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We need more research on hangovers, scientist argues
Everyone seems to have a go-to hangover remedy. Some people swear a Prairie Oyster—raw egg, Worcestershire sauce, and a splash of hot sauce—makes the nausea and headache subside (or maybe the beverage is so disgusting people forget they’re hung over?). Others believe a greasy breakfast makes them feel OK again. Still some crack open a beer, believing that only the hair of the dog can help them. But are all these efforts useless? Is it even possible to get rid of a hangover?
The only sure way to avoid a hangover is, of course, to abstain from drinking. But there are at least some science-backed ways to make the symptoms more bearable, says Alyson Mitchell, a professor and John Kinsella Chair in the department of food science and technology at the University of California, Davis.
Every year U.S. companies lose an estimated $148 billion on hangovers, says Alyson Mitchell, but experts know little about them. Hangovers cost so much because so many people miss work and if they do show, they flub basic tasks because being hung over makes people a bit, well, stupid. That's just one example of why we need more research on hangovers, Mitchell argued during a presentation at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting.
“The interesting thing about a hangover is that really it is a metabolic storm that is going on,” says Mitchell, a professor and John Kinsella Chair in the department of food science and technology at University of California, Davis. Hangovers involve a variety of systems, causing headaches, stomach discomfort, and immune responses like out-of-control inflammation.
Mitchell notes that there a wealth of research on alcohol and alcoholism, but there is little research on hangovers (PubMed has more than 700,000 articles on alcohol and only 400 on hangovers). While she believes researchers might shy away from studying hangovers because finding a hangover cure might encourage excessive drinking, she thinks that examining hangovers can improve our understanding of how the immune systems, metabolisms, GI systems react to alcohol.
“We really don’t know much about a hangover and it is an incredibly puzzling response—the symptoms only show up after all the alcohol is metabolized and gone from the body. And that in itself is amazing,” says Mitchell. “The fact that something is the most toxic after it has been eliminated from the body [is unusual].”
On to the “cures”: One way to avoid hangover symptoms is to drink water while you’re drinking alcohol. Alcohol works as a diuretic causing that achy head (so does caffeine; consuming alcohol and an energy drink will double that hangover).
“You lose a lot of liquid through urination—four times as much water is lost as you take in,” Mitchell explains. “Ethanol is also a vasodilator and that [also] causes some of the headache issues.”
People can also treat that icky hangover feeling by drinking fruit juice, which helps us hydrate and replace carbohydrates lost from drinking. It’s also why eating toast or crackers sometimes makes us feel better.
Prior to drinking, people should eat a high fat meal, something that includes olive oil, meat, or dairy. The fat coats the stomach, meaning it takes the body longer to absorb the alcohol. The day after drinking, eating eggs helps replace cysteine, an amino acid, lost from alcohol consumption. Our bodies don’t easily replenish the amino acid and cysteine-rich eggs help restore it.
”Hangovers are so common and prevalent in every society,” she says. “[Yet] I found it to be almost shocking that there is so little real research done on hangovers.”
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Why do hangovers seem so much worse as we get older?
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Your nightcap is not actually helping you sleep
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A happy hour urban myth: Is 'breaking the seal' a real thing?
Toby Talbot / AP
It’s around the third beer when it hits you. Your bladder feels full and you gotta go -- like, now. You head to the restroom, and as you leave, your friend jokes that you're risking "breaking the seal": You urinate once while drinking and after that, you’ll have to get up every five minutes to pee.
It's an urban myth that even urologists wonder about, as it turns out.
“Last week we were at a dinner party and someone asked us this question. I looked it up. There is no physiological basis. There are theories as to why this happens,” explains Dr. Courtenay Moore, a urologist at the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute at Cleveland Clinic.
While "breaking the seal" remains an urban legend, alcohol does have a real impact on the bladder and the urge to urinate. Drinking alcohol—whether it's one whiskey or three PBRs—intensifies the need to go.
“It can be shots, beer, volume isn’t necessary. The key thing is that [alcohol] produces the increased need to urinate,” explains James Zacny, associate professor of anesthesia and critical care at University of Chicago Medicine.
Alcohol consumption suppresses vasopressin, also known as anti-diuretic hormone. The pituitary gland in the brain releases ADH, which regulates water in your kidneys.
“Alcohol simply blocks the normal release of vasopressin … [vasopressin] promotes re-absorption of water in the kidney to the rest of the body. If you have this blocked, the water goes into the body,” Zacny adds.
