Hangover!!!
Yippee! Let's poison ourselves with beverages that will make us violently ill! It was your battle cry last night, and today you're paying the price. But what is that hangover you're experiencing, exactly?
A hangover is your body's reaction to drinking too much alcohol...
Everyone has a different tolerance (it's usually lower for women than men), but anyone who drinks enough is sure to experience a cornucopia of symptoms which might include headache, diarrhea, nausea, fatigue, anxiety, trembling and a general sense of misery. It gets worse the more you drink, when you drink on an empty stomach, when you haven't slept, or if you imbibe while dancing.
When alcohol enters your bloodstream, it tells your pituitary gland not to produce vasopressin, which is the hormone that typically keeps your body lubed up with moisture. Without vasopressin, liquids get siphoned straight to your bladder, which is why you really open the floodgates after the first time you pee during a boozy evening. When you're drinking, you lose about four times more liquid than you gain, which also causes the dehydration that leads to that wonderful cotton mouth and headache that come with a hangover. Ever wonder why exactly dehydration causes a headache? It's because your organs are so desperate they steal water from your brain, which causes your brain to shrink. A shrunken brain pulls on the membranes that connect the brain to the skull, and that, naturally HURTS!!
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A hangover is your body's reaction to drinking too much alcohol...
Everyone has a different tolerance (it's usually lower for women than men), but anyone who drinks enough is sure to experience a cornucopia of symptoms which might include headache, diarrhea, nausea, fatigue, anxiety, trembling and a general sense of misery. It gets worse the more you drink, when you drink on an empty stomach, when you haven't slept, or if you imbibe while dancing.
When alcohol enters your bloodstream, it tells your pituitary gland not to produce vasopressin, which is the hormone that typically keeps your body lubed up with moisture. Without vasopressin, liquids get siphoned straight to your bladder, which is why you really open the floodgates after the first time you pee during a boozy evening. When you're drinking, you lose about four times more liquid than you gain, which also causes the dehydration that leads to that wonderful cotton mouth and headache that come with a hangover. Ever wonder why exactly dehydration causes a headache? It's because your organs are so desperate they steal water from your brain, which causes your brain to shrink. A shrunken brain pulls on the membranes that connect the brain to the skull, and that, naturally HURTS!!
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