October 15, 2009 • 31 mins
After a night of heavy boozing, many partygoers find themselves the victim of a hangover. But what exactly is a hangover, and what causes it? Join Chuck and Josh as they break down the science behind hangovers -- and how to avoid them -- in this podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles Chuckers Bryant,
(00:21):
and that means it's the stuff you should know, right, Yes,
the over twenty one years old Chuck Bryant. Yeah, that's
a that's a big deal for this one. Chuck. We're
just gonna go ahead and see o A right now,
say that this is about drinking, and if you're under
twenty one, you should not drink. Chuck, have you ever
consumed an alcoholic beverage? I have over still at c A.
If you're over twenty one, you should drink responsively. Yes,
(00:43):
don't drink and drive. Um. If you have a problem,
uh yeah, heavy machineries a big one. If you have
a problem, you can contact alcoholics anonymous. Right, I've always
wanted to test that one. Get really plowed and just
sit down behind a bulldozer. I always imagine fork lifts
with heads, heavy machinery. I go straight to the dozer. So, yes,
(01:04):
I have had an alcoholic beverage before. What was your
experience with it? Like, did you feel a little light headed,
a little crazy, a little get inhibited? I wanted to
kiss somebody? Did you end up kissing anybody? I did?
I kissed my dog. Didn't you make out with a
friend's sister at a YouTube concert once? I did? Were
you under the effects of alcohol during that time? I
was okay, this was gimea break, Chuck. Did you end
(01:29):
up with a hangover that day? Yes? I did the
same day the next day? Yeah? Sure? So how did
you feel? I felt? I had a headache, I had
a poor sense of well being. I've had sensitivity to
light and sound, diarrhea, loss of appetite, trembling, nausea, fatigue,
you had the whole list, hydration, anxiety, trouble, sleeping, weakness. Yeah,
(01:52):
that's a bad hangover right there. That's all the symptoms,
you know. The one that always gets me the worst
whenever I have a hangover is the loss of the
sense of well being. I feel like I am right
there on the edge of danger. Everybody's gunning for me.
I feel horrible then real, Yeah, it's really bad, it really.
I've always assumed it affects my serotonin level. Sure, I
(02:13):
didn't see anything in this article about that, right. I
thought I was gonna have to get taken to the
hospital in Portland, Oregon one time, did you? Yeah? The
next day Emily asked me as her friend's wedding. She said, Okay,
do you like need to go to the hospital? And
I went, maybe I was serious. So let's talk about this, chuck.
What are the mechanisms that lie behind the cursed and
(02:35):
dreaded hangover? Vice algia? Yeah? Is that the correct pronunciation.
That's how I took it. That's the medical medical name
for hangover is vice algia. Yeah, And it comes from
a Norwegian word for uneasiness following debauchery and a Greek
(02:55):
word for pain algaia, which is weird. I've never seen
a Norwegian and Greek put together. I haven't either, But yeah,
you come up with vice algia? Can I say that
the Bible verse two? Yeah? Yeah, there's a Bible verse
that talks about hangovers. It's Isaiah five eleven. Woe unto
them that rise up early in the morning, that they
may follow strong drink. In other words, I feel real
(03:17):
sorry for you that you had to get up early.
If you got hammered last night, truer words have never
been written in the Bible, at least translation at least
translation there. Um. So okay, so we've got that down.
We have the word origin and a Bible quote as
this pretty much whenever you talk about a hangover. So
what's going on there, Chuck, Well, there's a bunch of things. Um,
(03:40):
let's go ahead and start with vasopressing. Yeah, here's here is,
by the way, everyone, a cocktail party conversation tidbit. So
it's your next cocktail party. You might want to just
bring this up. Okay, it might be kind of depressing
to bring this up actually a cocktail party. Well, this
is the This is how you explain breaking the seal,
which I know that you have experienced. It's crazy once
(04:03):
you once you urinate, and we're gonna stick to the
clinical terms here, Chuck, all right, let's keep it above
the breaking the seal. That's clinical. Um. Once you urinate
that first time, after you've started drinking, it seems like
you just keep going and going and going and you
can't stop, and you actually can't, right right. So vasa pressing,
(04:25):
that's a pressing. Yes, when you drink booze, uh, it
enters your bloodstream and the pituitary gland blocks the creation
of vasso pressing, and without this, your kidney starts sending
water straight to your bladder, basically right to the tune
of four times more than you actually drink. So you
drink two fifty milli leaders of alcohol. Uh, you can
(04:47):
shoot out up to a thousand milli leaders or a leader?
Is that the clinical term to shoot out? Yeah, So
that's no mistake. If you've ever had a few beers
and you're thinking, Wow, that's so weird, I use the
bathroom and now I can't stop. That's v's depressing right there, right, Um,
and that's called the diuretic effect. Um. As the the
presence of alcohol increases in the bloodstream, Um, you expel
(05:11):
a lot more water, right, But you're not just expelling water. Also,
we should say this leads directly to dehydration. If you're
expelling four times more liquid than you're consuming, Brother, you're
getting dehydrated, which is one of the signature results of
the hangover. And you get the headache because of that
and other things too. You do and the headache. And
we've talked about this before. I don't remember where, so
(05:33):
we probably shouldn't, you know, try to come up with
a time stamp. But um, when you have a hangover,
your brain actually shrinks. The next day, the other organs
in your body are like you brain, you've got a
bunch of water exactly, So a lot of the water
um is shuffled from your brain to other organs, causing
your brain to actually shrink in size, which pulls on
(05:55):
the membranes that connected to the skull, the meningies. And
you know, when you have a really had hangover, you
wake up and you feel like the membranes of your
skull are being pulled in different So when I read this,
I was like, oh, so that's what that is. Or
like there's a four hundred pound ham fisted man with
hair and his knuckles like doing little twirls in your head.
(06:16):
You know. Have you ever speaking of breaking the seal?
I don't think they did this in Athens at Georgia,
but I know some friends at Georgia Southern there were
bars there that had the drink till you pee for
free promotion? Have you ever heard of those? But it
sounds awesome. Basically, it like starting at six o'clock, they
monitor the bathrooms and everyone in the bar gets to
(06:37):
drink for free until the first person in the bar
goes to the bathroom. And I don't think they have
that in Athens, if they didn't when I was there.
And of course because it's you know, a college, there's
like dudes peeing in beer pictures in the corner, you know,
just to keep not to not have to pay the
two others whether or not there's that you know, contest
or promotion. So it's science science. Uh so, okay, that's
(07:00):
vast oppressing, right, yes, resulting in dehydration. But when you're
um urinating everywhere every which way, whether it's in a
beer picture or otherwise, Um, you're also expelling a lot
of other needed stuff like electrolytes, salt, potassium, salt, potassium, magnesium,
and these all affect how you're like cells function, how
(07:22):
your muscle's function, right, and you're getting rid of it
without putting it back in. So you're gonna feel lousy. Yes, indeed,
you are going to feel lousy. So you're dehydrated, You've
lost electrolytes, right, and the electrolyte and balance is really important. Um,
if you have too much salt in your electrolyte, and
balance is too high, Uh, you die. Um, if you
(07:43):
have too little, you get the shakes, the tremors, which
I understand is the most uncommon symptom of hangovers. Which
makes me nervous because I get the shakes just about
every time. The next day, I've never gotten the shakes.
