December 29, 2011 • 36 mins
Anatomy of a Hangover: Before your next New Year's hangover, let's explore what creates that splitting headache and the realization that you're wearing half a gorilla costume. Join Julie and Robert as they lead you through the effects of drinking and tips to cure the condition.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie
wins last for me to hangover? Um definitely not this morning. Um.
(00:24):
In the last six months plus six months, yeah, yeah,
I had one personal long time actually last weekend. Yeah,
Sunday morning, which is not my usual thing. I can't
remember the last time I actually had one, because I'm
generally not a big drinker, but you know, occasionally go
to a party and somebody will have will provide the alcohol.
And it's when they don't either either they're they're new
(00:47):
to the idea of mixing up a large quantity of
a drink and then forcing them upon people, or that
or they don't understand basic chemistry or something. That's when
I encountered the disastrous effects. In this case, it was
an overly strong margharita that had been mixed up for everybody,
because like a Mexican Christmas party, it was a great party.
But but the margarita's were basically tequila and ice and
(01:08):
some sugar and and that was a bad situation. In
other cases, I've encountered. Um uh, you know, you go
to a party and someone will hand out jello shots
and they won't even solidify that they're they're so poorly mixed,
and that is generally disastrous. Okay, well I have to
say that the festive Mexican Christmas party, I feel kind
(01:29):
of relieved. I thought you were doing keg stands or something. Yeah. Yeah,
but we're definitely talking about this, uh today this podcast,
because what's coming up New Year's right, Yeah, lots of revelry,
lots of debauchery, and in fact, if your Norwegian, maybe
you even say that it could lead to va Oh yes,
this is one of the older terms for for the hangover. Yeah, yeah,
(01:52):
I mean it actually means uneasiness following debauchery. Do you
think the the hangover movies are called vessels? You over there?
Because I feel like if I was told, Hey, we're
gonna go see this movie but selgy it sounds like
a really serious Norwegian you know, black and white art film,
and I would be like, ah, let's see that, and
then I would I would be rather disappointed. But then
you'd feel like there's a monkey in there. Oh, such
(02:15):
data ism, such surrealism. Well the monkey, y know, well
it would be used in a more surreal fashion. I imagine,
that's right. Yeah, but but yeah, and so in this
podcast we are going to talk about the hangover, the
the the actual hangover, what what's going on in it? Wait,
you can do to prevent it to well, I mean
the big thing you can do to prevent it, of course,
is to do not drink, and and hopefully too, as
we discussed the uh the wages of of drinking, you will, um,
(02:39):
you know, we're definitely not encouraging you to do. In fact,
if anything that should I mean just reading over it
and research again, I'm like, man, and maybe I shouldn't,
you know, I should just skip everything? Well right right,
by the end of this podcast, you'll have a really
good idea of why it's super creepy. Actually, this hangover
process that happens to your body is basically like a
big talk six spill that your body has to clean up.
(03:02):
And then you'll also understand why you keep doing it.
So we'll cover that. But first of all, let's talk
about what this feels like. What's a hangover to you? Well,
I mean, there's a whole list of of things that
it feels like a whole list of symptoms, and it
depends a lot of It depends on exactly how this
chemical spill plays out inside your body. There are several
(03:22):
different factors that contribute to it, but the symptoms generally
fall out like this headache obviously, and granted that can
range from a slight headache and oh, I had a
little bit much too much to drink last night headache
to a my skull is about to fall in half headache. Yes,
poor sense of overall well being, you know the words.
You just wake up and you just feel crappy, sensitivity
(03:42):
to light and sound, so you wake up. Was I
bid by a vampire? Or did I just drink a lot?
You don't know. Diarrhea, loss of appetite, trembling, uh, not good,
nausea of course, fatigue, increased heart rate and blood pressure, dehydration,
dry mouth, extreme thirst, dry eyes. And this is really
(04:03):
key and will discuss later on this dehydration because this
has a lot to do with how you're feeling overall. Uh.
Trouble concentrating, which is an interesting one because I was
I was looking around, um and I couldn't find anything
to back me up. In this. So this is one
of those cases where I might have to say, hey, readers, listeners, rather, uh,
if you have anything to add on this, I'd be
(04:23):
interested to hear. I found what what are you gonna
lay down on us? I found that in the in
the in the rare cases that I have been hungover,
there seems to be like a certain amount of hangover
that is conducive to concentration on work like that. There's
a certain amount. And I'm not saying it's necessarily the
hangover made made me smarter or more concentrate. Maybe it's
(04:44):
part of like you're overcompensating for the fact that you
you potentially screwed up your current, your present by what
you did in the past. So I don't know. I
think that it would be interesting to hear from other people.
Certainly could concentrate on TV watching, I'm sure a lot better.
But if you're a parent like I am, and you
if you do this foolish thing, you you have a
(05:04):
hangover and you have a splitting headache. There's just yet
concentrating is not going to happen. Uh. And then the
other ones are anxiety difficulties, sleeping, and weakness. Yeah, I
mean muscle weakness, right, Yeah, so of course it's just
all these different factors of malaise that happens. And what
can actually exacerbate this. To just keep in mind is
(05:26):
that if you drink on an empty stomach, you could
have a horrific hangover the next day if you have
a lack of sleep. Um, let's say you dance for
four hours straight. And the physical exertion is also a
part of that too. Yeah, physical exertion and you lost
a lot of the water content in your body right again,
dehydration before drinking, and then poor health, which kind of
(05:48):
makes sense, right, So if you've got the flu, it's
probably not a good idea to go on a bender exactly. Yeah,
don't compromise your body. Um. And I should also point
out the whole like that you're weak, your muscles just
don't have as much energy. I do remember one of
the the times I was hungover in college. Um, I
had to go into an acting class and they were
doing a lot of body work that day, and it
(06:09):
was there was a lot of like, we're gonna do
some yoga stuff. And this was like a decade or
so before I not a decade, but a long time
before I actually got into yoga, So it was just
pure torture, the idea, We're gonna do all these squats
and and down dogs and uh and all this. Yeah,
it's interesting you bring up the acting classes, because they do.
They love all sorts of random body warming up experiments.
(06:34):
I called them experiments because I have one teacher who
loved Marcel Marceau and so we mined for like twenty
minutes to get warmed up. I'm not kidding. And another
teacher who liked to play an album that's like a
charm and mow, um, it's supposed to be inspirational, uh
this record, and that we would march information the liberal
(06:54):
infiltration of academia. So yeah, and I'm just gonna throw
this out there. Maybe hangover yoga is a thing. Maybe somebody.
I'm sure that someone has created a hangover yoga for sure. Okay,
So let's uh talk a little more about what happens,
what happens in your body? And um, you touched on
this earlier and you told us it was important that
(07:16):
it is. It's this thing called the diuretic effect, right,
alcohol sends your kidneys a message to send water directly
to the bladder instead of reabsorbing it into the body. Okay,
that's that's why when you have a beer, you know,
twenty minutes later, you all of a sudden you have
to go to the bathroom. Yeah, this is why. Well, yeah,
it just becomes a NonStop trip back and forth to pee. Yeah.
That's why the longer than night goes on, the harder
(07:38):
it is to go use the bathroom at a bar
in a reasonable amount of time, right, because everybody's cued up.
And it's why the floor in the men's room at
any given bar is like an inch deep in urine. Yeah,
there you go. Another great reason to go and celebrating
your local pub or bar. And this is called vasopressin inhibition.