Your body produces ADH when you are sleeping, for example, preventing you from waking to pee several times through the night. When you imbibe, the ADH excretion lessens, increasing your urine production. Most people’s bladder holds anywhere from 300 to 400 cubic centimeters (otherwise known as cc’s, a term ubiquitous in medical dramas). When people drink, they consume more liquids than usual; pair that with the body sending the unabsorbed water directly to the bladder, and it’s no surprise people feel more urgency. And once the drinking starts, the body goes through a vicious cycle.
“[Alcohol] decreases your ADH and you are producing more fluid. So when you produce more fluid and you fill your bladder more, you suppress more ADH,” Moore says.
And within 20 minutes of drinking, alcohol irritates the bladder, leading to that uncomfortable feeling of a full bladder, even if it isn’t.
Moore says that she has heard all sorts of crazy theories as to why people pee more while drinking, including that you urinate more because your sphincter contracts, which is completely untrue.
And while most theories about breaking the seal are false, Moore believes that some of it might be mental.
“It is a level of awareness. Cognitively, you may be a little impaired,” she says, adding that you might believe that breaking the seal is the real reason you feel the urge to pee more.
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Glass shape may influence how fast you down that beer
Rita Juliana / Stock Xchng via MyHealthNewsDaily
Beer drinkers take almost twice as long to finish when drinking from a straight-sided glass compared with a curved glass, according to a new study.
MyHealthNewsDaily Staff
How quickly you down an alcoholic drink may depend on the shape of the glass you're holding, a new study suggests.
In the study, participants were asked to drink beer from either a straight-sided glass, or a curved "beer flute."
People took about almost twice as long to finish when drinking alcohol from the straight-sided glass, compared with the curved glass. There was no difference in drinking rates from the glasses when the drink was nonalcoholic.
People may swill their alcohol faster from curved glasses because it is more difficult to accurately judge the halfway point of these glasses, the researchers speculated. As a result, drinkers may be less able to gauge how much they have consumed.
"People often talk of 'pacing themselves' when drinking alcohol as a means of controlling levels of drunkenness, and I think the important point to take from our research is that the ability to pace effectively may be compromised when drinking from certain types of glasses," said study researcher Angela Attwood of the University of Bristol's School of Experimental Psychology in the United Kingdom.
In another experiment, participants completed a computer task in which they were shown pictures of two glasses containing varying volumes of liquid, and asked to judge whether each glass was more, or less, than half-full. The researchers found people made greater errors in judging the halfway point of the curved glass.
The participants who showed the greatest error in these judgments also tended to show the greatest changes in their drinking rates, the researchers said.
The speed at which people drink alcohol influences their level of intoxication, and the number of drinks they consume on an occasion. Therefore, slowing down is likely to have a positive impact for the individual, and also at a population level, the researchers said.
Pass it on: The shape of a glass may influence how quickly we consume alcohol.
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Could you be allergic to wine?
Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP/Getty Images
You've blamed your flushed skin and runny nose on bad shellfish, seasonal allergies, or too much jalapeno in your quesadilla. But the real culprit may be lurking in your wine glass, finds a new German study.
Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz sent out questionnaires to thousands of people living in a wine-producing region of western Germany. Of the roughly 950 people who completed the questionnaire, 225 drinkers--or almost 25 percent of the group--reported some mild signs of alcohol intolerance, says study author Heinz Decker, Ph.D. The most common symptoms included flushed or itchy skin, a runny nose, diarrhea, and a rapid heartbeat, Decker explains.
Wine contains proteins from grapes, bacteria, and yeast, as well as sulfites and other organic compounds, Decker says. Any one of those may cause an allergic-like reaction, and may also be found in your favorite beer, the study explains. A specific type of protein allergen called "LTP" is found in the skins of grapes, which makes red wine more likely than other types of booze to cause a reaction, Decker adds. Meanwhile, white wine is fermented without the grape skins. (Going hiking? Drink the 5 Best Portable Wines on your next outdoor adventure.)
So are you allergic to alcohol? If you experience any of the symptoms mentioned above, as well as vomiting, shortness of breath, or swelling of the lips, mouth, or throat, the answer could be yes. You may also be suffering from alcohol intolerance, which produces symptoms similar to an allergic reaction. The ethanol in your favorite drink may cause blood vessels to expand, which makes absorption of irritating agents a lot more likely, Decker says.
