I'm afraid to give my opinion or I'll be labeled a science denier.
I sometimes get headaches from drinking too much coffee.
I get headaches from drink too little coffee.
But not like a hangover compilation of symptoms. And it probably goes away with water - it's not like the water itself is then too harsh for your stomach, etc.
The drink with the lowest potential to cause a hangover is Gatorade and vodka.
But you can tell they're full of shit because they say nobody can tell the difference between low alcohol beer and regular beer.
I think they were saying no one can tell the difference between either beer and its electrolyte-spiked version. I make my own gatorade using flavoring and light salt (which is a mix of potassium and sodium chlorides) so I imagine you could put that in beer too. How you could claim it doesn't change the taste baffles me. Maybe they're using alternate electrolytes that aren't so obviously salty.
Maybe salted beer is a thing now. People started salting caramels and that seemed to work. I think I recall old guys putting salt in their beer. Maybe with tomato juice. Or maybe I'm hallucinating.
I had the worst hangover last week that I've had in a long time. Started drinking in the late afternoon with middle aged Chinese ladies, then kept going into the night with my Romanian/Swedish friend. Never try to keep up with an alcoholic Swede of Eastern European ancestry who is in his early 20s.
I'd support a beer that made people laconic and withdrawn, rather than so presumptuously chatty that when I tried to ask politely a drunk frat asshole in Times Square "What do I have to do to make you stop talking?", TWYRCL recoiled from the snarl that came out instead.
If you can't stand drunk assholes, get out of Times Square.
My friends who I think are starting a hipster restaurant in Pittsburgh gave me bottles of their "pretzel beer". It was pretty good.
I think people secretly kind of like hangovers. They're like little souvenirs of an experience.
Anyway, 5 is basically right, and if you want an enjoyable, less gross version, you can just drink the hard liquor of your choice with plenty of water on the side, and avoid the hangover.
I was amused that the Australian researchers took it for granted that people want to drink beer after exercise. Really? Who does that? (Other than Australians.)
13: Everybody is starting a hipster restaurant in Pittsburgh.
but no one gets hungover from slamming a bunch of coffee, so that's not exactly what's causing the hangover.
That's probably because coffee doesn't actually dehydrate you. That's a myth. Yes, caffeine is a mild diuretic, but coffee also contains large quantities of a substance that is good at rehydrating people, viz. water.
Salting beer is a thing, with Mexican beers. Sometimes lime-flavored salt. I like it.
14.1 is very wrong. I basically barely drink only because I loathe hangovers.
14.last: I drink water after exercise. Then beer, but only after I've cooled down. The thought of beer right after exercise kind of makes me nauseous.
16: there's plenty of water in beer.
The percentage of not-water in beer is much higher than the percentage of not-water in coffee.
Also, the soccer team brings beer for after the games, but yeah, I'm too fussy to join in the fun.
So if you let a beer evaporate, you'd be left with a lot more stuff than if you let coffee evaporate?
You all seem to be nearly arguing that hangovers are solely from dehydration. If so, you all are nuts.
Right. I think 14.2 is wrong because the hard liquor does matter. Regardless of how much water you drink, if you take in enough whiskey or red wine, you will get a hangover. I'm told vodka is different, but I've never drank enough vodka to test this. Vodka is for alcoholics and Eastern Europeans.
Congeners, innit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congener_(alcohol)
Although, strangely, I get much worse hangovers these days from beer* than I do from red wine.
* lager or pilsner, that is, not some brown ale strained through a druid's undershirt.
Also, the alcohol in a pint of beer will dehydrate you a lot more than the caffeine in a cup of coffee.
I had a very good local brown ale the other day. I forgot the name.
I quite like some dark ales, but the ratio of good to god-awful is incredibly low, for me. Ditto for 'IPAs'.* So I almost never take the risk.
* i.e. things that taste like a lemon and some battery acid.
26: So can one hypothetically get hungover from non-alcoholic beer?
Some of the IPAs are getting a bit too hoppy, but some aren't bad. The fruit-flavored beer thing is what I don't get. I tried two of them last week and both annoyed me.
re: 32
A lot are way way way too hoppy for my taste. Something like Deuchars is very nice. Most of the US style IPAs are [for me] are rank.
https://www.caledonianbeer.com/beers/deuchars-ipa
I have a very broad range of beer that appeals to me.