And this is a really interesting alcohol causes four times
(08:01):
as much liquid to be lost as gained. Yeah, there
are studies that showed the drinking about two d and
fifty million liters of an alcoholic beverage caused the body
to expel eight hundred to a thousand million liters of water. Yes,
so there you go. Okay, so what's the big result
of this is that you feel like a sun droid
to me the next day, you are very dehydrated. That's
the whole that's you know, your eyes feel dry, your
(08:22):
mouth feels dry, so that kind of sound, you know. Yeah,
and and of course your mouth feels like something died
in it too. Yeah, there's there's some smells that we're
not going to go into because we're gonna talk more
about how your body actually feels. The creepiest part is
that your organs are responsible for giving you a head
splitting headache because they essentially steal water from your brain,
(08:43):
causing it to decrease in size and pull on the
membranes that connect the brain to the skull, causing the pain. Yeah,
so they're they're like, look, there's a water shortage. Uh,
us lower organs really need all the goods brain you're
just gonna have to make do you got us into
this anyway? So uh yeah, you you're not gonna think
today anyway because you're hungover. So we're just gonna go
(09:03):
ahead and uh shrink your brain here. Also, because you've
been a p machine again thanks to that directic effect
of alcohol. If you've lost potassium, sodium, and glucose, which
we know as a source of energy and all, this
can result in fatigue nausea and motor skills pross of
saik a toddler. Well, what was that last part that
(09:24):
you could have the motor skills pross of a talking essentially,
because you know you have your you know, woken up
in the morning and a night of debauchery and said
to yourself, Oh, that's awful. You managed to get your
head up off the pillow and then you just start
banging into door frames everywhere. Well that's me all the
time anyway, and not the debauchery part, but just waking
up and stumbling over things. Okay, well made worse by alcohol. Yeah, yeah,
(09:48):
I'm a klutz anyway, so if I was, if I'm hungover,
then God help me. Another thing you have to worry
about when you have alcohol. It's something called the congenera effect.
And congenders are byproducts of fermentation in some alcohols. Uh,
you'll encounter these and generally red wines and dark liquors
such as your bourbons, your brandise, your whiskey, enough, your tequila.
(10:09):
These are just additional toxins that can have various effects
on the body. Right, And Okay, the the darker the
alcohol like rum or red wine, the more congenerous are
in it. So if you've got white wine or vodka,
you're actually going to be imbibing less congenerous, which is
a good thing. In fact, there was one study that
(10:30):
said that thirty three of those who drink an amount
of bourbon relative to their body weight reported a severe hangover,
compared to three percent of those who drink the same
amount of vodka. Not to say that clear liquors is
a path to salvation, because because ever clear is pure
looking at the driven snow, but everyone knows that it's
brewed in the devil's vowels, so nicely put yeah, yeah, um.
(10:52):
And then we know, of course that mixing is a
bad idea, right right, Yeah. I like that they have
all the things right, like beer before wine, go to bed,
fine line before beer, nothing to fear. I'm right now.
I can't remember one of them is bad, but I
don't remember which. At any rate, they say, don't mix, right.
If you're if you're having a margarite, to stick to marguarite.
If you're having read wine, stick to red wine. Don't
(11:13):
try and uh, you know, and earn all your merit
badges in one night. That's right, because all those merit
badges come with different points of toxicity, right, So you're
basically just creating a little toxicity cocktail for your body
to try to clean up the next day. Also, it
should be noted carbonation, you know, such as you know
in beer's, ciders, et cetera. These actually speed up the
(11:35):
absorption of alcohol that's my body. So think about that.
Is it fizzing? Is it dark? I don't know, you
think twice maybe, because that's actually it's going to give
the body less time and usual to process the toxins. Yeah,
and there's nothing wrong with beer in and of itself,
but pounding it several per hours probably not a good
idea because it actually takes your body one hour process
(11:57):
a drink like a beer, a glass of beer or
a glass suppline. Well, you know what a houseman said
about beer. What he said, beer has done more than
Milton can to justify God's ways to man, I always
like that one. He's of course referring to Milton, who
paradise loss to justify the ways of god demands. So nice,
that's just a little a set. I don't I'm actually
not a beer drinker, but I like that quick you
(12:18):
know that that that makes me think about when we
can't remember which podcast it was, but we talked about
how coffee houses really helped to usher in the age
of enlightenment because before everyone has just drunk off their butts, right,
because beer was sometimes more readily available than clean water.
And so yeah, you know, put a little caffeine and
(12:39):
then and all of a sudden people perk up and
the ideas start flowing. So yeah, and also it was
the you know, it's an age like you don't like
your current state. It's like, I don't really like where
my mind's at. I want to change it. What should
I do? Well, there's the beer option, and then there's nothing,
so I better go with the beer option. Now there
are a lot more options. There's there's the upper and
the downer, there's the coffee, there's the drink. People began
to go more and more with the upper, with the
(13:01):
coffee especially. Yeah, and then, of course we won't talk
about it right now, but a little bit we'll talk
about why you actually shouldn't mix you're caffeine with your alcohol.
But let's talk about something that is quite a menace.
It is as hyde. It's it's quite a bogger, right,
It's a it's creative when alcohol and the liver is
broken down, and it's more toxic than alcohol itself, and
(13:23):
usually the toxin is neutralized when it bonds to substances
called glutathione and nasatelda hide de hydrogen ase. But when
large amounts of alcohol enter the system, liver stores of
glutathion quickly run out and causes astel to hide, to
build up in the body and linger for for long
periods of time. Okay, so that's why, um, this is
(13:44):
really important because you just have a finite store of
basically these other little agents that come in and they
are the clamp crew and they whisk everything away. So
the more alcohol you pour into that, the more you're
going to deplete the clean up agents. And that's when
you get into trouble because you've got the acetelda hide
just sitting there and storing up. So it also turns
out that women have less stores of glutoth ione and
(14:06):
acetel to hide dehydrogen ese, which makes their hangover to
worse because it takes longer for the body to break
down the alcohol. In case anybody's wondering, I know, sometimes
people think that it has to do with body weight,
and you know, certainly that is a factor. But the
reason why women are essentially lightweights is because they don't
have as much as that cleanup crew hanging out in
(14:26):
their liver. It's also worth noting that sistine alright, cisticine
is actually hanging out with the glutoth ione and helps
to clean up. Yea, eggs contain a large amount of it. Yeah,
so if you the whole thing about have a big
breakfast after you had a night of drinking, Yeah, there's
some truth to that because I think you know, big
plate of eggs is going to have a lot of
sustaining in it, right, and that will help kind of
(14:47):
whisk it all out of your system. Um, but let's
talk about this this last element which is really important
about what's happening inside your body. Glutamine rebound. Yes, this
is basically the the idea that uh that you've been
you've been taking into pressant all night in the form
of the alcohol, and then once you get home, you've
stopped drinking, you want to sleep, but your body is
(15:10):
now rebounding from all that depression. That's right. I'll call
it inhibiting gluta mine, which is one of the body's
natural stimulants. So when the drinker stops drinking and the
body tries to make up for the lost time by
producing more glutamen, and the net net is that your
brain is really busy trying to recalibrate your body and
therefore not resting during sleep. Right It's kind of like
(15:32):
the cat has been sleeping all day, all afternoon while
you've been running around. Now you want to sleep, but
now the cat is awake. In the brain is the
cat and it wants to play with a mouse right now.
But yeah, I mean that's what leads to tremors, anxiety.
This just general feeling of malai's restlessness and increase blood pressure,
(15:53):
which is really important I think for people understand if
they've got some risk factors there. And of course we
need to talk about poopy tubes. I'm talking about diarrhea. Yes,
what's the what's the rationale on this? Why should that
have anything to do with like, because I mean it
seems on one level, it's like this shouldn't really concern
you intestines. This is this is just between my my,
(16:15):
my brain, my liver, and my bladder. Like you you
shouldn't even be a part of this discussion. Why are
you butting in? Okay, because the stommic the intestines are like, hey,
I've been poisoned, essentially because the alcohol is absorbed through
the stomach lining and then those cells become irritated, right,
and they just want to get everything out there, like
something is wrong here. Let's just clear it out. Yeah,
(16:35):
let's just go ahead and dump it all out. Also,
alcohol promote secretion of hydrochloric acid in the stomach um,
eventually causing the nerves to send a message to the
brain that the stomachs contents are hurting the body and
must be expelled through vomit. Okay, okay, So that's why
sometimes people are clutching out the porcelain. God. Yeah, And
it's it's like when you if you have any kind
(16:56):
of like food poisoning situation, it's like the bodies like
something ain't working. Everybody the out the front, out the back,
I don't care. Whichever is easy is find the nearest exit.
You you were you were told to note it when
you entered the plane. Now it's time to leave. That's
why we're shutting this down. Yeah, alright, So those are
some of the basics about what's happening, these awful things
that are happening in your body. We're going to talk
(17:16):
about the I will never do that again syndrome a
k a. Rose colored beer goggles. Rose colored beer goggles. Yes,
now this is this is easy for anyone to imagine.