But relax, you don't have to give up booze any time soon--as long as your symptoms are mild, Decker says. If red wine triggers one or several of the symptoms of alcohol intolerance, try switching to white. The same goes for beer and liquor: If you don't react well to one type, try another, Decker advises. But if your symptoms are severe--like if you have problems breathing or you become seriously ill--leave your liquor on the shelf and notify your doctor ASAP, he says. (In the clear? Then tip back your favorite brews--and lose up to 32 pounds in the process! Discover the gut-shrinking secret in Drink This, Not That!).
More Links:
- What Your Drink Order Says About You
- Cheap Beers We Love
- The Men's Health Allergy Center
- 4 Strange Reasons You Drink Too Much
- Sign up for the Men's Health Daily Dose newsletter for must-have tips in your inbox every single day!
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New study explains why some drinkers black out
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- Study explains the science behind your beer buzz
- What makes someone an angry drunk?
- I'll never drink again! Never mind. Cheers!
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Study explains the science behind your beer buzz
Leave it to science to take the mystery out of the “I just love you so much, man,” beer buzz. But their findings may lead to better treatment for alcoholics, according to a study in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Although researchers have known for decades that alcohol affects the brain, it remained unclear as to exactly how the hooch makes humans feel so darn happy. “We have three decades of animal data, but this study is the first direct evidence of how alcohol makes people feel good,” says lead author Jennifer Mitchell, PhD, clinical project director at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco.
The research team found that found that drinking alcohol releases a flood of endorphins, the so-called “feel good” brain chemicals, in two very specific brain areas: the nucleus accumbens, which is linked to addictive behaviors, and the orbitofrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making.
Using positron emission tomography, or PET imaging, the team looked at the immediate effects of alcohol in the brains of 13 heavy drinkers, defined in the study as having two or three drinks every day, and 12 matched “control” subjects, who were not heavy drinkers.
Before imbibing a special cocktail of alcohol used for research purposes, along with a little orange juice, the subjects were given injections of a radioactive drug that binds to the brain’s opioid receptors, a place where endorphins also bind. The researchers then mapped the receptor sites that “lit up” on the PET image.
The subjects were then each given one minute to drink the special cocktail, a second injection of the radioactive drug, and another PET scan.
By comparing areas of radioactivity in the first and second PET images, the researchers were able to map the exact brain locations where endorphins were released in response to drinking.
In all of the subjects, alcohol led to endorphin release, but there were some differences between the control group and the heavy drinkers.
Although all participants reported feeling a greater sense of pleasure when more endorphins were released in the nucleus accumbens, heavy drinkers reported feeling more intoxicated than the control group when a greater number of endorphins were released in the orbitofrontal cortex.
“Heavy drinkers got more of a reward, more of a high,” says Mitchell. “Their brains are changed in a way that makes drinking extremely pleasurable.”
The study also found that endorphins released after drinking bind to the Mu receptor, the target of narcotics like morphine and heroin.
That finding could lead to “reverse engineering,” the drug naltrexone, which makes drinking and drugs like heroin less pleasurable by preventing binding at non-specific opioid receptor sites. Compliance, however, is low, because of side effects.
“People say they don’t like how the drug makes them feel, but now that we know that alcohol releases endorphins, we believe that we can make a better naltrexone, and it could be something that people who need help would want to take,” says Mitchell.
Related:
- What makes someone an angry drunk?
- Blame it on the alcohol? Maybe not, study suggests
- Post-booze blackout, how people fill in the blanks
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What makes someone an angry drunk?
Petr David Josek / AP
There are weepy drinkers, inappropriately affectionate drinkers, giggly and goofy drinkers. But there's one type of reveler you really want to avoid: the angry drinker. New research suggests how to spot one.
Impulsive, live-in-the-moment types are likely to become aggressive when they're intoxicated, according to a new study from Ohio State University's Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at the school. "We already know that alcohol increases aggression. And people who have aggressive personality traits also tend not to think about the consequences of their actions," Bushman says. "You put the two together, and it's really a toxic mix."
The average age of the study's 495 volunteers was 23, all of whom described themselves as social drinkers and none of whom had any past or present drug, alcohol or psychiatric-related problems. They each took a questionnaire designed to measure which of the participants were future-focused, and which were more impulsive. Half of the volunteers were given alcohol mixed with orange juice; the other half were given orange juice with just a teensy bit of alcohol -- but researchers sprayed the rims of the glasses with alcohol so it smelled like a full-on alcoholic drink (genius).
