do decide to drink, stay hydrated and eat something.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Ben Bollin and produced by

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Speaker 1: Tyler clang. Brian Stuff is a production of iHeart Radios

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Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of

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Speaker 1: other Hair of the Dog topics, visit our home planet,

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Speaker 1: hows toff works dot com. Plus for more podcasts for

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Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H