Who's who's certainly who's ever had a little too much
to drink, or even if you've just seen a TV
show or a movie where someone has had too much
to drink, there comes that that that moment in the
(17:37):
morning after where someone's head feels like it's splitting in
half or their their bodies evacuating at both ends. Uh,
you know they're in a horrible state and they're clearly thinking,
or you're clearly thinking, I Am never doing that again,
because no matter how good it I felt last night,
at any given moment, it's not worth how I'm feeling now. Yeah,
(17:59):
it's true. For at least an hour up to possibly
like I don't know, days, weeks, months afterward, you may
be in this sort of shame spiral of I will
never do that again, and I was a complete drunken
stein um and you know it's it just never will
happen again. I will never behave in such a way,
(18:19):
and then it happens again. And this is very common,
right yeah, I mean this. You can expand this out
to anything humans do well. I mean I always keep
making the same mistakes we never learned, and we are
pretty bad at weighing long term effects versus instant gratification.
Oh yeah, our ulysses packed with ourselves is usually no
one void when it comes to alcohol. But just to
(18:40):
throw some stats at you, more than seventy five of
alcohol consumers have experienced to hang over at least once,
have one at least every month. In percent of you
crazy college students feel symptoms weekly, which is not a
big surprise. So again, obviously people keep coming back to
the trough when it comes to alcohol, and why do
they do it? Positive memory bias. That's right. It turns
(19:01):
out you are a very unreliable witness when it comes
to you and drinking the previous nights bender might have
seemed far more entertaining than it actually was, and you
overrate the experience so that it now has a positive
memory bias. Okay. Um. Researcher Diane Logan wrote a her
findings in a paper for the Journal of Addictive Behavior,
saying quote what goes on in some people's minds is, hey,
(19:24):
I've learned my lesson, things will be better next time.
Suddenly they think urinating on myself, it's not really that bad,
and it's already happened a couple of times. Um, And
this is what we call cognitive dissonance, right, yeah. Uh.
And then again Logan says, it's kind of where the
brain is at battle with itself. So if I'm a
good upstanding person, those bad behaviors from the night before
(19:47):
just don't quite fit together. Either I have to change
my view of myself, which is really important with cognitive dissonance, right,
or I have to change my view of the actual
activity that occurred. So it's that changed battle we spoke
of just ceases to exist because you can negate it
by explaining away the events of your transgressions as saying,
(20:08):
for instance, like, oh, well, that's just the cultural norm.
This happens, right, peeing on yourself it happens. But I
don't know that's actually I don't know how cultural norm
that is. Well, I feel like it's more I mean,
it's gonna happen, like you say, sooner or later, you're
gonna be on yourself. There's no avoiding it. I kind
of I'm gonna say a circumstance or another I was
gonna say, perhaps this is a gender difference. Okay, I
(20:31):
don't know. Um, So there you go. That's that's why
we keep coming back to the alcohol trop or at
least some of us do, even though we've had a
horrible experience. Uh. You know, we might feel like we're
dying the next day because we overrate the experience of
one we actually had a buzz. Alright, So this is
what I want to know. Can you you, Robert Lamb,
(20:51):
can you cure a hangover? Um? It depends what you
mean by cure. Can I help it go away in time? Yes?
Because it will go away in time? Um. But but
the key thing there is the time there's there there's
unfortunately for for those that are hungover. Uh, there's no
real magic cure like uh. One of the big things
(21:15):
is water both as a preventative and is a treatment
for the for the hangover. Okay, so there's no no
cure except for time. Time heals all wounds. Right, but
you can be made more comfortable, yes, yeah? And what
what water is key? Because as we discussed, dehydration is
a huge part of this. So if you're drinking more
water before and endearing and after you've had alcohol, you're
(21:37):
gonna be better off in the long run. I mean,
this is the kind of thing that one's older brother
or friend is you know, probably told you in the
wee early days of your drinking, yeah, or your grandmother,
you know, like, have a have a glass of water
between drinks, or if you're feeling like the one I
remember hearing when I was younger was um but though
(21:57):
of a drinking age was if you've finished drinking for
the evening and you feel kind of weird, you know,
drink drink water, and then when you feel like you
cannot drink anymore water, have another glass of water, because
you're just gonna be better off in the long run
for your organs, for your brain, everything. Yeah. Just remember
your poor brain being robbed of water, so try to
(22:17):
replenish that and you will probably won't have a hangover,
but of course that depends on how much you drink.
There is actually some really important preventative stuff you can
do too, Yeah, and I was suppresed by this actually
eating large fatty meals. Yeah, this is interesting because it's
sometimes mentioned as a cure, but it's like, oh, you're
feeling hungover, better, hit the fries, cook, get some tater tots.
(22:39):
So this is not true in the morning after, right,
not not true the morning after, but as a preventative
before that's where it makes a difference. You gotta have
that stuff already down there to soak it up. That's right.
It actually can slow the absorption of alcohol if you
have a big fatty meal beforehand. And of course hydrating
beforehand is really important. In fact, for every drink, you
should have one glass of water. Right, Actually, you just
(23:00):
mentioned that and this was interesting too. So you know
all these different hangover solution pills, the sort of magic
pills you can take to supposedly help you with your hangover. Um,
some of those do actually have some vitamins that are helpful,
because you know, they're various vitamins, nutritious things that are
that are lost during the night the unique to replenish.
But for the most part you'll find that these pills
(23:22):
are saying like, all right, take one of these every
two hours with like three glasses of water or something. Yeah,
it's the water that's helping. If that's a pill is
largely incidental. It's not a magic pill at all. Yeah. Um,
but you know, of course vitamins can help, right, especially
if the next day you are you know, been robbed
if your potassium. Yeah, eat banana, yeah, eat banana. Yeah.
So the next day, eat a banana, have some eggs.
(23:44):
As you said, that's sister scene is actually going to
clean things up pretty well for you. And uh, you know,
of course water water, water, what else we owe sports
drinks because they actually contain the electro lights and sugars
and salts to help you balance. And if you if
you were and if you were stupid enough to get
yourself hungover, then you deserve to have to drink one
of those horrible sports drinks. Consider it part of your
(24:05):
punishment for what you did. The range sugar water tastes bad, sure,
but you earned it, so that's your prize hangover. And
in fact, you should drink it in public, go outside,
walk around with it, go through that a wine glass. Yeah.
See how the sex do you feel? Then? Um? But
this is another important thing to uh we mentioned it earlier. Caffeine.
(24:26):
Stay away from it because even though it will give
you a lift, you know, it's pretty momentary um and fleeting,
and it will actually rob your body of more water,
of course. And another thing to keep in mind is
because I'm thinking back to a professor I had in college,
and he's a great professor. I'm not going to name him,
but but he was a great professor. But I remember
one of his classes. One of my classmates was like,
(24:48):
you should smell its coffee cup when you go, when
you go, And I'm like, how am I gonna smell
his coffee cups? And it's like, trust me, you don't
have to try very hard. And and his his coffee
cup like reeked of alcohol, so he's having some sort
of morning combination of caffeine but also the hair of
the dog that did in right, And that's another kind
of myth. When it comes to fighting a hangover, you
(25:10):
cannot drink it away, right. All you're doing is accumulating
more toxins in your lover for it to dump out. Yeah,
and it best. You're just putting off the inevitable. You're
just kicking that drunken can down the street a little ways. Yeah.
I like that, but maybe it'll get you through first period.
I don't know, Right, Sometimes you just need to get
through that first hour. Again, not advocating this because it
is awful. Do you mentioned quote beer goggles earlier? Is
(25:32):
that really a thing? It actually is? Yeah, yeah, this
is really interesting. We have an article called there's a
mathematical formula for the beer goggles effect question mark and
neurons and the nucleus A Cummins fire when you look
at a face that you deem attractive. Okay, so that's
important to know. Alcohol by itself actually causes neurons to
fire in the nucleus it commons as well, so it
(25:55):
is stimulated just a little bit more. Right. So the
idea is that if you're drinking and you're assessing someone's
attractiveness or whether or not you feel like you I
want to talk to this person or so on and
so forth, you may have some over activity in that
area of your brain. And studies have shown the inebriated
(26:15):
study participants rated photos of strangers twenty five percent more
attractive than their sober counterparts did with the same photos.