Then they played a little game: The participants were told they were playing against an unseen same-sex opponent in a speed reaction test, and that the winner got to give the loser an electric shock -- harmless, but still a little painful. (But, actually, they were playing against the researchers themselves.) As the game wore on, the shocks got longer and more intense, making it seem like the opponent was getting meaner and meaner with every win. The more impulsive the participants had rated themselves, the more likely they were to retaliate by upping the intensity and length of the shocks they sent the "losers."
“The less people thought about the future, the more likely they were to retaliate, but especially when they were drunk. People who were present-focused and drunk shocked their opponents longer and harder than anyone else in the study,” Bushman explained. "Alcohol didn’t have much effect on the aggressiveness of people who were future-focused."
While the impulsive types who were not intoxicated did up the intensity of the shocks, it wasn't to the same degree as the impulsive folks who were drunk.
"If you carefully consider the consequences of your actions, it is unlikely getting drunk is going to make you any more aggressive than you usually are," Bushman said.
That's because alcohol is a disinhibitor, explains New York City psychiatrist and regular TODAY contributor Dr. Gail Saltz. It doesn't cause a personality trait; it reveals what's already there, hiding somewhere inside your personality. A drunk friend may appear to be acting out of character, but we don't know what that person might be keeping under wraps, Saltz explains.
Think you're only an angry drunk when you're throwing back, say, shots of tequila? It's not that simple, says Bruce Bartholow, associate professor of psychology at University of Missouri College of Arts and Sciences. (Bartholow led a study we wrote about earlier this year on alcohol and behavior.) Bartholow says there isn't much research looking at how drinking an unfamiliar type of alcohol changes cognitive function.
"There’s a social influence on your drunken behavior," Bartholow explains. "People drink different kinds of things in different situations. If you're at a dinner party at your boss's house, you're probably not going to be doing shots of tequila." There, you might be drinking a good sauvignon blanc, so you learn to associate the experience of drinking wine with mind-your-manners behavior. "There's a difference between what it feels like to be drunk off of wine and what it feels like to be drunk off of shots of tequila because the situations are vastly different," Bartholow explains.
Related:
Post-booze blackout, how people fill in the blanks
Blame it on the alcohol? Maybe not
Why do hangovers seem so much worse as we get older?
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Post-booze blackout, how people fill in the blanks
Getting hammered to the point of not remembering much, if anything, about it is a pretty common experience for some people on college campuses or during a long holiday weekend. Reconstructing what happened during a bout of booze-fueled amnesia can either make for a hilarious movie plot like "The Hangover" or an interesting research project.
Although not inspired by the Hollywood blockbuster, a recent study looked at alcohol-induced memory blackouts hoping to learn how people "fill in the blanks" afterward and whether this information is accurate. Researchers found that people frequently turn to unreliable sources to piece together these forgotten memories.
In the study, published in the journal Memory, 280 British college students completed an online survey. Students were asked whether they had experienced either a partial blackout -- where they remembered bits and pieces of what happened after they started drinking, or a total one -- forgetting everything about what they did or saw until they woke up the next day.
Among the students who drank, 24 percent of them admitted to having a total blackout while 37 percent had a partial one. Drinking a lot within a short period of time typically causes a blackout, explains lead author Robert Nash.
Researchers found that blackout sufferers were somewhat more likely to ask people who had also been intoxicated for details of the hazy episode rather than asking people who weren't drunk but had also witnessed it. Nearly 44 percent said they had seen a photograph or video reminding them of what happened.
"I was surprised at how highly motivated people were to reconstruct these forgotten alcohol-soaked experiences, despite knowing that doing so can often lead to considerable embarrassment or panic," admits Nash, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England.
He says asking other people who were there is often the only way we can find out what happened. But that relying on friends or acquaintances who were probably drunk can make their recollections less than 100 percent reliable.
Unreliable sources can lead to memory errors and sometimes false beliefs about behaviors during a forgotten time-period. This may be true not only for boozy blackouts but for other past experiences, whether it's cobbling together childhood memories or even in cases of wrongful conviction.
Interestingly roughly three-quarters of the study participants admitted they might have unintentionally made up information when a friend passed out, such as claiming the person had sex with a stranger or puked on someone.
And nearly 17 percent of blackout sufferers later discovered they were misled by incorrect information, often coming from friends.
But having a blackout and being eager to know what happened, seems perhaps to change people's perspectives on whether a particular source could be trusted, Nash points out. "So we place faith in information sources that we would othewise consider highly untrustworthy."
His advice? "Be aware when reconstructing events of whether you are placing trust in a source because someone is truly reliable or because that person is the only option."
