What Happens When I Have A Hangover?

If you've ever had a few too many beers at a party, then you've probably encountered the symptoms of a hangover -- the pulsing headache, dry mouth, nausea and more. But what's actually happening to you? And what is it about alcohol that can turn a wonderful Saturday night into an agonizing Sunday morning?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Kristin Conger and I'm Caroline Irvan, and we're a
host of the podcast Stuff Mom Never told you. That
gets down to the business of being women from every
imaginable angle. That's right. Kristen and I skillfully decode the biology, psychology,
and sociology of ladies and gents from their evolutionary past
a millennial present to better understand all of that stuff

(00:22):
Mom never told you. No offense moms, Now be sure
to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to brain
Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff Christian Sager here.
Even if you don't drink, you know all about the

(00:43):
symptoms from TV, film and maybe your friends headaches, malaise,
loss of appetite, fatigue, nausea, dehydration, and more. If you
are or were a drinker, then at some point in
your life, the odds are that you have had a hangover.
More than seventy percent of alcohol consumers have had a
hangover at least once, and have had one about once

(01:06):
a month. Of college students feel the symptoms. Weekly hangover
is like the street name for the more formal term
vasal gia. It derives from cavice a Norwegian word that
means uneasiness after drinking, and algaea, the Greek word for pain.
But what happens during a hangover? How does alcohol make

(01:29):
you feel so bad the next morning? While scientists still
aren't certain about all the causes, they have a pretty
good idea. So let's talk about what happens when you're
consuming alcohol. It enters your blood stream and causes the
pituitary gland in the brain to block the creation of vasopressin.
Vasa pressin is an anti diuretic hormone, and without it,

(01:51):
your kidneys send water directly to your bladder instead of
reabsorbing it into the body. This is why when you're
drinking you need to pee so much. Drinking about two
hundred and fifty milli liters of alcohol makes your body
expel about eight hundred to one thousand million liters of water,
one to four times as much liquid lost as gained.

(02:14):
This helps create that hangover, which leads us to dehydration.
After a period of heavy drinking, your body desperately wants
water and sends you all the signals it can to
indicate this. A dry mouth, even a headache. Headaches are
frightening stuff in this scenario that headache is the result
of water thieves inside your body. See when you're de hydrated,

(02:38):
the other organs in your body try to compensate by
stealing water from your brain. This makes your brain shrink. Yeah,
it physically shrinks. It pulls on the membranes connecting your
skull to your brain, and boom, massive pulsing pain. Quote.
Breaking the seal and urinating frequently can also expel potassium, magnese,

(03:00):
seum and salts needed for nerve and muscle function. Without them,
you can get fatigue and nausea. Lack of glycogen can
also contribute to weakness and lack of coordination. However, a
study found no correlation between this and hangovers, so the
hypothesis is contradicted by the data, at least in one case.

(03:23):
There are a few other factors at play here, such
as a settled to hide and glutamine rebound which sounds
like a band but it's not. When your liver breaks
down an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, it creates something called
a settled to hide. This is a nasty customer, and
it's more toxic than the alcohol itself. Luckily, the liver

(03:46):
uses another enzyme called a settled to hide de hydrogenase
and a substance called glutathione to change this stuff into
non toxic acetate in a short amount of time. If
you've only had a few drinks, that is, when you
drink more booze, your liver runs out of glutoth ione,
and that toxic a settled hide can cause some serious

(04:09):
headaches and vomiting. Studies actually show that women have less
glutoth ione and actyla hyde dehydrogenase, making their hangovers potentially worse.
You know how, if someone sleeps while they drank too much,
they won't sleep as soundly as normal. That's because of
glutamine rebound. Alcohol suppresses glutamine, one of the body's natural stimulants.

(04:31):
When the party's over and you stop imbibing, your body
tries to compensate by making glutamine more than normal. This
stimulates the sleeping drinker's brain, keeping him or her from
the deepest levels of slumber. This also contributes to fatigue
and possibly to tremors, anxiety, restlessness, and increased blood pressure.

(04:52):
And there's your stomach lining. Alcohol gets absorbed directly through
the stomach and that irritates your stomach cells. Alcohol also
promotes hydrochloric acid, like don King promotes boxers. Eventually, your
nerves have had enough and they tell your brain, hey,
get this booze out of here. Boom you vomit. It's

(05:13):
true that vomiting can lessen some hangover symptoms, but it's
by no means a good life decision. Finally, hangover sufferers
have been found to have high levels of cytokines, which
your immune system normally uses to trigger fever or inflammation
to battle and infection. It seems that too much alcohol

(05:33):
can trigger cytokine release, causing symptoms like muscle ache, nausea, fatigue,
memory loss, and more. And you've probably heard that some
drinks can cause worse hangovers, and this is true. It
all goes back to the byproducts of fermentation known as congeners.
Congeners are essentially various impurities and a given type of

(05:55):
alcoholic beverage. They combine to create some severe hangover symptoms.
Red wine and dark liquors think like bourbon, brandy, tequila,
and so on, have the highest amounts of these toxins,
while white wine and clear liquors have a smaller amount.
Of People who drank an amount of bourbon relative to
their body weight reported severe hangovers, while only three percent

(06:18):
of vodka drinkers experience symptoms. So that's how I hangover works.
What actually happens when booze meets the body. The severity
of hangovers doesn't just depend on the booze, though. Studies
show that your genes, your gender, your body weight, and
more can all play a role in whether you wake
up with a pounding headache or just hit the snooze
button a few times. There are ways to manage a hangover,

(06:42):
and it's one of those things it's easier to prevent
than to remedy. First, you can drink in moderation or
you know, you could abstain entirely. Second, if you do
decide to drink, stay hydrated, and eat something. Check out
the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this

(07:04):
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.