What I've never got in the shakes. It also points
out in this article that hangovers are subjective, so for
(08:04):
each person, you know, they might experience different like oh,
I've never had a hangover, or when you get the
shakes and you have a loss of a sense of
well being. Yeah, that's like Nick Cage and leaving Las
Vegas kind of wow. Yeah, I've always been like, wow,
that'd be great to have a grocery cart in a
liquor store. What a great scene. Should we talk about
(08:24):
glacogen real quick too? Yeah, that's another thing you lose. Yes, Um,
the glacogen is a is a key energy source and uh,
we turns it goes to the liver and turns into glucouse.
Is that correct? Right? Well, the liver turns it into
glucost and then sends it out like what the heck
is going on and just does something and all of
a sudden You've just lost all of your energies. I'll
(08:46):
just pee everything out just to be sure exactly. Basically,
it's what's going on, and that actually accounts for like
the weakness the next day fatigue um. And actually that's
not that's not the only thing that accounts for fatigue. Um.
You don't sleep very well after a night of heavy drinking.
Glut to mine. Yes, you have glut to mine, which
(09:07):
is a another it's actually a stimulant um, natural stimulant, yes,
which is the only good kind of stimulant um. And uh,
when you drink alcohol, the production of this natural stimulant
is actually blocked. So when you stop drinking e g.
Go to sleep, your body tries to make up for
(09:29):
lost time and overproduces glutaman. So means you're not getting
as gonna sleep exactly. And the next day you also
feel restless and anxious. Um, maybe you've got the shakes.
That's another cocktail party tip. If you know that if
you start saying all these things that your next cocktail party,
you probably won't be invited back to the next cocktail party. Though,
you know, I think you can wow some people. It
(09:49):
depends on how cool your cocktail party. I guess I
could see them all saying, now, like, why are you
telling us all these awful things about drinking unless my
kind of cocktail party, it's great for me. Another one.
Screw glycogen, screw bass repressing. Uh so what else, Josh? Well,
(10:10):
we could talk about the impurities of liquor, the different alcohols. Yeah.
The rule of thumb is the darker the alcohol, the
more impure it is, and therefore the the heavier the hangover. Yes,
which is why I think everyone pretty much knows that
like your worst alcoholics, they like start drinking every morning
(10:31):
when they wake up, they're probably drinking vodka. Yes, it's
actually a good thing to drink if you are an alcoholic,
because you're going to be able to be as close
to a function alcoholic as possible. Right. How about that
study with the bourbon. Yeah, thirty they did study between
bourbon and vodka, and uh, of the people who drank
amount of bourbon relative to their body weight had a
(10:52):
severe hangover, and only three percent had a hangover when
they drank vodka. That's a big white wine, that kind
of thing. Um, light run yeah, Jen, Yeah, conversely, dark rum,
it's bad white tequila is good. Basically, if it's dark,
it's going to kill you. I'm in bad shape then,
because I'm you know, I mean, I'm a bourbon red
(11:13):
wine beer guy. That's funny. I'm like the whatever's in
the glass guy. Right, that's good. You're fun to have
the cocktail party because you're not picky. No, as long
as you don't run an ice so you know, as
long as there's not a cigarette but floating in it,
I'll think it. And then sometimes even then, I don't
think that hasn't happened before, Chuck. Basically, what I took
(11:33):
from this article is when you drink, you are poisoning
your body through coningers. There's through impurities in the alcohol,
but also through the body's natural processes of breaking down
out alcohol too. It Actually there's a there's a byproduct
produced when the liver metabolizes alcohol, um called acid aldehyde. Yeah,
(11:55):
take this one, because this kind of I read it
like three times and I was still a little lost. Okay,
allow me please. So basically, when the liver metabolizes alcohol,
it produces a byproduct that's a toxin called acid aldehyde,
and acid aldehyde is actually more toxic to the body
than alcohol. Itself, which is crazy. But we have natural
(12:15):
mechanism for neutralizing acid aldehyde called appropriate appropriately enough acid
aldehyde dehydrogenase appropriately so that stuff goes and attacks the
acid aldehyde. Right. Then we have this other stuff that
is called glutoth ione, right, and it contains high levels
of a substance called cysteine, and cysteine actually is attracted
(12:38):
to acid aldehyde. So the two things combine, acid aldehyde
dehydrogen ase and the cysteine in the glutoth ione uh
combined to neutralize the acid aldehyde, right, and it does
it pretty quickly. Um. You you are going to feel
some ill effects, but the less you drink, the easier
it is for these two substances to neutralize. Byproduct, is
(13:00):
the alcohol metabolized. Okay, here's the problem. You have a
limited store of glue tooth ione in your liver, so
you use it up pretty quick. And women have even
less than men exactly, which accounts for why women tend
to have more harsh hangovers and harsher hangovers than men,
not just body weight, although that does matter. Um. So
(13:21):
you use up your glue tooth ione stores and once
you do that, you're blood is just basically circulating this
toxic acid aldehyde, while the liver generates more glue tooth ione.
Hence you've got this horrible hangover and why ultimately time
is the only remedy for it. Yeah, well let's get
to that in a second. Let's get to the remedies.
(13:42):
Let's talk about liquor before beer, never fear or is
it the other way around here? Before liquor, never sticker
or sick. There's you're a little bit of truth to
that turns out because of it when folk totally um,
it turns out that the carbonation and beer speeds up
the absorption of alcohol. So if you start with beer,
your body's gonna have and then move on to liquor,
(14:03):
your body is in fact gonna have a harder time
processing those toxins. Even though there's a certain age. My
friend Justin, I you know, Justin, we were talking about
this a few years ago. Someone was remarking about we
had a big night out and like, what was it
liquor before beer? Be before liquor? I can't remember, And
I just said, you know what doesn't matter anymore, No,
you're gonna be hurting. You reach a certain age and
(14:24):
it either doesn't affect you or it's gonna affect you
no matter what those are college rules. I've noted through
my own personal observations, um that at about age twenty
four you get as you start getting really severe hangovers.
I haven't figured out exactly why yet, but that seems
to be about the age when you switch over from
I can do this constantly to Oh God, why why
(14:48):
I've got the shake cause I have a loss of
sense of well being? Right? Yeah, vomiting diarrhea. I don't
know why. Maybe that's when puberty ends. There's something to
do with hormones still floating around in the body. If
you're puberty into then uh, prebody doesn't in your twenties.
I pubody ended when I was like fourteen, but it
started when I was seven. So seven. Uh, where are
(15:14):
we now? Are we talking about vomiting? Yeah, it turns
out that that actually does help. And also, chuck, Um,
since we have a drinking game based on this and
we're talking about hangovers, allow me, okay, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck,
chuck chuck. That should keep them for a little while.
