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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: it's Christian Seger. Have you ever heard of this gallon

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Speaker 1: of milk challenge before? Here's the idea. You try to

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Speaker 1: drink a gallon of milk and hold it down for

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Speaker 1: an hour without puking. That sounds unnecessary to me, but

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Speaker 1: I mean it's called the challenge, and you don't win anything,

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Speaker 1: I think, but still, thousands of people have tried it

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Speaker 1: and failed. So if you've already heard of this, then

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Speaker 1: you've probably heard it's impossible. But spoiler alert, it's not.

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Speaker 1: It's just really hard and really gross. So what makes

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Speaker 1: drinking milk difficult? Well, let's begin with the basics. Drinking

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Speaker 1: a gallon of anything in an hour can be hazardous.

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Speaker 1: Even a gallon of water can be fatal if you

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Speaker 1: drink it too quickly. Too much water overloads the circulatory

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Speaker 1: system and the kidneys, elutes blood electrolytes, and can cause

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Speaker 1: cells to swell, potentially causing brain damage or death. So

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Speaker 1: it's not surprising that a gallon of milk is also

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Speaker 1: bad business stomach wise, most people who attempt it vomit.

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Speaker 1: There are a few proposed causes for this condition. You'll

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Speaker 1: often hear people blame lactose for the pucatude let's call

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Speaker 1: it of milk. Lactose is essentially milk sugar, and your

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Speaker 1: body can only process so much of it at a time.

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Speaker 1: You need the enzyme called lactasee to deal with lactose,

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Speaker 1: and the idea here is that people who are lactose

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Speaker 1: intolerant can't process any lactose and they may throw up

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Speaker 1: from just one glass of milk. But nutritionists like Dr

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Speaker 1: Sarah Ash at North Carolina State University point out that

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Speaker 1: lactose intolerance is a problem of the large intestine, not

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Speaker 1: the stomach. Since pctose is digested and absorbed in the

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Speaker 1: small intestine, the trouble doesn't really hit until it passes

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Speaker 1: to the large intestine, where it's consumed by bacteria, producing

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Speaker 1: diarrhea and gas fun both unpleasant in their own ways,

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Speaker 1: but nothing that could stop you from holding the milk down.

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Speaker 1: Then there's calcium. Milk contains a lot of calcium, about

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Speaker 1: three hundred milligrams per eight ounce glass. A Tom's chewable

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Speaker 1: tablet contains about two hundred milligrams of available calcium, so

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Speaker 1: drinking a gallon of milk is like downing twenty five

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Speaker 1: Tom's tablets, it messes up the acid balance in the stomach,

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Speaker 1: giving your stomach another reason to consider puking. The most

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Speaker 1: likely culprit, however, is surprisingly simple. It's just stomach size, guys.

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Speaker 1: The average stomach can hold about a half a gallon

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Speaker 1: of well whatever. More than that, you run the risk

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Speaker 1: of triggering these stretch receptors in your stomach, which can

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Speaker 1: induce vomiting. There are a few people with the ability

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Speaker 1: to complete this challenge, like professional competitive eaters, but for

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Speaker 1: most of us, this is a pipe dream that could

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Speaker 1: quickly turn messy. So while chugging a gallon of milk

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Speaker 1: may be more difficult than chugging water, it turns out

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Speaker 1: that drinking a gallon of anything this quickly just isn't

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Speaker 1: a great idea. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube,

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Speaker 1: and for more on this and thousands of other topics,

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Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com.