So, why do we get hangovers? How can we avoid them? How bad can it get? And what can we do when we have one?

 

The term hangover was originally a 19th century expression describing unfinished business—something left over from a meeting—or “survival.” In 1904, the meaning “morning after-effect of drinking too much” first surfaced.

In Norwegian, veisalgia derives from kveis (uneasiness following debauchery) and the Greek algia (pain).

THE QUESTION… How do I know if I have a hangover?
First of all, you will know when you have one, trust me. If you have never had one, consider yourself lucky and here’s to the hope that you are never plagued with one in your lifetime.

These are some of the symptoms of a hangover, if you are lucky you are not suffering from all of these at once. If this entire list describes your current condition, tell everyone to leave you alone and go back to bed.

• Dehydration
• Dry mouth
• Tiredness
• Headache
• Nausea
• Weakness
• Anxiety
• Irritability
• Pessimism
• Difficulty concentrating
• Sensitivity to light and noise
• Trouble sleeping
• Suspension of the laws of gravity

If you would like to cheer up a little and gauge the severity of your pain, listen or read  The Six Stages of Hangovers.

Hangover ratings:

• One Star Hangover:
  No pain. No real feeling of illness. Your sleep last night was a mere disco nap, which has given you a whole lot of misplaced energy. Be glad that you are able to function relatively well. However, you are still parched. You can drink 10 sodas and still feel this way. You are craving mostly stodgy, savory foods with a side of chips and gravy.
• Two Star Hangover:
  No pain, but something is definitely amiss. You may look okay but you have the mental capacity of a staple gun. The coffee you are chugging is only exacerbating your rumbling gut, which is craving a fresh and fruity pancake breakfast with icecream. There is some definite havoc being wreaked upon your bowels. 
• Three Star Hangover:
  Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely not productive. Anytime a girl walks by you gag because her perfume reminds you of the random gin shots you did with your alcoholic friends after the bouncer kicked you out at 1:45 a.m. Life would be better right now if you were in your bed with a dozen donuts and a thai takeaway watching the E! fashion awards. You’ve had 4 cups of coffee, a gallon of water, 3 Gatorades and a liter of coke, yet you haven’t peed once.
• Four Star Hangover:
  Life sucks. Your head is throbbing. You can’t speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can’t hide the fact that you missed an oh-so crucial spot shaving, (girls, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars.) Your eyes look like one big vein and your hair style makes you look like a reject from the class picture of your highschool class of ’84.
• Five Star Hangover:
  AKA “Dante’s 4th Circle of Hell.”
  You have a second heartbeat in your head, which is actually annoying fellow employees. Vodka vapor is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth in an attempt to get the remnants of the garbage fairy out. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva, so your tongue is suffocating you. Death seems pretty good right now. You definitely don’t remember who you were with, where you were, what you drank and why there is a stranger still sleeping in your bed at home.
• Six Star Hangover:
  Otherwise known as the “Infinite Nut smacker”
  You wake up on your bathroom floor. For about 2 seconds you look at the ceiling, wondering if the cool refreshing feeling on your cheek is the bathroom tile or your vomit from 5 hours ago. You try to lift your head. Not an option. Then you inadvertently turn your head too quickly and smell the funk of 13 packs of cigarettes in your hair. Suddenly you realize you were smoking, but not ultra lights… someone handed you Marlboro reds, and you smoked them like it was your second full time job. You look in the mirror only to see remnants of the stamp “Ready to Rock” faintly on your forehead… the stamp on the back of your hand that has magically appeared on your forehead by alcoholic osmosis. You have to be to work in t-minus 14 minutes and 32 seconds and the only thing you can think of wearing is your “hello kitty” pajamas and your slippers. 

Hangover Biology 101

While drinking isn’t necessarily bad, remember that alcohol is a drug. Your body attempts to protect itself by producing enzymes to metabolize (breakdown) and remove the toxins from your body. But when the toxin level exceeds your body’s ability to break them down  in an efficient manner, you experience the unpleasant and classic symptoms… of a hangover. The excess toxins may irritate your stomach, cause you to vomit, and in general, make you feel ill.

So, is it possible to avoid them? It would be a great strategy, but the fact is, the exact origin of the toxins is unknown. They may be present in the alcoholic beverage itself, or they may be created by the body as a metabolic by-product.

Alcohol also acts as a diuretic, which means that it increases the release of urine from the body. This is because your kidneys and liver require water to dilute and process the toxins. When you drink alcohol, your body actually requires more water than usual in order to perform this function efficiently. If water and fluids are not readily available to aid in this detoxification process, the body redistributes whatever water is available. All parts of the body are affected by this redistribution of fluid, even the brain. And you wonder why your head hurts!

The enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) is responsible for breaking down the alcohol in the liver. The tolerance that habitual drinkers build to alcohol is due to increased levels of ADH. Some research suggests that men tend to have more of this enzyme than women, and as a result can usually drink more than women of equal weight. For some reason, people of Asian descent reportedly produce less of the enzyme and people of Polynesian, Maori and Aboriginal decent are often missing this enzyme altogether.