Go ahead, chuck. Uh alcohol, what's going on there is
(15:38):
it is indeed better to vomit because when alcohol is
absorbed directly through the stomach. And when that happens, you're
the lining of your stomach is gonna become irritated and say, hey,
thanks for putting all this poison in me. And um,
it's gonna start secreting, secreting hydrochloric acid. Right, and the
hydrochloric acid is actually what makes you vomit. Um here
(16:00):
messages to the brain, says the stomach is really connected
to the brain via hormonal signals, which don't necessarily end
after puberty, right and um, yeah, your stomach says you've
got to get rid of this stuff. And yeah, and
it turns out that's you know, you probably shouldn't make
yourself throw up because it's dangerous. It could become a problem.
(16:21):
If you're drinking so much and you're making yourself throw up,
you do have a problem. You should check into a
clinic or something. Check into Promises in Malibu if you've
got the cash. But it will make you feel a
little better because obviously your body is not gonna have
to process whatever alcohol is stolen your stomach. So there
you have it. Uh, what are we on to now, buddy?
I think we're we kind of nailed what it is.
(16:42):
So should we talk about some of the cures that
people spout. Yeah, there are plenty of hangover cures. Everybody's
got one. Yeah, and actually I'm surprised to find that
some of them actually are real. Now that you understand
what causes a hangover, you can actually identify what will
help here a hangover, sure, because really what's going on
is you've expelled electrolytes. It's biology you've expelled exactly, You've
(17:06):
expelled your natural energy stores. Um, you are dehydrated and
your brain is strung. Yeah, so what do you do
to make yourself feel better? Chuck? My personal favorite's hair
of the dog. Well, that helped me or not? Uh,
it will not. You know where that comes from? Uh,
(17:26):
it's the Bible again, isn't it. No Nazareth medieval times though,
the hair of the dog that bit you. Supposedly, if
you got bit by a rabid dog, you would take
some of that dog's hair and apply it to your
wound and that will cure you. This is the same
culture that buried a cat at midnight to cure war exactly.
So just like that is false hair the dog, it's
faults as well. Having a drink the next day to
(17:48):
make yourself feel a little bit better will not work.
Might make you feel a bit better in the in
the short term, but ultimately you're just adding more toxins
that your body is gonna have to process, and you're
kind of just staving off the inevitable hangover. Unless you
just drink all day again and then you'll have to
hang over the following day. Yeah, exactly. Um, unless you
just keep going until you die and then you won
(18:11):
the game. I was taking a walk with Emily yesterday
with the dogs the shows how twisted I am? And
I saw it was eight o'clock in the morning, seven
thirty in the morning, something like that, And there was
a guy down the street from us in the parking lot,
you know, cracking his first King Cobra. And I said,
you know what, am? I said? Ninety nine times out
of a hundred, I see those people, and I think, God,
(18:34):
how could you live your life like just getting bombed
for the moment you wake up every day? I said,
But every once in a while, I think what a
way to live? She said? She said, what is wrong
with you? Exactly? Doesn't she well, she doesn't let me
get up and get drunk every day. If that's what
you mean, that's keeping you in line. Okay, she does,
um chuck. One of the things that kills me is
(18:56):
drinking coffee. I learned a long time ago that if
I ever have a hangover, I stay away from coffee.
So I'm surprised to find in this article that actually
it does have some benefits agreed, which are, Uh, it
will actually um alleviate your headache a little bit because
it's caffeine and that's a vasso constrictor, so it reduces
the your blood vessels. It reduces the swelling, so that'll
(19:18):
help a little bit. It'll help cure the headache some.
But it'll dehydrate you because it's a diuretic because it's
a diarettice, which is how you really got into this
trouble in the first place. So stop being stupid. Saying
coffee along with a lot of water might be a
good idea. Possibly, it's just me, right, Okay. So what else? Uh?
Fatty fatty food, fried food the next day. Yeah, which
is odd because I know I crave fried food the
(19:40):
next day. Cheeseburger, bacon, chili, cheeseburger. It's like two hamburgers.
A year and they're on hangover days. She doesn't eat
meat beef at all, but when she wakes up with
a really bad hanger, she's like quarter pounder. It's very
It's strange because obviously she's not the only person who
experiences that craving. But that doesn't necessarily help and could
(20:02):
actually make you vomit. It could tip the scales when
you've got a bunch of hydrochloric acid in your stomach.
But it could help if you ate a bacon chili
cheeseburger or two bacon chili cheeseburgers before you started drinking it.
Why because it contains oil and the fat and the
grease will line your stomach and absolutely and in fact,
(20:24):
in the Mediterranean they have long drank a little bit
of olive oil before imbibing. It's an old thing they do.
They're not I'm not either. I like ol of o,
but I'm not gonna drink a tablespoon of it. No
me neither. Okay, Uh, how about a banana. I'm just
gonna pull that one out of my head, out of
your banana tree um remedy, yes, okay, loaded with potassium electrolytes.
(20:50):
And because remember you lose potassium, which is an electrolyte,
so if you can remember, restore the balance. So banana
will help your hangover as well. Eggs, yeah, since we're
on breakfast, because they contain cisteine, right, which is something
that's attracted to acid aldehyde. Right, So eggs in a
banana and water would be a great way to start
your morning if you had to hang over, Not just water,
(21:11):
but water loaded with sugar and salt. Actually, right, because
the carbonation it would do the same thing as it
did with the beer before liquor. So you want uncarbonated
water load of a salt sugar, not a red Bull no,
because it has caffeine. Not an energy drink. Uncarbonated non
caffeine water with salt and sugar, which I think I
(21:36):
just described a supports drink, right, A banana and some
eggs or you know what else you can do instead
of water? Put some fruit juice in there. Fruit juice.
Fruit juice is the kind of the kind of sugar
you want fruit toase, and studies have shown that it
increases the rate that which your body gets rid of
the toxins, and uh, that's a good idea. It also
(21:59):
gives you vitamins of course, Okay, what about um say
etcetera seta menafin a seeda menafin is uh, well, you
you want to avoid etcetera because has caffeine, right, which
can help. But ultimately, now and a set of menafin
I believe you don't want to take because that can
mess with your liver. Ultimately, if you have alcohol in yours,
(22:20):
if you take a set of mena fin for a hangover,
you are probably going to feel a little better. Actually
you'll probably feel a lot better. But in the long run,
your liver is gonna fall apart. Yeah, you're doing your body. Damn,
You're gonna expel that through your urine. So what you
want to do is get a non caffeinated anti inflammatory
prostaglandin inhibitor, which is also known as aspirin, which is good.
(22:44):
So aspirin will help that. It's shown that prostaglandin actually
uh reeks havoc on your body during hangover. So if
you take a prostaglandin inhibitor, you're gonna feel a lot better.
And apparently there have been studies that show yes, aspirin helps,
especially if you take one before you go to bed.
And you take two when you wake up, But be
(23:05):
aware people with tender stomachs often vomit from aspirate. Right,
you know what my curious let's talk about each other's curious.
If you got one, Um, surely you do. What do
I do? You want to hear mine? Yeah? Mine is?
My deal is I can't sleep in anymore. It doesn't
matter if I was out till three in the morning.
