As nothing much else came to mind today I thought I'd post up what I'll be talking about on my Radio show on Monday morning (2SER 107.3 9am Monday if you're interested)

There are a couple of things we usually associate with drinking a lot of alcohol. You’ve got things like slurred speech, going to the toilet twice for every drink after breaking seal and of course the Hang Over. Now purely in the interests of science of course, I did some pretty comprehensive research in this area at a friends wedding last weekend. And it took me until around midday to recover from this research. Because Hangovers are surrounded by so many Old Wives tales about how to prevent them and how to get rid of one once you have it, I decided to conduct some follow up research in the interests of helping out our University student friends who seems to be particularly susceptible to this condition.

So lets take a look at some of the symptoms and what are their actual causes.

Now believe it or not a lot of hangover symptoms are very closely linked to the reason why we seem to spend half the night standing in front of a urinal or sitting on the toilet. When alcohol starts to enter your system, it stops the creation of the chemical vasopressin. Without this your kidneys simply send water straight to your bladder instead of sending it around the body to the arrears it is needed.

So as you become more and more dehydrated, the vital organs really start to scream out for water and so start taking it from the brain. When this happens the brain contracts until it starts to pull on the membranes which attach it to your skull which in turn causes the massive headache you wake up with.

What’s more, all this urination rapidly depletes the body of potassium and salts which is a contributing factor to the fatigue and nausea you feel. Alcohol also breaks down the body’s store of glycogen in the liver, which only serves to make you feel even worse.

But that’s only half the problem. As the alcohol is being broken down in the liver, a toxin even more poisonous that alcohol is produced called acetaldehyde. This toxin is in turn attacked by an enzyme call acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and a substance called glutathione.

This system works pretty well until you really start hitting the bottle and the liver’s stores of glutathione run out. When this happens the toxins really start to build up and you really start to feel bad.

Yet another contributing factor is what’s called the glutamine rebound effect. Glutamine is a natural stimulant found in the body but when you drink alcohol this stimulant is not produced until you stop drinking. And it’s then that the body goes into over drive replacing its lost stores of glutamine. Unfortunately it usually produces a lot more than it needs so when you come home after a big one and try to get some rest, you will not sleep properly because you are high on all these extra stimulants running through your body. This of course only makes you feel even worse in the morning.

And finally on top of all this is the main reason we are driving the porcelain bus the next day. When alcohol is absorbed by the stomach, the cells that line it become quite irritated. So when this happens, they start to produce hydrochloric acid. And as you cam imagine, that wouldn’t feel so great and it’s this that makes you feel sick. As the concentration of acid increases the nerves in your stomach start to tell your water starved brain that there is something not very nice down here and we want it out.

So how can we have our cake and eat it to? Is there a way to have a big night out and not wake up in the morning feeling, looking and indeed smelling like a train wreck?

First lets dispel some of the myths.

Coffee will not make you feel any better or sober you up like they do in the movies. About the only benefit coffee will have is that it may decrease your headache slightly in the short term. It makes it worse in the long term though because it will dehydrate you even further.

Hair of the Dog is pretty similar in that it might make you feel better in the short term, it will only worsen the whole experience in the long term.

One of the best things you can do to ward off a hangover is to simply drink water. Drink early and drink often. If you are able to stay hydrated you can sometimes wake up with no effects at all apart from the 2kg of loose change in your pockets and a handful of mysterious bruises.

If you weren’t able to keep the water up during the night, one of the best remedies is burnt toast. The reason this works is that the charred carbon on the toast acts as a filter and attracts all those nasty toxic by products of processing the alcohol.

If your combine this with a few sports drinks which will not only re hydrate you but will also replace all the salts and minerals you flushed down the toilet last night and will get you back on the road to recovery pretty quickly.

UPDATE...

You can listen to me delievring the above on Discovery, the radio show I am a part of.