And then there's actually apparently a mathematical formula for this
beer goggles effect, and it takes into account the lighting
level and the quality of the person's eyesight. And you know,
along with like four other factors. So there you go.
(26:40):
Beer goggles does exist for apparently for for men and women.
So there are a lot of false claims out there
about what can be done to cure a hangover, what
can be done to to to to soften its effects,
because because when you when you have a hangover, especially
severe when you're you're probably willing to pay any amount
of money for it to go away. And um, one
(27:01):
of the interesting things that ran across this from several
years back. And I don't think it's really kicked off anymore.
It doesn't really gained anymore esteem. But um, it was
invented by a business by the name of Dominique similar
and it was called a wall alcohol without liquid. Um
tell me more, which sounds a little alcohol without borders
(27:21):
or something. Yeah, alcohol without liquid. And this was the
idea that you would you would take alcohol and you
would you would turn it into an inhalable form, so
you would go up to your to the bar, I guess,
and they would hand you a like a blue velvet
style gas and you would huff the alcohol. And and
it was the marketing on this is that it's going
to be like low carb because you're not you're not.
(27:43):
It's not physical, so you can't possibly have any weight
to it, and it's you're not gonna really get get
much of a hand. Clowns show up, does a woman
carrying a log show up? Yes? And participating bars um.
But but the thing is, it turns out when scientists
were asked about this, and when when journals actually like
looked into the matter, most of this stuff it wasn't true.
(28:04):
Like the carb issue is bunk and the hangover issues
kind of tricky too, because we mentioned there's several reasons
for hangover to happen, and a number of them are
not going to really be affected by by whether you're
you're drinking it or inhaling it into your body. Yeah,
it seems like if that were actually an effective mode
of making someone drunk, that would be piped into you know,
most retail areas for instance. It may affect some of
(28:27):
the congenerous in the alcohol. I Like we said that
you know find this specifically like red wine and dark alcohols.
But but that's not going to affect the dehydration, the
diseruption of electro light branches, sleep patterns being messed with.
Uh So Yeah, it turns out it's not really um
the pie in the sky thing that the people thought
(28:48):
it was. Like I said, if it were, I'm pretty
sure the gap would be pumping it out right shopping.
I mentioned earlier in the podcast how it couldn't really
find anything to to tell me yea or nay on
the whole increased focus with hangover, um so, and which
leads me to believe that I am full of it
on that you know, or this just sort of I
think for you, this is just a unique situation. I
(29:11):
have a feeling it's it's me over compensating and being
like hangover ruining my morning. No, I'm gonna get some
work done anyway. Yeah, but I did find something um
I mentioned on Psychology Today called the hangover hypothesis, and
this basically breaks down that a night of moderate drinking
okay moderate plus a low car breakfast can improve your
(29:33):
mood and memory. Specifically, they mentioned some research from the
University of Wales that showed that people who fast and
choose to skip breakfast after drinking alcohol the night before
are less energetic big surprise, uh, and have poor mood
throughout the morning. And according to a study published in
the Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience, individuals who consume more than
four point five grams of alcohol the previous night. Uh,
(29:55):
it compounds the effects of both memory and happiness. So
they're sort of putting these together and making the argument
that moderate drinking, low car breakfasts improved memory and improved moods.
So I don't know, Yeah, of course that's all up
for interpretation. That's always the problem, right, Like once one
man's moderate is is another woman's uh way too much? Yeah,
(30:16):
and it's it's also some people can't have have zero
tolerance for alcohol on a biological level. I mean, I've
known people before that they they if they were to, say,
you know, more than a couple of SIPs, they would
be really drunk. But we're then violently my mother for instance, Yeah, yeah,
she's starched, breaking out into some sort of odd dance. Uh.
And we're talking about a quarter a couple of wine. Yeah,
(30:39):
entertaining for us. And then other people are just dangerous
and that they drink so much that you you're around
them and you're it feels like you should be keeping
up with them, but they're bottommost pit I don't know,
your tolerance builds up over time. But and then there
are others who pass out with a cheeseburger in their mouth.
Yeah yeah, I'm telling you these these are ugly pictures
(31:00):
of alcohol, and yet uh, we continue to to go
to it, right, Yeah yeah, I mean it's built up
in culture, you know. And and that's a speaking of culture,
I should I should mention that, you know, we're we
were looking around seeing if there's anything about the future
of hangovers, and unfortunately most of what I found was
just stuff about the next hangover movie, which which Gibson right.
(31:24):
But but I did find uh. I was reminded rather
of of Ian m Banks culture novels, in which the
members of the culture are like a post human um society.
There they're they're humans that have been highly that are
highly evolved, and then highly their their their physiology is
highly tinkered with. It's a post singularity situation where robots
(31:46):
do most of the works and human beings typically just
do whatever they want, they engage in whatever arts. This
is the benevolent version of the right benevent version of singularity.
The robots do most of the work, the humans come
along for the ride for occasional humanitarians, but mostly just
do what they want to do, and and so they'll
they'll typically have have drug glands in their bodies for
(32:07):
hormonal levels, chemical secretions of various uppers and downers, and
they also have the ability, and one of the characters
does this in the player of games. They can actually
bypass their system if they're drinking something they don't want
to feel the effects of it, or presumably if they're
eating for purely hedonistic reasons and they don't want to
(32:28):
actually digest it, then they can just shoot it straight
straight through, straight through, but their own little vomitorium right right,
which doesn't didn't actually exist, right, but yes, we used
to think of Roman times for a vomitorium, right, This
would be the mythical idea of a vomitorium um brought
to fruition through um through post humanism bodies. Well, and
(32:51):
as we discussed in nanimal healthcare, surely there will be
some sort of delivery system of at least nano aspirin
to help alleviate some of the symptoms of our debauchery. Yes,
in time, I can imagine like uh, nanotechnology creating if
not a true hangover cure, then something akin to it. Yeah,
all right, you heard it here first, or maybe don't.
(33:15):
In any case, I hope that that gives everybody a
good sense of what's happening in your body during a hangover.
And I hope that I'm not too loud. If you
are currently hungover and you are listening to me, I apologize. Well, hey,
let's dip into the listener mail. Alright, man, that bot
is hungover? What were you doing? Where were you robots go?
(33:38):
I know, come on, robot mail person, and I know
it's Monday, but come on, so let's see what do
we have here. Here's one from Extra Extra writes in
from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and says I was just listening
to your miss Aphonia episode and I thought I would
provide some insight from a sufferer. The sound I react
to is munching or something sticky. The sound has to
(34:00):
be below a certain volume, barely audible for me at least,
and I respond with a rage so deep I have
sometimes thought, only for a moment, about killing my father.
My specific case is very easy to deal with. Avoiding
my dad at breakfast seems to do quite well. I
feel bad for those who react to a more common noise,
especially those with a with a fight instinct. Uh, it
(34:21):
really is quite a horrible affliction. Wow. Yeah, Yeah, Okay,
I can actually can sort of under I'm not uh
for me, I don't have ms aphonia, so obviously I
don't respond so um passionately about that. But I can't
understand how certain things that are right underneath the radar
(34:41):
that you just kind of hear them are so distracting
that your brain kind of goes, what is that? Yeah,
however I don't. I guess I'm just glad that as
avoiding his or her father. Yes, don't don't actually murder
anybody because it sounds as h Yeah, and check out
the mssophone uh podcast if you haven't heard it, because
(35:02):
we do discuss various ways of dealing with it. Some
of the best are merely being aware of it and
just and you know, taking a step back and be like, whoa,
I'm totally losing it over a sound. I should not
get this mad and or kill my father, um over
the sound release chewing. It's true. So hey, if you
have something you want to share with us, you can
find us on Facebook as stuff to Blow the Mind,
(35:25):
and you can also find us on Twitter. We're blow
the Mind on Twitter, um, since we were limited by characters,
but Blow the Mind stuff to Blow the Mind, you
can find us on either with either of those handles
and uh, you know, interact with the share stuff with us,
let us know what you think about hangovers. You do
not have to share your most outlinedish hangover story, but
if you have a science thing upon it, or if
(35:46):
you have a particular cure, or even if it's like
a folk remedy that you've tried out, I would be
interested to hear how it failed. And if you do
want to share it with us but in a more
private space, yeah, or you know, want to withhold you
and right, feel free to send us an email at
Blow the Mind at has to works dot com. Be
(36:10):
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join House to Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie
wins last for me to hangover? Um definitely not this morning. Um.