I'm still gonna wake up at seven. It's just the
(23:27):
way it is. When you're old, you'll you'll experience this
one day. I get up at seven like I normally do,
and I drink I pound like three or four glasses
of water, take a couple of aspirin, and then I
get right back in bed and see if I can
get like another hour to a sleep, and then I
wake up in at That works crazy well, especially works
(23:48):
with advil. If you take a couple of advil and
you have even like a half hour, preferably an hour
extra to sleep. For some reason, Anville always makes me sleepy.
It makes me fall asleep very easily. Never it out why,
But yeah, you wake up an hour later and you
are set. It's a great one because sleep is only real,
real key to carrying a hangover. They say, yeah, well, time,
(24:11):
well that that's usually what I rely on. It's time, um,
and I pound a few Coca colas in the morning,
which is not good for me, but it works, right.
And then as burn, is that what they say? Yeah?
And then I don't make eye contact with anybody because
they're all out to get me. That's how I make
it through the day when I have a hangover. Sure,
And again we should say, please don't find any of
(24:31):
this funny, entertaining, or amusing if you're twenty one years
or older. And if you are twenty one years or older,
please find it amusing responsibly. Uh. We should talk about
some of these over the counter, like anti hangover pills
that you can buy. You heard of these, yeah, like Chasers. Yeah,
they're they're basically multi vitamins. And here's the deal. Well,
(24:54):
some are activated carbon, which can work. But here's the deal.
If you if you read on the package, it'll say
something like us, um, drink a full glass twel bounced
glass of water before you start drinking, and take a pill.
And then after your second or third drink, drink another
glass of water and take another pill and then do
that again. Then before you go to bed, drink a
glass of water with a pill, and then wake up
and drink a glass of water with a bill. So
(25:15):
you're basically taking a vitamin downing tons of water, which
is and that's the key is the water. You're hydrating yourself.
So it's a bit of a rip off, um, but
not necessarily because it is recommended that you do take
a multi vitamin the next morning. But just take a
multi vitamin, don't pay for some hangover cure. You know.
What else helps is to actually be cognizant and not
(25:37):
a total drunk while you're drinking. Yes, um, if you
drink glass for glass water for alcohol. Number one, it
keeps you hydrated. But number two, it also paces your
drinking so that your body has more time to process
this alcohol. It's not just like bom bomb. You know.
I've gotten better at that. Oh yeah, sure, I try
to be. If I have like a big night out,
(25:57):
I try to be pretty aware of uh drinking a
couple of glasses of water here and there, and I
always will pound two or three glasses before I get
to bed. For you, chuck, it's the way to do it,
all right. So there you have it. That's the hangover, right. Yeah.
A couple other things you can do beforehand is eat. Obviously,
alcohol and the empty stomach is gonna get you there quicker,
(26:18):
but it will get you sicker and make you feel worse.
So water, what else you say, multi vitamins? Drinking Moderation,
of course is the key with everything. Watch what you're drinking,
red wine, bourbon. It's gonna make you feel bad. It
tastes sugary sweet on your tongue, but it'll make you
feel worse. I'm in trouble though. I wish I could
(26:39):
learn to drink vodka. I just don't take it. Is
so wonderful, isn't nice? I drink gin and tonics occasionally
during the summertime months, but I can't drink those. Gin
actually makes me crazy. I have a self imposed band
on gin. I won't drink it. I don't allow myself
to drink it because it makes me nuts. And apparently
in the seventeenth century, uh, the UK actually banned or
(27:02):
I should say England banned because nuts. Yeah yeah, so
jin was banned in England for a little while because
people went like I did. Sure, you know, different alcohols
through that tequila is notorious for making people violent and
the act out of sorts. Never had a problem with tequila,
I mean neither. My buddy Scottie has a red wine thing.
(27:24):
Completely personality shift when he drinks it, really but yeah,
it becomes a completely different person. You know, Alexander the
Great died from a red wine drinking competition. One of
his soldiers challenged into it and they apparently drank like
five million gallons apiece. And Alexander is a great one
off and died. Boy. I bet the alcohol back then
was rough too, man, Yeah, you know they love their wine.
(27:47):
Those are the good old days. Well, if you want
to learn absolutely every last detail there is to know
about a hangover, you should read this fine, fine article
by freelancer Lacey Perry called how Hangovers Work. You can
just type in hangover in the handy search bar at
how stuff works dot com. Also check out our Kiva
dot org, page bucks and growing so far. Yeah, very
(28:11):
proud of you guys. You can help fund a loan
for an entrepreneur in uh developing country for as little
as twenty five bucks and best part, you get it back.
We have a team that's to be found at www
dot Kiva dot org, slash team slash stuff you should
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(28:33):
community and then search stuff you should know. And we've
been posting a link at the bottom of every one
of our blog posts. Yes, we've got close to a
hundred members and about bucks raised and it's pretty cool.
Let's do listener, mam, Let's do listening now. Okay, Josh,
I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't kill me. I'm just
the enumerator. This is a good one. Hi, guys, hope
(28:57):
this finds you well. My name is Mark and I
live in fish Kill, New York, which is an interesting town.
I was listening to the Gross National Happiness podcast and
you mentioned the census worker being killed. I thought i'd
send an email. I was a Census Bureau worker in
two thousand. It was I was a care free nineteen
year old on summer break. My friends and I saw
the ad in the paper and took the exam and
(29:20):
became official enumerators, including a shiny plastic badge from the
Treasury Department to boot. He says, So our task was
a travel door to door and talked to the people
who didn't return their survey. Some people got the short form,
some got the long form and former. I remember the
forms were assigned at random. Usually the long formers didn't
mail him back in, and uh that's who they usually
(29:43):
had to a confront, shakedown and shake him down. Uh.
People were downright mean when I knocked on their door.
One this is a good one. One man asked me
to hold on for a second. He closed the door,
and within a few minutes I heard the garage door
open and he drove out and waved goodbye. Such a
jerky move. One woman answered the door with a baby
(30:03):
in her arms, shouting something at me. I heard dogs barking,
and the next thing I knew, she had let the
dogs loose on us, and I was running safely back
to my h the safety of my Buick Regal. I
quickly learned my lesson, and when someone would open the
door and give me the skinny on their neighbors who
didn't mail their forms back in, I was happy. And
I was even happier when it was a grandma who
(30:24):
would offer me a cold drink, Because you know, the
old folks, they're just like, come on in, let's talk
for a while. Exactly Um I did not know, however,
that uh enumerators were killed. I must have missed that
part of the training. Uh. Most of the rants would
be anti government. They would say I was the man
sold to get off their property and all the expletives
(30:45):
that go with it. It's not be it's not easy
being in enumerator. So give them a shout out. So
shout out to all you enumerators out there. And that's
pretty much it. He uh said, I thought i'd chime in.
Actually I was chiming in this morning in the car
and then realized that I was alone. Mark, so lonely. Mark,
the former enumerator is a funny guy, and he says,
by the way, podcast suggestion how Hippie Rob works. Oh
(31:08):
that's a good one. That would be a great one.
That audio trying to track them down. Sure, yeah, so
thanks Mark, and good luck if you enumerate in the future.