The Toxins Involved in a Hangover

Ethanol (ethyl alcohol)

Produced naturally during fermentation (the making of alcohol).

By-products of metabolism

When the liver breaks down alcohol, enzymes produce a by-product called acetaldehyde. This highly toxic substance enters the system and can make you feel very ill.

Congeners

Congeners are toxic substances created during the alcohol fermentation process. When you drink alcohol, these toxins are dispersed through your system as your liver breaks down the alcohol. While congeners are not the sole cause of a hangover, they do seem to contribute in some manner to the “quality” of the ensuing hangover.

Knowing something about the level of congeners in your chosen alcoholic beverage may help you determine how sick it can make you. In general, the fermentation and distillation processes determine the amount of congeners in the end product. Lower levels of congeners may mean a kinder, gentler hangover, if there is such a thing.

More expensive alcohol generally contains fewer congeners because it undergoes a more rigorous distillation process that filters out a higher percentage of the congeners. Darker colored drinks, such as whiskey, brandy and red wine have more congeners than lighter drinks such as vodka, gin and white wine.

Your liver breaks ethanol down with the aid of enzymes produced by liver cells. These chemical reactions do many things including impairing the liver’s ability to supply glucose to tissues, in particular to the brain. Glucose is responsible for the brain’s energy and the lack thereof results in fatigue, weakness, moodiness and decreased attention.

• Some people believe the sugar in sweeter cocktails contribute to the severity of hangovers.
• Smokers and even some non-smokers tend to smoke more when they are drinking and this can lead to nicotine poisoning which will also worsen hangovers.
• Some people are genetically lucky when it comes to hangovers and rarely, if ever, suffer the effects.
• Weight is a factor. The less one weighs the more that person will feel the effects and after effects of alcohol.
• The older you are the more likely you are to have a severe hangover. This is usually not a factor because we tend to take it a little easier as we learn from the mistakes of the past. But you have been warned.  

Hangover Remedies

• Drink Water: You’ll feel miserable until you are rehydrated. Water is an excellent hangover remedy. So is orange juice, unless your stomach is too upset to handle it.
• Eat Something Simple: Eggs contain cysteine, which may help combat hangover symptoms. Milk is more food than water, but it serves to rehydrate you while supplying calcium, which may ease your misery.
• Sodium Bicarbonate: Try a spoonful of baking soda in water to help quell the hangover queasiness.
• Exercise: It raises your metabolic rate, which helps you clear toxins associated with metabolizing alcohol. Exercise helps you deliver oxygen to your cells, which can increase the speed at which you detoxify harmful compounds.
• Oxygen: Supplemental oxygen is another way to speed up detoxification after drinking alcohol, without having to exercise.
• Vitamin B1 or Thiamine: Thiamine helps prevent the buildup of glutarate in the brain, which may be associated with part of the headache associated with a hangover. Other B vitamins are depleted when you drink, so taking a B vitamin complex may be beneficial.

FACT OR FICTION – DO THESE WORK?

Black Coffee

Coffee contains a high amount of caffeine, which is a stimulant and therefore helps fight fatigue. But when the caffeine wears off, a drinker may be even more tired than before. Coffee can help alleviate a pounding head because caffeine is a vasoconstrictor, meaning it reduces the size of blood vessels. This counteracts the effect of the alcohol, which makes them swell, making the head hurt in the first place. Unfortunately, caffeine is also a diuretic like alcohol and can make a drinker even more dehydrated than before, thereby increasing the severity of the hangover. Overall, coffee isn’t a good hangover cure.

Conclusion:

• FICTION – Remedy

Hair of the Dog

Contrary to popular belief, more of the “hair of the dog that bit you” only delays the inevitable. One of the reasons hangovers are so unpleasant is the liver is still processing the toxins left over from alcohol metabolism. Drinking more alcohol can make the symptoms seem to lessen at first but will only make the situation worse once the liver breaks the alcohol down, because it will have even more toxins to deal with.

Conclusion:

• FICTION – Remedy

Burnt Toast

At first, the burnt toast remedy may seem that it’s actually based on scientific fact. The culprit behind this fictional cure is the carbon in the charred bread. Carbon can act like a filter in the body. While it’s true that activated charcoal (which is a treated form of carbon) is used to treat some types of poisonings, it’s not currently used to treat alcohol poisoning (something that is vastly different from a regular hangover).

The carbon/charcoal found on burnt toast is not the same as activated charcoal and is actually a carcinogenic (cancer causing) … bbq meat etc

Conclusion:

• FICTION – Remedy

Fried or Fatty Foods

Although eating fried or fatty foods the morning after will probably only irritate a drinker’s stomach further, eating them before drinking can actually be helpful. Putting anything in the stomach prior to indulging in alcohol helps prevent a hangover, but fatty foods in particular stick to the stomach lining longer and therefore slow down the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream. While that might make it take longer to feel the alcohol’s effects, it also gives the body more time to process the byproducts and will increase a drinker’s chances of feeling decent in the morning. So much so, in fact, that a Mediterranean folk tactic is to take a spoonful of olive oil before drinking alcohol. Eating lighter food such as a fruit smoothie will provide energy and alleviate some symptoms by replenishing the electrolytes the body lost from dehydration.