(00:24):
In the last six months plus six months, yeah, yeah,
I had one personal long time actually last weekend. Yeah,
Sunday morning, which is not my usual thing. I can't
remember the last time I actually had one, because I'm
generally not a big drinker, but you know, occasionally go
to a party and somebody will have will provide the alcohol.
And it's when they don't either either they're they're new
(00:47):
to the idea of mixing up a large quantity of
a drink and then forcing them upon people, or that
or they don't understand basic chemistry or something. That's when
I encountered the disastrous effects. In this case, it was
an overly strong margharita that had been mixed up for everybody,
because like a Mexican Christmas party, it was a great party.
But but the margarita's were basically tequila and ice and
(01:08):
some sugar and and that was a bad situation. In
other cases, I've encountered. Um uh, you know, you go
to a party and someone will hand out jello shots
and they won't even solidify that they're they're so poorly mixed,
and that is generally disastrous. Okay, well I have to
say that the festive Mexican Christmas party, I feel kind
(01:29):
of relieved. I thought you were doing keg stands or something. Yeah. Yeah,
but we're definitely talking about this, uh today this podcast,
because what's coming up New Year's right, Yeah, lots of revelry,
lots of debauchery, and in fact, if your Norwegian, maybe
you even say that it could lead to va Oh yes,
this is one of the older terms for for the hangover. Yeah, yeah,
(01:52):
I mean it actually means uneasiness following debauchery. Do you
think the the hangover movies are called vessels? You over there?
Because I feel like if I was told, Hey, we're
gonna go see this movie but selgy it sounds like
a really serious Norwegian you know, black and white art film,
and I would be like, ah, let's see that, and
then I would I would be rather disappointed. But then
you'd feel like there's a monkey in there. Oh, such
(02:15):
data ism, such surrealism. Well the monkey, y know, well
it would be used in a more surreal fashion. I imagine,
that's right. Yeah, but but yeah, and so in this
podcast we are going to talk about the hangover, the
the the actual hangover, what what's going on in it? Wait,
you can do to prevent it to well, I mean
the big thing you can do to prevent it, of course,
is to do not drink, and and hopefully too, as
we discussed the uh the wages of of drinking, you will, um,
(02:39):
you know, we're definitely not encouraging you to do. In fact,
if anything that should I mean just reading over it
and research again, I'm like, man, and maybe I shouldn't,
you know, I should just skip everything? Well right right,
by the end of this podcast, you'll have a really
good idea of why it's super creepy. Actually, this hangover
process that happens to your body is basically like a
big talk six spill that your body has to clean up.
(03:02):
And then you'll also understand why you keep doing it.
So we'll cover that. But first of all, let's talk
about what this feels like. What's a hangover to you? Well,
I mean, there's a whole list of of things that
it feels like a whole list of symptoms, and it
depends a lot of It depends on exactly how this
chemical spill plays out inside your body. There are several
(03:22):
different factors that contribute to it, but the symptoms generally
fall out like this headache obviously, and granted that can
range from a slight headache and oh, I had a
little bit much too much to drink last night headache
to a my skull is about to fall in half headache. Yes,
poor sense of overall well being, you know the words.
You just wake up and you just feel crappy, sensitivity
(03:42):
to light and sound, so you wake up. Was I
bid by a vampire? Or did I just drink a lot?
You don't know. Diarrhea, loss of appetite, trembling, uh, not good,
nausea of course, fatigue, increased heart rate and blood pressure, dehydration,
dry mouth, extreme thirst, dry eyes. And this is really
(04:03):
key and will discuss later on this dehydration because this
has a lot to do with how you're feeling overall. Uh.
Trouble concentrating, which is an interesting one because I was
I was looking around, um and I couldn't find anything
to back me up. In this. So this is one
of those cases where I might have to say, hey, readers, listeners, rather, uh,
if you have anything to add on this, I'd be
(04:23):
interested to hear. I found what what are you gonna
lay down on us? I found that in the in
the in the rare cases that I have been hungover,
there seems to be like a certain amount of hangover
that is conducive to concentration on work like that. There's
a certain amount. And I'm not saying it's necessarily the
hangover made made me smarter or more concentrate. Maybe it's
(04:44):
part of like you're overcompensating for the fact that you
you potentially screwed up your current, your present by what
you did in the past. So I don't know. I
think that it would be interesting to hear from other people.
Certainly could concentrate on TV watching, I'm sure a lot better.
But if you're a parent like I am, and you
if you do this foolish thing, you you have a
(05:04):
hangover and you have a splitting headache. There's just yet
concentrating is not going to happen. Uh. And then the
other ones are anxiety difficulties, sleeping, and weakness. Yeah, I
mean muscle weakness, right, Yeah, so of course it's just
all these different factors of malaise that happens. And what
can actually exacerbate this. To just keep in mind is
(05:26):
that if you drink on an empty stomach, you could
have a horrific hangover the next day if you have
a lack of sleep. Um, let's say you dance for
four hours straight. And the physical exertion is also a
part of that too. Yeah, physical exertion and you lost
a lot of the water content in your body right again,
dehydration before drinking, and then poor health, which kind of
(05:48):
makes sense, right, So if you've got the flu, it's
probably not a good idea to go on a bender exactly. Yeah,
don't compromise your body. Um. And I should also point
out the whole like that you're weak, your muscles just
don't have as much energy. I do remember one of
the the times I was hungover in college. Um, I
had to go into an acting class and they were
doing a lot of body work that day, and it
(06:09):
was there was a lot of like, we're gonna do
some yoga stuff. And this was like a decade or
so before I not a decade, but a long time
before I actually got into yoga, So it was just
pure torture, the idea, We're gonna do all these squats
and and down dogs and uh and all this. Yeah,
it's interesting you bring up the acting classes, because they do.
They love all sorts of random body warming up experiments.
(06:34):
I called them experiments because I have one teacher who
loved Marcel Marceau and so we mined for like twenty
minutes to get warmed up. I'm not kidding. And another
teacher who liked to play an album that's like a
charm and mow, um, it's supposed to be inspirational, uh
this record, and that we would march information the liberal
(06:54):
infiltration of academia. So yeah, and I'm just gonna throw
this out there. Maybe hangover yoga is a thing. Maybe somebody.
I'm sure that someone has created a hangover yoga for sure. Okay,
So let's uh talk a little more about what happens,
what happens in your body? And um, you touched on
this earlier and you told us it was important that
(07:16):
it is. It's this thing called the diuretic effect, right,
alcohol sends your kidneys a message to send water directly
to the bladder instead of reabsorbing it into the body. Okay,
that's that's why when you have a beer, you know,
twenty minutes later, you all of a sudden you have
to go to the bathroom. Yeah, this is why. Well, yeah,
it just becomes a NonStop trip back and forth to pee. Yeah.
That's why the longer than night goes on, the harder
(07:38):
it is to go use the bathroom at a bar
in a reasonable amount of time, right, because everybody's cued up.
And it's why the floor in the men's room at
any given bar is like an inch deep in urine. Yeah,
there you go. Another great reason to go and celebrating
your local pub or bar. And this is called vasopressin inhibition.