And all you enumerators out there, accounting heads, I'm sorry,
I didn't know it's so rough on you. And uh,
let's see if you're an numerator or a denominator or
you know the current whereabouts of Hippie Rob put in
(31:29):
an email to stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
that how stuff works dot Com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
Com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
(31:52):
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles Chuckers Bryant,
(00:21):
and that means it's the stuff you should know, right, Yes,
the over twenty one years old Chuck Bryant. Yeah, that's
a that's a big deal for this one. Chuck. We're
just gonna go ahead and see o A right now,
say that this is about drinking, and if you're under
twenty one, you should not drink. Chuck, have you ever
consumed an alcoholic beverage? I have over still at c A.
If you're over twenty one, you should drink responsively. Yes,
(00:43):
don't drink and drive. Um. If you have a problem,
uh yeah, heavy machineries a big one. If you have
a problem, you can contact alcoholics anonymous. Right, I've always
wanted to test that one. Get really plowed and just
sit down behind a bulldozer. I always imagine fork lifts
with heads, heavy machinery. I go straight to the dozer. So, yes,
(01:04):
I have had an alcoholic beverage before. What was your
experience with it? Like, did you feel a little light headed,
a little crazy, a little get inhibited? I wanted to
kiss somebody? Did you end up kissing anybody? I did?
I kissed my dog. Didn't you make out with a
friend's sister at a YouTube concert once? I did? Were
you under the effects of alcohol during that time? I
was okay, this was gimea break, Chuck. Did you end
(01:29):
up with a hangover that day? Yes? I did the
same day the next day? Yeah? Sure? So how did
you feel? I felt? I had a headache, I had
a poor sense of well being. I've had sensitivity to
light and sound, diarrhea, loss of appetite, trembling, nausea, fatigue,
you had the whole list, hydration, anxiety, trouble, sleeping, weakness. Yeah,
(01:52):
that's a bad hangover right there. That's all the symptoms,
you know. The one that always gets me the worst
whenever I have a hangover is the loss of the
sense of well being. I feel like I am right
there on the edge of danger. Everybody's gunning for me.
I feel horrible then real, Yeah, it's really bad, it really.
I've always assumed it affects my serotonin level. Sure, I
(02:13):
didn't see anything in this article about that, right. I
thought I was gonna have to get taken to the
hospital in Portland, Oregon one time, did you? Yeah? The
next day Emily asked me as her friend's wedding. She said, Okay,
do you like need to go to the hospital? And
I went, maybe I was serious. So let's talk about this, chuck.
What are the mechanisms that lie behind the cursed and
(02:35):
dreaded hangover? Vice algia? Yeah? Is that the correct pronunciation.
That's how I took it. That's the medical medical name
for hangover is vice algia. Yeah, And it comes from
a Norwegian word for uneasiness following debauchery and a Greek
(02:55):
word for pain algaia, which is weird. I've never seen
a Norwegian and Greek put together. I haven't either, But yeah,
you come up with vice algia? Can I say that
the Bible verse two? Yeah? Yeah, there's a Bible verse
that talks about hangovers. It's Isaiah five eleven. Woe unto
them that rise up early in the morning, that they
may follow strong drink. In other words, I feel real
(03:17):
sorry for you that you had to get up early.
If you got hammered last night, truer words have never
been written in the Bible, at least translation at least
translation there. Um. So okay, so we've got that down.
We have the word origin and a Bible quote as
this pretty much whenever you talk about a hangover. So
what's going on there, Chuck, Well, there's a bunch of things. Um,
(03:40):
let's go ahead and start with vasopressing. Yeah, here's here is,
by the way, everyone, a cocktail party conversation tidbit. So
it's your next cocktail party. You might want to just
bring this up. Okay, it might be kind of depressing
to bring this up actually a cocktail party. Well, this
is the This is how you explain breaking the seal,
which I know that you have experienced. It's crazy once
(04:03):
you once you urinate, and we're gonna stick to the
clinical terms here, Chuck, all right, let's keep it above
the breaking the seal. That's clinical. Um. Once you urinate
that first time, after you've started drinking, it seems like
you just keep going and going and going and you
can't stop, and you actually can't, right right. So vasa pressing,
(04:25):
that's a pressing. Yes, when you drink booze, uh, it
enters your bloodstream and the pituitary gland blocks the creation
of vasso pressing, and without this, your kidney starts sending
water straight to your bladder, basically right to the tune
of four times more than you actually drink. So you
drink two fifty milli leaders of alcohol. Uh, you can
(04:47):
shoot out up to a thousand milli leaders or a leader?
Is that the clinical term to shoot out? Yeah, So
that's no mistake. If you've ever had a few beers
and you're thinking, Wow, that's so weird, I use the
bathroom and now I can't stop. That's v's depressing right there, right, Um,
and that's called the diuretic effect. Um. As the the
presence of alcohol increases in the bloodstream, Um, you expel
(05:11):
a lot more water, right, But you're not just expelling water. Also,
we should say this leads directly to dehydration. If you're
expelling four times more liquid than you're consuming, Brother, you're
getting dehydrated, which is one of the signature results of
the hangover. And you get the headache because of that
and other things too. You do and the headache. And
we've talked about this before. I don't remember where, so
(05:33):
we probably shouldn't, you know, try to come up with
a time stamp. But um, when you have a hangover,
your brain actually shrinks. The next day, the other organs
in your body are like you brain, you've got a
bunch of water exactly, So a lot of the water
um is shuffled from your brain to other organs, causing
your brain to actually shrink in size, which pulls on
(05:55):
the membranes that connected to the skull, the meningies. And
you know, when you have a really had hangover, you
wake up and you feel like the membranes of your
skull are being pulled in different So when I read this,
I was like, oh, so that's what that is. Or
like there's a four hundred pound ham fisted man with
hair and his knuckles like doing little twirls in your head.
(06:16):
You know. Have you ever speaking of breaking the seal?
I don't think they did this in Athens at Georgia,
but I know some friends at Georgia Southern there were
bars there that had the drink till you pee for
free promotion? Have you ever heard of those? But it
sounds awesome. Basically, it like starting at six o'clock, they
monitor the bathrooms and everyone in the bar gets to
(06:37):
drink for free until the first person in the bar
goes to the bathroom. And I don't think they have
that in Athens, if they didn't when I was there.
And of course because it's you know, a college, there's
like dudes peeing in beer pictures in the corner, you know,
just to keep not to not have to pay the
two others whether or not there's that you know, contest
or promotion. So it's science science. Uh so, okay, that's
(07:00):
vast oppressing, right, yes, resulting in dehydration. But when you're
um urinating everywhere every which way, whether it's in a
beer picture or otherwise, Um, you're also expelling a lot
of other needed stuff like electrolytes, salt, potassium, salt, potassium, magnesium,
and these all affect how you're like cells function, how
(07:22):
your muscle's function, right, and you're getting rid of it
without putting it back in. So you're gonna feel lousy. Yes, indeed,
you are going to feel lousy. So you're dehydrated, You've
lost electrolytes, right, and the electrolyte and balance is really important. Um,
if you have too much salt in your electrolyte, and
balance is too high, Uh, you die. Um, if you
(07:43):
have too little, you get the shakes, the tremors, which
I understand is the most uncommon symptom of hangovers. Which
makes me nervous because I get the shakes just about
every time. The next day, I've never gotten the shakes.