Related:
- About last night: Biology of the booze blackout
- Why do hangovers seem so much worse as we get older?
- I'll never drink again! Never mind. Cheers!
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Blame it on the alcohol? Maybe not, study suggests
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We're going to guess many poor decisions were made that night.
It’s a trap that most of us have fallen into: making a rash or regrettable decision after a few cold Coors Lights. Blame it on the booze, right? A new study out of the University of Missouri College of Arts and Sciences sheds light on how the brain processes mistakes in the presence of alcohol.
In a finding that runs contrary to previous thinking, it turns out we still know we are making mistakes when intoxicated. We just don’t care as much.
“I suppose the main implication is that people shouldn’t assume ‘I was drunk’ is a good excuse for doing things one knows he or she shouldn’t be doing,” wrote the study’s author, Dr. Bruce Bartholow of the University of Missouri, in an e-mail. The study will be published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
“It’s not as though people do drunken things because they’re not aware of their behavior, but rather they seem to be less bothered by the implications or consequences of their behavior than they normally would be,” Bartholow added.
Bartholow set out to bring clarity to an area of ambiguity in brain research: Does the strength of the ERN – the error-related negativity “alarm signal” set off in the brain by mistakes – change with the presence of alcohol? Research out of the Netherlands in 2002 had concluded that intoxication reduced the brain’s capacity to detect errors.
However, Bartholow’s study challenged that assumption by asking if it’s possible that the ability to detect errors actually remained the same – but alcohol changed the brain’s reaction to those errors.
“I wondered whether alcohol's effects on error processing were less about reducing awareness of errors and more about reducing the distress that normally accompanies errors,” Bartholow said.
In the study, a group of 67 people aged 21-35 were split into three groups. While two of the three groups received a placebo alcohol (10-proof vodka-tonics), or just plain tonic, the third (lucky?) group received alcoholic beverages -- 100-proof vodka-tonics. The participants in the alcohol group got to a blood-alcohol level of about .09 percent -- just over the legal driving limit. The other two groups remained at a .00 percent blood-alcohol level throughout the study. All participants were then tasked with completing a challenging computer task.
Bartholow’s team noted that while all the groups made mistakes, those which had consumed alcohol were less likely to notice their errors. The alcohol drinkers were also less likely to slow down after an error.
However, in addition to monitoring their performance on the computer, participants also measured the subjects’ mood.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the alcohol group reported feeling less negative. (Hilariously, the group which received the placebo had a more negative mood.) Using these measurements, Bartholow’s team was able to demonstrate a correlation between the mood of the participants and the strength of the ERN. A less negative mood equaled a less severe ERN.
For the study author, the findings represent an important step in understanding how alcohol affects the brain – and the mistakes made by people who have had a couple brew-dogs. Further avenues of research could include testing whether drunk people can be sufficiently motivated to care about their mistakes (and if so, would their brain responses be similar to those of sober individuals).
Another possible avenue Bartholow is pursuing is testing whether the error-related brain activity differences observed in the study will produce changes in other parts of the brain as people attempt to correct their mistakes. In what promises to be endless entertainment for the research assistants, Bartholow is pursuing the use of an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging – or scans that measure brain activity) machine to take measurements of the study participants.
Related:
- Why do hangovers seem so much worse as we get older?
- I'll never drink again! Never mind. Cheers!
- And the definitive hangover cure is ... plain old coffee and aspirin, actually
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Drink wine, don't get sunburned
Igor Dutina / featurepics.com
Important health tip for the summer: Drink more wine! A better protection against harmful sunburns might be a healthy dose of SPF sauvignon blanc, suggests a new Spanish study.
A compound found in grapes or grape derivatives may protect skin cells from skin-damaging ultraviolet radiation, report researchers from the University of Barcelona and the Spanish National Research Council. The flavonoids found in grapes work to halt the chemical reaction that kills skin cells and causes sun damage. Here's what happens: When UV rays hit your skin, they activate "reactive oxygen species," or ROS, which then oxidize big molecules like lipids and DNA. This activates particular enzymes that kill skin cells.
But grapes' flavonoids work to decrease the formation of the ROS's in skin cells that were exposed to UVA and UVB rays. The researchers, led by Marta Cascante, a biochemist at the University of Barcelona and director of the research project, note that this finding may lead to better sun-shielding drugs and cosmetics.
The study was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Previously, vino has also been found to fight Alzheimer's, ward off prostate cancer and even prevent cavities. We'll drink to that.
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