And this is a really interesting alcohol causes four times
(08:01):
as much liquid to be lost as gained. Yeah, there
are studies that showed the drinking about two d and
fifty million liters of an alcoholic beverage caused the body
to expel eight hundred to a thousand million liters of water. Yes,
so there you go. Okay, so what's the big result
of this is that you feel like a sun droid
to me the next day, you are very dehydrated. That's
the whole that's you know, your eyes feel dry, your
(08:22):
mouth feels dry, so that kind of sound, you know. Yeah,
and and of course your mouth feels like something died
in it too. Yeah, there's there's some smells that we're
not going to go into because we're gonna talk more
about how your body actually feels. The creepiest part is
that your organs are responsible for giving you a head
splitting headache because they essentially steal water from your brain,
(08:43):
causing it to decrease in size and pull on the
membranes that connect the brain to the skull, causing the pain. Yeah,
so they're they're like, look, there's a water shortage. Uh,
us lower organs really need all the goods brain you're
just gonna have to make do you got us into
this anyway? So uh yeah, you you're not gonna think
today anyway because you're hungover. So we're just gonna go
(09:03):
ahead and uh shrink your brain here. Also, because you've
been a p machine again thanks to that directic effect
of alcohol. If you've lost potassium, sodium, and glucose, which
we know as a source of energy and all, this
can result in fatigue nausea and motor skills pross of
saik a toddler. Well, what was that last part that
(09:24):
you could have the motor skills pross of a talking essentially,
because you know you have your you know, woken up
in the morning and a night of debauchery and said
to yourself, Oh, that's awful. You managed to get your
head up off the pillow and then you just start
banging into door frames everywhere. Well that's me all the
time anyway, and not the debauchery part, but just waking
up and stumbling over things. Okay, well made worse by alcohol. Yeah, yeah,
(09:48):
I'm a klutz anyway, so if I was, if I'm hungover,
then God help me. Another thing you have to worry
about when you have alcohol. It's something called the congenera effect.
And congenders are byproducts of fermentation in some alcohols. Uh,
you'll encounter these and generally red wines and dark liquors
such as your bourbons, your brandise, your whiskey, enough, your tequila.
(10:09):
These are just additional toxins that can have various effects
on the body. Right, And Okay, the the darker the
alcohol like rum or red wine, the more congenerous are
in it. So if you've got white wine or vodka,
you're actually going to be imbibing less congenerous, which is
a good thing. In fact, there was one study that
(10:30):
said that thirty three of those who drink an amount
of bourbon relative to their body weight reported a severe hangover,
compared to three percent of those who drink the same
amount of vodka. Not to say that clear liquors is
a path to salvation, because because ever clear is pure
looking at the driven snow, but everyone knows that it's
brewed in the devil's vowels, so nicely put yeah, yeah, um.
(10:52):
And then we know, of course that mixing is a
bad idea, right right, Yeah. I like that they have
all the things right, like beer before wine, go to bed,
fine line before beer, nothing to fear. I'm right now.
I can't remember one of them is bad, but I
don't remember which. At any rate, they say, don't mix, right.
If you're if you're having a margarite, to stick to marguarite.
If you're having read wine, stick to red wine. Don't
(11:13):
try and uh, you know, and earn all your merit
badges in one night. That's right, because all those merit
badges come with different points of toxicity, right, So you're
basically just creating a little toxicity cocktail for your body
to try to clean up the next day. Also, it
should be noted carbonation, you know, such as you know
in beer's, ciders, et cetera. These actually speed up the
(11:35):
absorption of alcohol that's my body. So think about that.
Is it fizzing? Is it dark? I don't know, you
think twice maybe, because that's actually it's going to give
the body less time and usual to process the toxins. Yeah,
and there's nothing wrong with beer in and of itself,
but pounding it several per hours probably not a good
idea because it actually takes your body one hour process
(11:57):
a drink like a beer, a glass of beer or
a glass suppline. Well, you know what a houseman said
about beer. What he said, beer has done more than
Milton can to justify God's ways to man, I always
like that one. He's of course referring to Milton, who
paradise loss to justify the ways of god demands. So nice,
that's just a little a set. I don't I'm actually
not a beer drinker, but I like that quick you
(12:18):
know that that that makes me think about when we
can't remember which podcast it was, but we talked about
how coffee houses really helped to usher in the age
of enlightenment because before everyone has just drunk off their butts, right,
because beer was sometimes more readily available than clean water.
And so yeah, you know, put a little caffeine and
(12:39):
then and all of a sudden people perk up and
the ideas start flowing. So yeah, and also it was
the you know, it's an age like you don't like
your current state. It's like, I don't really like where
my mind's at. I want to change it. What should
I do? Well, there's the beer option, and then there's nothing,
so I better go with the beer option. Now there
are a lot more options. There's there's the upper and
the downer, there's the coffee, there's the drink. People began
to go more and more with the upper, with the
(13:01):
coffee especially. Yeah, and then, of course we won't talk
about it right now, but a little bit we'll talk
about why you actually shouldn't mix you're caffeine with your alcohol.
But let's talk about something that is quite a menace.
It is as hyde. It's it's quite a bogger, right,
It's a it's creative when alcohol and the liver is
broken down, and it's more toxic than alcohol itself, and
(13:23):
usually the toxin is neutralized when it bonds to substances
called glutathione and nasatelda hide de hydrogen ase. But when
large amounts of alcohol enter the system, liver stores of
glutathion quickly run out and causes astel to hide, to
build up in the body and linger for for long
periods of time. Okay, so that's why, um, this is
(13:44):
really important because you just have a finite store of
basically these other little agents that come in and they
are the clamp crew and they whisk everything away. So
the more alcohol you pour into that, the more you're
going to deplete the clean up agents. And that's when
you get into trouble because you've got the acetelda hide
just sitting there and storing up. So it also turns
out that women have less stores of glutoth ione and
(14:06):
acetel to hide dehydrogen ese, which makes their hangover to
worse because it takes longer for the body to break
down the alcohol. In case anybody's wondering, I know, sometimes
people think that it has to do with body weight,
and you know, certainly that is a factor. But the
reason why women are essentially lightweights is because they don't
have as much as that cleanup crew hanging out in
(14:26):
their liver. It's also worth noting that sistine alright, cisticine
is actually hanging out with the glutoth ione and helps
to clean up. Yea, eggs contain a large amount of it. Yeah,
so if you the whole thing about have a big
breakfast after you had a night of drinking, Yeah, there's
some truth to that because I think you know, big
plate of eggs is going to have a lot of
sustaining in it, right, and that will help kind of
(14:47):
whisk it all out of your system. Um, but let's
talk about this this last element which is really important
about what's happening inside your body. Glutamine rebound. Yes, this
is basically the the idea that uh that you've been
you've been taking into pressant all night in the form
of the alcohol, and then once you get home, you've
stopped drinking, you want to sleep, but your body is
(15:10):
now rebounding from all that depression. That's right. I'll call
it inhibiting gluta mine, which is one of the body's
natural stimulants. So when the drinker stops drinking and the
body tries to make up for the lost time by
producing more glutamen, and the net net is that your
brain is really busy trying to recalibrate your body and
therefore not resting during sleep. Right It's kind of like
(15:32):
the cat has been sleeping all day, all afternoon while
you've been running around. Now you want to sleep, but
now the cat is awake. In the brain is the
cat and it wants to play with a mouse right now.
But yeah, I mean that's what leads to tremors, anxiety.
This just general feeling of malai's restlessness and increase blood pressure,
(15:53):
which is really important I think for people understand if
they've got some risk factors there. And of course we
need to talk about poopy tubes. I'm talking about diarrhea. Yes,
what's the what's the rationale on this? Why should that
have anything to do with like, because I mean it
seems on one level, it's like this shouldn't really concern
you intestines. This is this is just between my my,
(16:15):
my brain, my liver, and my bladder. Like you you
shouldn't even be a part of this discussion. Why are
you butting in? Okay, because the stommic the intestines are like, hey,
I've been poisoned, essentially because the alcohol is absorbed through
the stomach lining and then those cells become irritated, right,
and they just want to get everything out there, like
something is wrong here. Let's just clear it out. Yeah,
(16:35):
let's just go ahead and dump it all out. Also,
alcohol promote secretion of hydrochloric acid in the stomach um,
eventually causing the nerves to send a message to the
brain that the stomachs contents are hurting the body and
must be expelled through vomit. Okay, okay, So that's why
sometimes people are clutching out the porcelain. God. Yeah, And
it's it's like when you if you have any kind
(16:56):
of like food poisoning situation, it's like the bodies like
something ain't working. Everybody the out the front, out the back,
I don't care. Whichever is easy is find the nearest exit.
You you were you were told to note it when
you entered the plane. Now it's time to leave. That's
why we're shutting this down. Yeah, alright, So those are
some of the basics about what's happening, these awful things
that are happening in your body. We're going to talk
(17:16):
about the I will never do that again syndrome a
k a. Rose colored beer goggles. Rose colored beer goggles. Yes,
now this is this is easy for anyone to imagine.
