Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Boke Obama and this is a classic episode
Speaker 1: from former host Christian Sager. With the holiday season coming
Speaker 1: to a close and lots of buzz about dry January
Speaker 1: in the air, I thought this one would be appropriate
Speaker 1: the topic what happens when I have a hangover? Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff? Christian Sager? Here. Even if you don't drink,
Speaker 1: you know all about the symptoms from TV film and
Speaker 1: maybe your friends. Headaches, malaise, loss of appetite, fatigue, nausea, dehydration,
Speaker 1: and more. If you are or were a drinker, then
Speaker 1: at some point in your life, the odds are that
Speaker 1: you have had a hangover. More than seventy of alcohol
Speaker 1: consumers have had a hangover at least once, and fift
Speaker 1: have had one about once a month. Of college students
Speaker 1: feel the symptoms weekly. Hangover is like the street name
Speaker 1: for the more formal term vasal gia. It derives from cavice,
Speaker 1: a Norwegian word that means uneasiness after drinking, and algaea,
Speaker 1: the Greek word for pain. But what happens during a hangover?
Speaker 1: How does alcohol make you feel so bad the next morning?
Speaker 1: While scientists still aren't certain about all the causes. They
Speaker 1: have a pretty good idea, So let's talk about what
Speaker 1: happens when you're consuming alcohol. It enters your blood stream
Speaker 1: and causes the pituitary gland in the brain to block
Speaker 1: the creation of vasopressin. Vasa presson is an anti diuretic hormone,
Speaker 1: and without it, your kidneys send water directly to your
Speaker 1: bladder instead of reabsorbing it into the body. This is
Speaker 1: why when you're drinking, you need to peace so much.
Speaker 1: Drinking about two hundred and fifty millileaters of alcohol makes
Speaker 1: your body expel about eight hundred to one thousand million
Speaker 1: liters of water, one to four times as much liquid
Speaker 1: lost as gained. This helps create that hangover, which leads
Speaker 1: us to dehydration. After a period of heavy drinking. Your
Speaker 1: body desperately wants water and sends you all the signals
Speaker 1: it can to indicate this, a dry mouth, even a headache.
Speaker 1: Headaches are frightening stuff. In this scenario, that headache is
Speaker 1: the result of water thieves inside your body. See, when
Speaker 1: you're hydrated, the other organs in your body try to
Speaker 1: compensate by stealing water from your brain. This makes your
Speaker 1: brain shrink. Yeah, it physically shrinks. It pulls on the
Speaker 1: membranes connecting your skull to your brain, and boom, massive
Speaker 1: pulsing pain. Quote. Breaking the seal and urinating frequently can
Speaker 1: also expel potassium, magnesium, and salts needed for nerve and
Speaker 1: muscle function. Without them, you can get fatigue and nausea.
Speaker 1: Lack of glycogen can also contribute to weakness and lack
Speaker 1: of coordination. However, a study found no correlation between this
Speaker 1: and hangovers, so the hypothesis is contradicted by the data,
Speaker 1: at least in one case. There are a few other
Speaker 1: factors at play here, such as a settled to hide
Speaker 1: and glutamine rebound which sounds like a band but it's not.
Speaker 1: When your liver breaks down an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase,
Speaker 1: it creates something called a settled to hide. This is
Speaker 1: a nasty customer, and it's more toxic than the alcohol itself. Luckily,
Speaker 1: the liver uses another enzyme called a settled to hide
Speaker 1: de hydrogenase and a substance called glutathione to change this
Speaker 1: stuff into non toxic acetate in a short amount of time.
Speaker 1: If you've only had a few drinks, that is. When
Speaker 1: you drink more booze, your liver runs out of glutath ione,
Speaker 1: and that toxic a settled to hide can cause some
Speaker 1: serious headaches and vomiting. Studies actually show the women have
Speaker 1: less glutathione and acetyla 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 is over and you stop imbibing, your
Speaker 1: body tries to compensate by making glutamine more than normal.
Speaker 1: This stimulates the sleeping drinker's brain, keeping him or her
Speaker 1: from the deepest levels of slumber. This also contributes to
Speaker 1: fatigue 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 cytokinds, 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: Thirty three of people who drank an amount of bourbon
Speaker 1: relative to their body weight reported severe hangovers, while only
Speaker 1: three percent of vodka drinkers experience symptoms. So that's how
Speaker 1: I hangover works. What actually happens when booze meets the body.
Speaker 1: The severity of hangovers doesn't just depend on the booze, though.
Speaker 1: Studies show that your genes, your gender, your body weight,
Speaker 1: and more can all play a role in whether you
Speaker 1: wake up with a pounding headache or just hit the
Speaker 1: snooze button a few times. There are ways to manage
Speaker 1: a hangover, and it's one of those things it's easier
Speaker 1: to prevent than to remedy. First, you can drink in
Speaker 1: moderation or you know, you could abstain entirely. Second, if
Speaker 1: you do decide to drink, stay hydrated and eat something.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Ben Bollin and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler clang. Brian Stuff is a production of iHeart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of
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