What I've never got in the shakes. It also points
out in this article that hangovers are subjective, so for
(08:04):
each person, you know, they might experience different like oh,
I've never had a hangover, or when you get the
shakes and you have a loss of a sense of
well being. Yeah, that's like Nick Cage and leaving Las
Vegas kind of wow. Yeah, I've always been like, wow,
that'd be great to have a grocery cart in a
liquor store. What a great scene. Should we talk about
(08:24):
glacogen real quick too? Yeah, that's another thing you lose. Yes, Um,
the glacogen is a is a key energy source and uh,
we turns it goes to the liver and turns into glucouse.
Is that correct? Right? Well, the liver turns it into
glucost and then sends it out like what the heck
is going on and just does something and all of
a sudden You've just lost all of your energies. I'll
(08:46):
just pee everything out just to be sure exactly. Basically,
it's what's going on, and that actually accounts for like
the weakness the next day fatigue um. And actually that's
not that's not the only thing that accounts for fatigue. Um.
You don't sleep very well after a night of heavy drinking.
Glut to mine. Yes, you have glut to mine, which
(09:07):
is a another it's actually a stimulant um, natural stimulant, yes,
which is the only good kind of stimulant um. And uh,
when you drink alcohol, the production of this natural stimulant
is actually blocked. So when you stop drinking e g.
Go to sleep, your body tries to make up for
(09:29):
lost time and overproduces glutaman. So means you're not getting
as gonna sleep exactly. And the next day you also
feel restless and anxious. Um, maybe you've got the shakes.
That's another cocktail party tip. If you know that if
you start saying all these things that your next cocktail party,
you probably won't be invited back to the next cocktail party. Though,
you know, I think you can wow some people. It
(09:49):
depends on how cool your cocktail party. I guess I
could see them all saying, now, like, why are you
telling us all these awful things about drinking unless my
kind of cocktail party, it's great for me. Another one.
Screw glycogen, screw bass repressing. Uh so what else, Josh? Well,
(10:10):
we could talk about the impurities of liquor, the different alcohols. Yeah.
The rule of thumb is the darker the alcohol, the
more impure it is, and therefore the the heavier the hangover. Yes,
which is why I think everyone pretty much knows that
like your worst alcoholics, they like start drinking every morning
(10:31):
when they wake up, they're probably drinking vodka. Yes, it's
actually a good thing to drink if you are an alcoholic,
because you're going to be able to be as close
to a function alcoholic as possible. Right. How about that
study with the bourbon. Yeah, thirty they did study between
bourbon and vodka, and uh, of the people who drank
amount of bourbon relative to their body weight had a
(10:52):
severe hangover, and only three percent had a hangover when
they drank vodka. That's a big white wine, that kind
of thing. Um, light run yeah, Jen, Yeah, conversely, dark rum,
it's bad white tequila is good. Basically, if it's dark,
it's going to kill you. I'm in bad shape then,
because I'm you know, I mean, I'm a bourbon red
(11:13):
wine beer guy. That's funny. I'm like the whatever's in
the glass guy. Right, that's good. You're fun to have
the cocktail party because you're not picky. No, as long
as you don't run an ice so you know, as
long as there's not a cigarette but floating in it,
I'll think it. And then sometimes even then, I don't
think that hasn't happened before, Chuck. Basically, what I took
(11:33):
from this article is when you drink, you are poisoning
your body through coningers. There's through impurities in the alcohol,
but also through the body's natural processes of breaking down
out alcohol too. It Actually there's a there's a byproduct
produced when the liver metabolizes alcohol, um called acid aldehyde. Yeah,
(11:55):
take this one, because this kind of I read it
like three times and I was still a little lost. Okay,
allow me please. So basically, when the liver metabolizes alcohol,
it produces a byproduct that's a toxin called acid aldehyde,
and acid aldehyde is actually more toxic to the body
than alcohol. Itself, which is crazy. But we have natural
(12:15):
mechanism for neutralizing acid aldehyde called appropriate appropriately enough acid
aldehyde dehydrogenase appropriately so that stuff goes and attacks the
acid aldehyde. Right. Then we have this other stuff that
is called glutoth ione, right, and it contains high levels
of a substance called cysteine, and cysteine actually is attracted
(12:38):
to acid aldehyde. So the two things combine, acid aldehyde
dehydrogen ase and the cysteine in the glutoth ione uh
combined to neutralize the acid aldehyde, right, and it does
it pretty quickly. Um. You you are going to feel
some ill effects, but the less you drink, the easier
it is for these two substances to neutralize. Byproduct, is
(13:00):
the alcohol metabolized. Okay, here's the problem. You have a
limited store of glue tooth ione in your liver, so
you use it up pretty quick. And women have even
less than men exactly, which accounts for why women tend
to have more harsh hangovers and harsher hangovers than men,
not just body weight, although that does matter. Um. So
(13:21):
you use up your glue tooth ione stores and once
you do that, you're blood is just basically circulating this
toxic acid aldehyde, while the liver generates more glue tooth ione.
Hence you've got this horrible hangover and why ultimately time
is the only remedy for it. Yeah, well let's get
to that in a second. Let's get to the remedies.
(13:42):
Let's talk about liquor before beer, never fear or is
it the other way around here? Before liquor, never sticker
or sick. There's you're a little bit of truth to
that turns out because of it when folk totally um,
it turns out that the carbonation and beer speeds up
the absorption of alcohol. So if you start with beer,
your body's gonna have and then move on to liquor,
(14:03):
your body is in fact gonna have a harder time
processing those toxins. Even though there's a certain age. My
friend Justin, I you know, Justin, we were talking about
this a few years ago. Someone was remarking about we
had a big night out and like, what was it
liquor before beer? Be before liquor? I can't remember, And
I just said, you know what doesn't matter anymore, No,
you're gonna be hurting. You reach a certain age and
(14:24):
it either doesn't affect you or it's gonna affect you
no matter what those are college rules. I've noted through
my own personal observations, um that at about age twenty
four you get as you start getting really severe hangovers.
I haven't figured out exactly why yet, but that seems
to be about the age when you switch over from
I can do this constantly to Oh God, why why
(14:48):
I've got the shake cause I have a loss of
sense of well being? Right? Yeah, vomiting diarrhea. I don't
know why. Maybe that's when puberty ends. There's something to
do with hormones still floating around in the body. If
you're puberty into then uh, prebody doesn't in your twenties.
I pubody ended when I was like fourteen, but it
started when I was seven. So seven. Uh, where are
(15:14):
we now? Are we talking about vomiting? Yeah, it turns
out that that actually does help. And also, chuck, Um,
since we have a drinking game based on this and
we're talking about hangovers, allow me, okay, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck,
chuck chuck. That should keep them for a little while.
Go ahead, chuck. Uh alcohol, what's going on there is
(15:38):
it is indeed better to vomit because when alcohol is
absorbed directly through the stomach. And when that happens, you're
the lining of your stomach is gonna become irritated and say, hey,
thanks for putting all this poison in me. And um,
it's gonna start secreting, secreting hydrochloric acid. Right, and the
hydrochloric acid is actually what makes you vomit. Um here
(16:00):
messages to the brain, says the stomach is really connected
to the brain via hormonal signals, which don't necessarily end
after puberty, right and um, yeah, your stomach says you've
got to get rid of this stuff. And yeah, and
it turns out that's you know, you probably shouldn't make
yourself throw up because it's dangerous. It could become a problem.