Who's who's certainly who's ever had a little too much
to drink, or even if you've just seen a TV
show or a movie where someone has had too much
to drink, there comes that that that moment in the
(17:37):
morning after where someone's head feels like it's splitting in
half or their their bodies evacuating at both ends. Uh,
you know they're in a horrible state and they're clearly thinking,
or you're clearly thinking, I Am never doing that again,
because no matter how good it I felt last night,
at any given moment, it's not worth how I'm feeling now. Yeah,
(17:59):
it's true. For at least an hour up to possibly
like I don't know, days, weeks, months afterward, you may
be in this sort of shame spiral of I will
never do that again, and I was a complete drunken
stein um and you know it's it just never will
happen again. I will never behave in such a way,
(18:19):
and then it happens again. And this is very common,
right yeah, I mean this. You can expand this out
to anything humans do well. I mean I always keep
making the same mistakes we never learned, and we are
pretty bad at weighing long term effects versus instant gratification.
Oh yeah, our ulysses packed with ourselves is usually no
one void when it comes to alcohol. But just to
(18:40):
throw some stats at you, more than seventy five of
alcohol consumers have experienced to hang over at least once,
have one at least every month. In percent of you
crazy college students feel symptoms weekly, which is not a
big surprise. So again, obviously people keep coming back to
the trough when it comes to alcohol, and why do
they do it? Positive memory bias. That's right. It turns
(19:01):
out you are a very unreliable witness when it comes
to you and drinking the previous nights bender might have
seemed far more entertaining than it actually was, and you
overrate the experience so that it now has a positive
memory bias. Okay. Um. Researcher Diane Logan wrote a her
findings in a paper for the Journal of Addictive Behavior,
saying quote what goes on in some people's minds is, hey,
(19:24):
I've learned my lesson, things will be better next time.
Suddenly they think urinating on myself, it's not really that bad,
and it's already happened a couple of times. Um, And
this is what we call cognitive dissonance, right, yeah. Uh.
And then again Logan says, it's kind of where the
brain is at battle with itself. So if I'm a
good upstanding person, those bad behaviors from the night before
(19:47):
just don't quite fit together. Either I have to change
my view of myself, which is really important with cognitive dissonance, right,
or I have to change my view of the actual
activity that occurred. So it's that changed battle we spoke
of just ceases to exist because you can negate it
by explaining away the events of your transgressions as saying,
(20:08):
for instance, like, oh, well, that's just the cultural norm.
This happens, right, peeing on yourself it happens. But I
don't know that's actually I don't know how cultural norm
that is. Well, I feel like it's more I mean,
it's gonna happen, like you say, sooner or later, you're
gonna be on yourself. There's no avoiding it. I kind
of I'm gonna say a circumstance or another I was
gonna say, perhaps this is a gender difference. Okay, I
(20:31):
don't know. Um, So there you go. That's that's why
we keep coming back to the alcohol trop or at
least some of us do, even though we've had a
horrible experience. Uh. You know, we might feel like we're
dying the next day because we overrate the experience of
one we actually had a buzz. Alright, So this is
what I want to know. Can you you, Robert Lamb,
(20:51):
can you cure a hangover? Um? It depends what you
mean by cure. Can I help it go away in time? Yes?
Because it will go away in time? Um. But but
the key thing there is the time there's there there's
unfortunately for for those that are hungover. Uh, there's no
real magic cure like uh. One of the big things
(21:15):
is water both as a preventative and is a treatment
for the for the hangover. Okay, so there's no no
cure except for time. Time heals all wounds. Right, but
you can be made more comfortable, yes, yeah? And what
what water is key? Because as we discussed, dehydration is
a huge part of this. So if you're drinking more
water before and endearing and after you've had alcohol, you're
(21:37):
gonna be better off in the long run. I mean,
this is the kind of thing that one's older brother
or friend is you know, probably told you in the
wee early days of your drinking, yeah, or your grandmother,
you know, like, have a have a glass of water
between drinks, or if you're feeling like the one I
remember hearing when I was younger was um but though
(21:57):
of a drinking age was if you've finished drinking for
the evening and you feel kind of weird, you know,
drink drink water, and then when you feel like you
cannot drink anymore water, have another glass of water, because
you're just gonna be better off in the long run
for your organs, for your brain, everything. Yeah. Just remember
your poor brain being robbed of water, so try to
(22:17):
replenish that and you will probably won't have a hangover,
but of course that depends on how much you drink.
There is actually some really important preventative stuff you can
do too, Yeah, and I was suppresed by this actually
eating large fatty meals. Yeah, this is interesting because it's
sometimes mentioned as a cure, but it's like, oh, you're
feeling hungover, better, hit the fries, cook, get some tater tots.
(22:39):
So this is not true in the morning after, right,
not not true the morning after, but as a preventative
before that's where it makes a difference. You gotta have
that stuff already down there to soak it up. That's right.
It actually can slow the absorption of alcohol if you
have a big fatty meal beforehand. And of course hydrating
beforehand is really important. In fact, for every drink, you
should have one glass of water. Right, Actually, you just
(23:00):
mentioned that and this was interesting too. So you know
all these different hangover solution pills, the sort of magic
pills you can take to supposedly help you with your hangover. Um,
some of those do actually have some vitamins that are helpful,
because you know, they're various vitamins, nutritious things that are
that are lost during the night the unique to replenish.
But for the most part you'll find that these pills
(23:22):
are saying like, all right, take one of these every
two hours with like three glasses of water or something. Yeah,
it's the water that's helping. If that's a pill is
largely incidental. It's not a magic pill at all. Yeah. Um,
but you know, of course vitamins can help, right, especially
if the next day you are you know, been robbed
if your potassium. Yeah, eat banana, yeah, eat banana. Yeah.
So the next day, eat a banana, have some eggs.
(23:44):
As you said, that's sister scene is actually going to
clean things up pretty well for you. And uh, you know,
of course water water, water, what else we owe sports
drinks because they actually contain the electro lights and sugars
and salts to help you balance. And if you if
you were and if you were stupid enough to get
yourself hungover, then you deserve to have to drink one
of those horrible sports drinks. Consider it part of your
(24:05):
punishment for what you did. The range sugar water tastes bad, sure,
but you earned it, so that's your prize hangover. And
in fact, you should drink it in public, go outside,
walk around with it, go through that a wine glass. Yeah.
See how the sex do you feel? Then? Um? But
this is another important thing to uh we mentioned it earlier. Caffeine.
(24:26):
Stay away from it because even though it will give
you a lift, you know, it's pretty momentary um and fleeting,
and it will actually rob your body of more water,
of course. And another thing to keep in mind is
because I'm thinking back to a professor I had in college,
and he's a great professor. I'm not going to name him,
but but he was a great professor. But I remember
one of his classes. One of my classmates was like,
(24:48):
you should smell its coffee cup when you go, when
you go, And I'm like, how am I gonna smell
his coffee cups? And it's like, trust me, you don't
have to try very hard. And and his his coffee
cup like reeked of alcohol, so he's having some sort
of morning combination of caffeine but also the hair of
the dog that did in right, And that's another kind
of myth. When it comes to fighting a hangover, you
(25:10):
cannot drink it away, right. All you're doing is accumulating
more toxins in your lover for it to dump out. Yeah,
and it best. You're just putting off the inevitable. You're
just kicking that drunken can down the street a little ways. Yeah.
I like that, but maybe it'll get you through first period.
I don't know, Right, Sometimes you just need to get
through that first hour. Again, not advocating this because it
is awful. Do you mentioned quote beer goggles earlier? Is
(25:32):
that really a thing? It actually is? Yeah, yeah, this
is really interesting. We have an article called there's a
mathematical formula for the beer goggles effect question mark and
neurons and the nucleus A Cummins fire when you look
at a face that you deem attractive. Okay, so that's
important to know. Alcohol by itself actually causes neurons to
fire in the nucleus it commons as well, so it
(25:55):
is stimulated just a little bit more. Right. So the
idea is that if you're drinking and you're assessing someone's
attractiveness or whether or not you feel like you I
want to talk to this person or so on and
so forth, you may have some over activity in that
area of your brain. And studies have shown the inebriated
(26:15):
study participants rated photos of strangers twenty five percent more
attractive than their sober counterparts did with the same photos.
And then there's actually apparently a mathematical formula for this
beer goggles effect, and it takes into account the lighting
level and the quality of the person's eyesight. And you know,
along with like four other factors. So there you go.