Conclusion:

• FACT – Prevention
• FICTION – Remedy

Eggs

Eating eggs the morning after provides energy like any other food, which is the primary benefit. But eggs do also contain large amounts of cysteine, the substance that breaks down the hangover-causing toxin acetaldehyde in the liver’s easily depleted glutathione. Therefore, eggs can potentially help mop up the left-over toxins.

Conclusion: FACT – Remedy

Bananas

Eating bananas the morning after a night of heavy drinking provides lost electrolytes like any food would, but it also specifically replenishes the potassium lost to alcohol’s diuretic effect. Other potassium-rich foods such as kiwi fruit or sports drinks work just as well.

Conclusion:

• FACT – Remedy

Water

Replenishing the body’s water supply after a night of drinking combats dehydration, and it also helps dilute the leftover byproducts in the stomach. Adding salt and sugar to water helps replace the sodium and glycogen lost the night before. Non-caffeinated, non-carbonated sports drinks can achieve the same effect.

As a prevention method, drinking a glass of water for every alcoholic beverage slows down drinking, providing more time for the body to deal with the alcohol (the body can only process about three-quarters of an ounce of alcohol in an hour). Drinking a few glasses of water before going to bed helps fight dehydration after the body finishes breaking down the alcohol.

Conclusion:

• FACT – Prevention and Remedy

Fruit Juice/Coconut water!!!

­The fructose — fruit sugar — in fruit juice helps to naturally increase the body’s energy. Studies have proven that it also increases the rate at which the body gets rid of toxins such as those left over from alcohol metabolism. Fruit juice is also a good idea the morning after because it’s high in vitamins and nutrients that were depleted the night before because of alcohol’s diuretic effect. Vitamin supplements high in vitamins C and B are also effective.

Conclusion:

• FACT – Remedy

MY PERSONAL REMEDY – WATER WATER WATER DURING DRINKING

VITAMIN B (before bed produces vivid dreams) but hey, I’d rather have a vivid dream than a vivid hangover!!!

BANANA SMOOTHIES MADE WITH COCONUT WATER

Ineffective or unproven remedies

Recommendations for foods, drinks and activities to relieve hangover symptoms abound. The ancient Romans, on the authority of Pliny the Elder, favored raw owl‘s eggs or fried canary. while the “Prairie Oyster” restorative, introduced at the 1878 Paris World Exposition, calls for raw egg yolk mixed with Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, salt and pepper. By 1938, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel provided a hangover remedy in the form of a mixture of Coca-Cola and milk (Coca-Cola itself having been invented, by some accounts as a hangover remedy). Alcoholic writer Ernest Hemingway relied on tomato juice and beer. Certain mixtures were developed specifically for the purpose. The “Black Velvet” consists of equal parts champagne and flat Guinness Stout. A 1957 survey by a Wayne State University folklorist found widespread belief in the efficacy of heavy fried foods, tomato juice and sexual activity.

NATURAL HANGOVER CURES

There are a number of tried and tested natural hangover cures, but today we’ll deal with one that has been seen to be the most effective of them all. Milk thistle beats everything else to the number one position of the ‘hangover cures‘ list.

Milk thistle is used in natural medicines to aid the functioning of the liver – which is, the primary organ responsible for detoxifying the human body. These leaves are known to help the body in clearing out the toxins and thus, they help reduce the risk and effect of hangovers.

If you are a regular drinker, it would be advisable for you to take milk thistle everyday or on most days of the week. It has been proven as a ‘safe’ herb; and doesn’t have any significant after-effects in the long run. Milk thistle tinctures are generally available in local health food stores; and are economical. So you won’t end up burning a hole in your pocket either.

If you don’t drink regularly, you could try taking these tinctures on the day when you are to indulge in drinking.

The best way, however, is to use this thistle before you start drinking. It is known to avoid the symptoms of a hangover. Like they say ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ Aye Aye, to that!

National Geographic has an interesting article about some of the strangest hangover cures from around the world. Perhaps they mean “cure” in a way that you’ll never touch alcohol again if you’re forced to take these the morning after:

Germany: Pickled Herring

 

Romania: Tripe Soup
Tripe – aka cow stomach – is the go-to ingredient for many Romanians suffering from a hangover. It’s also a common “cure” in Mexico and Turkey, and no doubt many other countries as well. But in Romania, the edible offal is boiled in a greasy, salty soup of root vegetables, garlic vinegar, and cream.

Poland: Sour pickle juice
Polish hangover remedies are all about the sour. Some say that soured milk (which is unpasteurized and has been left at room temperature for a day or tow) does the trick. Others favor sour – very sour – pickle juice, heavy on the vinegar.

Hangovers are poorly understood from a medical point of view. Health care professionals prefer to study alcohol abuse from a standpoint of treatment and prevention, and there is a view that the hangover provides a useful, natural and intrinsic disincentive to excessive drinking.

Next weeks Belly will be with Sista Tess and the lovely Lilith who will be here to present her regular segment “Cooking with the stars – Capricorns”

Sister Rasela wishing you a hangover free 2011!!

BayFM website – bayfm.org