(16:21):
If you're drinking so much and you're making yourself throw up,
you do have a problem. You should check into a
clinic or something. Check into Promises in Malibu if you've
got the cash. But it will make you feel a
little better because obviously your body is not gonna have
to process whatever alcohol is stolen your stomach. So there
you have it. Uh, what are we on to now, buddy?
I think we're we kind of nailed what it is.
(16:42):
So should we talk about some of the cures that
people spout. Yeah, there are plenty of hangover cures. Everybody's
got one. Yeah, and actually I'm surprised to find that
some of them actually are real. Now that you understand
what causes a hangover, you can actually identify what will
help here a hangover, sure, because really what's going on
is you've expelled electrolytes. It's biology you've expelled exactly, You've
(17:06):
expelled your natural energy stores. Um, you are dehydrated and
your brain is strung. Yeah, so what do you do
to make yourself feel better? Chuck? My personal favorite's hair
of the dog. Well, that helped me or not? Uh,
it will not. You know where that comes from? Uh,
(17:26):
it's the Bible again, isn't it. No Nazareth medieval times though,
the hair of the dog that bit you. Supposedly, if
you got bit by a rabid dog, you would take
some of that dog's hair and apply it to your
wound and that will cure you. This is the same
culture that buried a cat at midnight to cure war exactly.
So just like that is false hair the dog, it's
faults as well. Having a drink the next day to
(17:48):
make yourself feel a little bit better will not work.
Might make you feel a bit better in the in
the short term, but ultimately you're just adding more toxins
that your body is gonna have to process, and you're
kind of just staving off the inevitable hangover. Unless you
just drink all day again and then you'll have to
hang over the following day. Yeah, exactly. Um, unless you
just keep going until you die and then you won
(18:11):
the game. I was taking a walk with Emily yesterday
with the dogs the shows how twisted I am? And
I saw it was eight o'clock in the morning, seven
thirty in the morning, something like that, And there was
a guy down the street from us in the parking lot,
you know, cracking his first King Cobra. And I said,
you know what, am? I said? Ninety nine times out
of a hundred, I see those people, and I think, God,
(18:34):
how could you live your life like just getting bombed
for the moment you wake up every day? I said,
But every once in a while, I think what a
way to live? She said? She said, what is wrong
with you? Exactly? Doesn't she well, she doesn't let me
get up and get drunk every day. If that's what
you mean, that's keeping you in line. Okay, she does,
um chuck. One of the things that kills me is
(18:56):
drinking coffee. I learned a long time ago that if
I ever have a hangover, I stay away from coffee.
So I'm surprised to find in this article that actually
it does have some benefits agreed, which are, Uh, it
will actually um alleviate your headache a little bit because
it's caffeine and that's a vasso constrictor, so it reduces
the your blood vessels. It reduces the swelling, so that'll
(19:18):
help a little bit. It'll help cure the headache some.
But it'll dehydrate you because it's a diuretic because it's
a diarettice, which is how you really got into this
trouble in the first place. So stop being stupid. Saying
coffee along with a lot of water might be a
good idea. Possibly, it's just me, right, Okay. So what else? Uh?
Fatty fatty food, fried food the next day. Yeah, which
is odd because I know I crave fried food the
(19:40):
next day. Cheeseburger, bacon, chili, cheeseburger. It's like two hamburgers.
A year and they're on hangover days. She doesn't eat
meat beef at all, but when she wakes up with
a really bad hanger, she's like quarter pounder. It's very
It's strange because obviously she's not the only person who
experiences that craving. But that doesn't necessarily help and could
(20:02):
actually make you vomit. It could tip the scales when
you've got a bunch of hydrochloric acid in your stomach.
But it could help if you ate a bacon chili
cheeseburger or two bacon chili cheeseburgers before you started drinking it.
Why because it contains oil and the fat and the
grease will line your stomach and absolutely and in fact,
(20:24):
in the Mediterranean they have long drank a little bit
of olive oil before imbibing. It's an old thing they do.
They're not I'm not either. I like ol of o,
but I'm not gonna drink a tablespoon of it. No
me neither. Okay, Uh, how about a banana. I'm just
gonna pull that one out of my head, out of
your banana tree um remedy, yes, okay, loaded with potassium electrolytes.
(20:50):
And because remember you lose potassium, which is an electrolyte,
so if you can remember, restore the balance. So banana
will help your hangover as well. Eggs, yeah, since we're
on breakfast, because they contain cisteine, right, which is something
that's attracted to acid aldehyde. Right, So eggs in a
banana and water would be a great way to start
your morning if you had to hang over, Not just water,
(21:11):
but water loaded with sugar and salt. Actually, right, because
the carbonation it would do the same thing as it
did with the beer before liquor. So you want uncarbonated
water load of a salt sugar, not a red Bull no,
because it has caffeine. Not an energy drink. Uncarbonated non
caffeine water with salt and sugar, which I think I
(21:36):
just described a supports drink, right, A banana and some
eggs or you know what else you can do instead
of water? Put some fruit juice in there. Fruit juice.
Fruit juice is the kind of the kind of sugar
you want fruit toase, and studies have shown that it
increases the rate that which your body gets rid of
the toxins, and uh, that's a good idea. It also
(21:59):
gives you vitamins of course, Okay, what about um say
etcetera seta menafin a seeda menafin is uh, well, you
you want to avoid etcetera because has caffeine, right, which
can help. But ultimately, now and a set of menafin
I believe you don't want to take because that can
mess with your liver. Ultimately, if you have alcohol in yours,
(22:20):
if you take a set of mena fin for a hangover,
you are probably going to feel a little better. Actually
you'll probably feel a lot better. But in the long run,
your liver is gonna fall apart. Yeah, you're doing your body. Damn,
You're gonna expel that through your urine. So what you
want to do is get a non caffeinated anti inflammatory
prostaglandin inhibitor, which is also known as aspirin, which is good.
(22:44):
So aspirin will help that. It's shown that prostaglandin actually
uh reeks havoc on your body during hangover. So if
you take a prostaglandin inhibitor, you're gonna feel a lot better.
And apparently there have been studies that show yes, aspirin helps,
especially if you take one before you go to bed.
And you take two when you wake up, But be
(23:05):
aware people with tender stomachs often vomit from aspirate. Right,
you know what my curious let's talk about each other's curious.
If you got one, Um, surely you do. What do
I do? You want to hear mine? Yeah? Mine is?
My deal is I can't sleep in anymore. It doesn't
matter if I was out till three in the morning.
I'm still gonna wake up at seven. It's just the
(23:27):
way it is. When you're old, you'll you'll experience this
one day. I get up at seven like I normally do,
and I drink I pound like three or four glasses
of water, take a couple of aspirin, and then I
get right back in bed and see if I can
get like another hour to a sleep, and then I
wake up in at That works crazy well, especially works
(23:48):
with advil. If you take a couple of advil and
you have even like a half hour, preferably an hour
extra to sleep. For some reason, Anville always makes me sleepy.