(26:40):
Beer goggles does exist for apparently for for men and women.
So there are a lot of false claims out there
about what can be done to cure a hangover, what
can be done to to to to soften its effects,
because because when you when you have a hangover, especially
severe when you're you're probably willing to pay any amount
of money for it to go away. And um, one
(27:01):
of the interesting things that ran across this from several
years back. And I don't think it's really kicked off anymore.
It doesn't really gained anymore esteem. But um, it was
invented by a business by the name of Dominique similar
and it was called a wall alcohol without liquid. Um
tell me more, which sounds a little alcohol without borders
(27:21):
or something. Yeah, alcohol without liquid. And this was the
idea that you would you would take alcohol and you
would you would turn it into an inhalable form, so
you would go up to your to the bar, I guess,
and they would hand you a like a blue velvet
style gas and you would huff the alcohol. And and
it was the marketing on this is that it's going
to be like low carb because you're not you're not.
(27:43):
It's not physical, so you can't possibly have any weight
to it, and it's you're not gonna really get get
much of a hand. Clowns show up, does a woman
carrying a log show up? Yes? And participating bars um.
But but the thing is, it turns out when scientists
were asked about this, and when when journals actually like
looked into the matter, most of this stuff it wasn't true.
(28:04):
Like the carb issue is bunk and the hangover issues
kind of tricky too, because we mentioned there's several reasons
for hangover to happen, and a number of them are
not going to really be affected by by whether you're
you're drinking it or inhaling it into your body. Yeah,
it seems like if that were actually an effective mode
of making someone drunk, that would be piped into you know,
most retail areas for instance. It may affect some of
(28:27):
the congenerous in the alcohol. I Like we said that
you know find this specifically like red wine and dark alcohols.
But but that's not going to affect the dehydration, the
diseruption of electro light branches, sleep patterns being messed with.
Uh So Yeah, it turns out it's not really um
the pie in the sky thing that the people thought
(28:48):
it was. Like I said, if it were, I'm pretty
sure the gap would be pumping it out right shopping.
I mentioned earlier in the podcast how it couldn't really
find anything to to tell me yea or nay on
the whole increased focus with hangover, um so, and which
leads me to believe that I am full of it
on that you know, or this just sort of I
think for you, this is just a unique situation. I
(29:11):
have a feeling it's it's me over compensating and being
like hangover ruining my morning. No, I'm gonna get some
work done anyway. Yeah, but I did find something um
I mentioned on Psychology Today called the hangover hypothesis, and
this basically breaks down that a night of moderate drinking
okay moderate plus a low car breakfast can improve your
(29:33):
mood and memory. Specifically, they mentioned some research from the
University of Wales that showed that people who fast and
choose to skip breakfast after drinking alcohol the night before
are less energetic big surprise, uh, and have poor mood
throughout the morning. And according to a study published in
the Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience, individuals who consume more than
four point five grams of alcohol the previous night. Uh,
(29:55):
it compounds the effects of both memory and happiness. So
they're sort of putting these together and making the argument
that moderate drinking, low car breakfasts improved memory and improved moods.
So I don't know, Yeah, of course that's all up
for interpretation. That's always the problem, right, Like once one
man's moderate is is another woman's uh way too much? Yeah,
(30:16):
and it's it's also some people can't have have zero
tolerance for alcohol on a biological level. I mean, I've
known people before that they they if they were to, say,
you know, more than a couple of SIPs, they would
be really drunk. But we're then violently my mother for instance, Yeah, yeah,
she's starched, breaking out into some sort of odd dance. Uh.
And we're talking about a quarter a couple of wine. Yeah,
(30:39):
entertaining for us. And then other people are just dangerous
and that they drink so much that you you're around
them and you're it feels like you should be keeping
up with them, but they're bottommost pit I don't know,
your tolerance builds up over time. But and then there
are others who pass out with a cheeseburger in their mouth.
Yeah yeah, I'm telling you these these are ugly pictures
(31:00):
of alcohol, and yet uh, we continue to to go
to it, right, Yeah yeah, I mean it's built up
in culture, you know. And and that's a speaking of culture,
I should I should mention that, you know, we're we
were looking around seeing if there's anything about the future
of hangovers, and unfortunately most of what I found was
just stuff about the next hangover movie, which which Gibson right.
(31:24):
But but I did find uh. I was reminded rather
of of Ian m Banks culture novels, in which the
members of the culture are like a post human um society.
There they're they're humans that have been highly that are
highly evolved, and then highly their their their physiology is
highly tinkered with. It's a post singularity situation where robots
(31:46):
do most of the works and human beings typically just
do whatever they want, they engage in whatever arts. This
is the benevolent version of the right benevent version of singularity.
The robots do most of the work, the humans come
along for the ride for occasional humanitarians, but mostly just
do what they want to do, and and so they'll
they'll typically have have drug glands in their bodies for
(32:07):
hormonal levels, chemical secretions of various uppers and downers, and
they also have the ability, and one of the characters
does this in the player of games. They can actually
bypass their system if they're drinking something they don't want
to feel the effects of it, or presumably if they're
eating for purely hedonistic reasons and they don't want to
(32:28):
actually digest it, then they can just shoot it straight
straight through, straight through, but their own little vomitorium right right,
which doesn't didn't actually exist, right, but yes, we used
to think of Roman times for a vomitorium, right, This
would be the mythical idea of a vomitorium um brought
to fruition through um through post humanism bodies. Well, and
(32:51):
as we discussed in nanimal healthcare, surely there will be
some sort of delivery system of at least nano aspirin
to help alleviate some of the symptoms of our debauchery. Yes,
in time, I can imagine like uh, nanotechnology creating if
not a true hangover cure, then something akin to it. Yeah,
all right, you heard it here first, or maybe don't.
(33:15):
In any case, I hope that that gives everybody a
good sense of what's happening in your body during a hangover.
And I hope that I'm not too loud. If you
are currently hungover and you are listening to me, I apologize. Well, hey,
let's dip into the listener mail. Alright, man, that bot
is hungover? What were you doing? Where were you robots go?
(33:38):
I know, come on, robot mail person, and I know
it's Monday, but come on, so let's see what do
we have here. Here's one from Extra Extra writes in
from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and says I was just listening
to your miss Aphonia episode and I thought I would
provide some insight from a sufferer. The sound I react
to is munching or something sticky. The sound has to
(34:00):
be below a certain volume, barely audible for me at least,
and I respond with a rage so deep I have
sometimes thought, only for a moment, about killing my father.
My specific case is very easy to deal with. Avoiding
my dad at breakfast seems to do quite well. I
feel bad for those who react to a more common noise,
especially those with a with a fight instinct. Uh, it
(34:21):
really is quite a horrible affliction. Wow. Yeah, Yeah, Okay,
I can actually can sort of under I'm not uh
for me, I don't have ms aphonia, so obviously I
don't respond so um passionately about that. But I can't
understand how certain things that are right underneath the radar
(34:41):
that you just kind of hear them are so distracting
that your brain kind of goes, what is that? Yeah,
however I don't. I guess I'm just glad that as
avoiding his or her father. Yes, don't don't actually murder
anybody because it sounds as h Yeah, and check out
the mssophone uh podcast if you haven't heard it, because
(35:02):
we do discuss various ways of dealing with it. Some
of the best are merely being aware of it and
just and you know, taking a step back and be like, whoa,
I'm totally losing it over a sound. I should not
get this mad and or kill my father, um over
the sound release chewing. It's true. So hey, if you
have something you want to share with us, you can
find us on Facebook as stuff to Blow the Mind,
(35:25):
and you can also find us on Twitter. We're blow
the Mind on Twitter, um, since we were limited by characters,
but Blow the Mind stuff to Blow the Mind, you
can find us on either with either of those handles
and uh, you know, interact with the share stuff with us,
let us know what you think about hangovers. You do
not have to share your most outlinedish hangover story, but
if you have a science thing upon it, or if
(35:46):
you have a particular cure, or even if it's like
a folk remedy that you've tried out, I would be
interested to hear how it failed. And if you do
want to share it with us but in a more
private space, yeah, or you know, want to withhold you
and right, feel free to send us an email at
Blow the Mind at has to works dot com. Be
(36:10):
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join House to Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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