It makes me fall asleep very easily. Never it out why,
But yeah, you wake up an hour later and you
are set. It's a great one because sleep is only real,
real key to carrying a hangover. They say, yeah, well, time,
(24:11):
well that that's usually what I rely on. It's time, um,
and I pound a few Coca colas in the morning,
which is not good for me, but it works, right.
And then as burn, is that what they say? Yeah?
And then I don't make eye contact with anybody because
they're all out to get me. That's how I make
it through the day when I have a hangover. Sure,
And again we should say, please don't find any of
(24:31):
this funny, entertaining, or amusing if you're twenty one years
or older. And if you are twenty one years or older,
please find it amusing responsibly. Uh. We should talk about
some of these over the counter, like anti hangover pills
that you can buy. You heard of these, yeah, like Chasers. Yeah,
they're they're basically multi vitamins. And here's the deal. Well,
(24:54):
some are activated carbon, which can work. But here's the deal.
If you if you read on the package, it'll say
something like us, um, drink a full glass twel bounced
glass of water before you start drinking, and take a pill.
And then after your second or third drink, drink another
glass of water and take another pill and then do
that again. Then before you go to bed, drink a
glass of water with a pill, and then wake up
and drink a glass of water with a bill. So
(25:15):
you're basically taking a vitamin downing tons of water, which
is and that's the key is the water. You're hydrating yourself.
So it's a bit of a rip off, um, but
not necessarily because it is recommended that you do take
a multi vitamin the next morning. But just take a
multi vitamin, don't pay for some hangover cure. You know.
What else helps is to actually be cognizant and not
(25:37):
a total drunk while you're drinking. Yes, um, if you
drink glass for glass water for alcohol. Number one, it
keeps you hydrated. But number two, it also paces your
drinking so that your body has more time to process
this alcohol. It's not just like bom bomb. You know.
I've gotten better at that. Oh yeah, sure, I try
to be. If I have like a big night out,
(25:57):
I try to be pretty aware of uh drinking a
couple of glasses of water here and there, and I
always will pound two or three glasses before I get
to bed. For you, chuck, it's the way to do it,
all right. So there you have it. That's the hangover, right. Yeah.
A couple other things you can do beforehand is eat. Obviously,
alcohol and the empty stomach is gonna get you there quicker,
(26:18):
but it will get you sicker and make you feel worse.
So water, what else you say, multi vitamins? Drinking Moderation,
of course is the key with everything. Watch what you're drinking,
red wine, bourbon. It's gonna make you feel bad. It
tastes sugary sweet on your tongue, but it'll make you
feel worse. I'm in trouble though. I wish I could
(26:39):
learn to drink vodka. I just don't take it. Is
so wonderful, isn't nice? I drink gin and tonics occasionally
during the summertime months, but I can't drink those. Gin
actually makes me crazy. I have a self imposed band
on gin. I won't drink it. I don't allow myself
to drink it because it makes me nuts. And apparently
in the seventeenth century, uh, the UK actually banned or
(27:02):
I should say England banned because nuts. Yeah yeah, so
jin was banned in England for a little while because
people went like I did. Sure, you know, different alcohols
through that tequila is notorious for making people violent and
the act out of sorts. Never had a problem with tequila,
I mean neither. My buddy Scottie has a red wine thing.
(27:24):
Completely personality shift when he drinks it, really but yeah,
it becomes a completely different person. You know, Alexander the
Great died from a red wine drinking competition. One of
his soldiers challenged into it and they apparently drank like
five million gallons apiece. And Alexander is a great one
off and died. Boy. I bet the alcohol back then
was rough too, man, Yeah, you know they love their wine.
(27:47):
Those are the good old days. Well, if you want
to learn absolutely every last detail there is to know
about a hangover, you should read this fine, fine article
by freelancer Lacey Perry called how Hangovers Work. You can
just type in hangover in the handy search bar at
how stuff works dot com. Also check out our Kiva
dot org, page bucks and growing so far. Yeah, very
(28:11):
proud of you guys. You can help fund a loan
for an entrepreneur in uh developing country for as little
as twenty five bucks and best part, you get it back.
We have a team that's to be found at www
dot Kiva dot org, slash team slash stuff you should
know right. If that's too hard, you can click on
(28:33):
community and then search stuff you should know. And we've
been posting a link at the bottom of every one
of our blog posts. Yes, we've got close to a
hundred members and about bucks raised and it's pretty cool.
Let's do listener, mam, Let's do listening now. Okay, Josh,
I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't kill me. I'm just
the enumerator. This is a good one. Hi, guys, hope
(28:57):
this finds you well. My name is Mark and I
live in fish Kill, New York, which is an interesting town.
I was listening to the Gross National Happiness podcast and
you mentioned the census worker being killed. I thought i'd
send an email. I was a Census Bureau worker in
two thousand. It was I was a care free nineteen
year old on summer break. My friends and I saw
the ad in the paper and took the exam and
(29:20):
became official enumerators, including a shiny plastic badge from the
Treasury Department to boot. He says, So our task was
a travel door to door and talked to the people
who didn't return their survey. Some people got the short form,
some got the long form and former. I remember the
forms were assigned at random. Usually the long formers didn't
mail him back in, and uh that's who they usually
(29:43):
had to a confront, shakedown and shake him down. Uh.
People were downright mean when I knocked on their door.
One this is a good one. One man asked me
to hold on for a second. He closed the door,
and within a few minutes I heard the garage door
open and he drove out and waved goodbye. Such a
jerky move. One woman answered the door with a baby
(30:03):
in her arms, shouting something at me. I heard dogs barking,
and the next thing I knew, she had let the
dogs loose on us, and I was running safely back
to my h the safety of my Buick Regal. I
quickly learned my lesson, and when someone would open the
door and give me the skinny on their neighbors who
didn't mail their forms back in, I was happy. And
I was even happier when it was a grandma who
(30:24):
would offer me a cold drink, Because you know, the
old folks, they're just like, come on in, let's talk
for a while. Exactly Um I did not know, however,
that uh enumerators were killed. I must have missed that
part of the training. Uh. Most of the rants would
be anti government. They would say I was the man
sold to get off their property and all the expletives
(30:45):
that go with it. It's not be it's not easy
being in enumerator. So give them a shout out. So
shout out to all you enumerators out there. And that's
pretty much it. He uh said, I thought i'd chime in.
Actually I was chiming in this morning in the car
and then realized that I was alone. Mark, so lonely. Mark,
the former enumerator is a funny guy, and he says,
by the way, podcast suggestion how Hippie Rob works. Oh
(31:08):
that's a good one. That would be a great one.
That audio trying to track them down. Sure, yeah, so
thanks Mark, and good luck if you enumerate in the future.
And all you enumerators out there, accounting heads, I'm sorry,
I didn't know it's so rough on you. And uh,
let's see if you're an numerator or a denominator or
you know the current whereabouts of Hippie Rob put in
(31:29):
an email to stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
that how stuff works dot Com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
Com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
(31:52):
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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