Hangovers are not caused by dehydration. Most likely it is an inflammatory response, which is why anti-inflammatories like Advil help.
I think people secretly kind of like hangovers. They're like little souvenirs of an experience.
One of the more delightful instances of you trolling your own blog. In any event, 24 gets it right, as does 26, though the linked entry neglects to consider that the quality of spirits matters more than the type. Distilling involves eliminating the first and last portions of the distillate (the heads and tails), which contain more congeners; discarding more of the heads and tails makes for a better (and more expensive) spirit.
Deuchars is great - in my top 3 beers, no question. It will definitely give you a hangover, though.
I drink beer after skiing. Except when I'm doing low carb, then I drink whiskey.
I believe hangovers are mostly inflammation, congener metabolites, and withdrawal.
I was amused that the Australian researchers took it for granted that people want to drink beer after exercise. Really? Who does that? (Other than Australians.)
Adult rec leagues, let me introduce you to them.
In particular, I'm familiar with softball and hockey- arguably the former isn't really exercise, but you sweat a ton with hockey and drinking beer in the locker room or parking lot is definitely more common than not. Usually light crap though, definitely has to be cans so you can stomp on them and kick them into the common pile of empties when you're done. My volleyball team also often drinks after match night but usually at a bar not BYO.
I've stated before that the day after a hangover is wonderful and makes everything worthwhile. So in anticipation I kind of enjoy the suffering.
I was amused that the Australian researchers took it for granted that people want to drink beer after exercise. Really? Who does that? (Other than Australians.)
Cyclists. Beer is really satisfying after riding a lot. It feels nourishing. The one time I bonked super hard, we eventually made our way to Tweety's aunt's house and she gave me a beer, which was the best thing ever at that moment.
The one time I bonked super hard, we eventually made our way to Tweety's aunt's house and she gave me a beer
O HAI, transatlantic differences in slang terms.
The one time I bonked super hard
I thought you were talking about cycling.
Goddamn it. Anyhoo, not so much transatlantic, apparently.
Well I left that one right there, didn't I.
It's more like "endurance athletes" vs. "everyone else" differences in slang terms.
Usually, the beer comes before the super-hard bonking.
47 is right, I think. I've only heard "bonk" used for sex or onomatopoeia-related hitting.
What's it say about me that I read the intended meaning, blood sugar drop, without ever thinking of the other?
I love the pictures of pro cyclists from about a hundred years ago, and used to have several up in my office. There's one were a large group has stopped and are drinking spirits of some kind from large bottles. Another has the riders in a pack, sharing a cigarette prior to a climb.
There was some energy bar (google says Powerbar) that used the tagline "Don't Bonk." I'm guessing that didn't help their sales.
It's more like "endurance athletes" vs. "everyone else" differences in slang terms.
I deny this, I've used "bonk" and I'm not an endurance athlete by any stretch of the imagination. (Though I guess I did pick it up from my century-riding father.)
"Century Riding" isn't also sexual slang?
I seem to get hangovers much more randomly over the last decade or so -- usually not if I literally haven't drunk anything, but, e.g., a couple of New Year's Eves ago I had precisely two small glasses of white wine at a neighbor's party, and woke up feeling as bad as I ever have: spend the day in bed moaning softly bad. Or I'll drink much more than that and wake up fine (such as this morning, not that I drank that much, but four beers is into the plausible hangover zone). Which makes me think that it is mostly about dehydration.
I totally believe that you can avoid a hangover by only ever drinking salted Coors light, but I'm not sure if the mechanism involved has anything to do with dehydration.
Being dehydrated does not cause hangovers. (Obviously.) But being dehydrated while also simultaneously being hungover is particularly unpleasant, and that's not an uncommon outcome of heavy drinking. It's pretty easy to avoid if you make sure to get enough hydrating liquid but not everyone even knows they need to do that and even among those who do know, not everyone is good at following through on that sort of planning when they have been drinking heavily.
re: 54
Yeah, ditto. I have historically had a decent enough tolerance for alcohol. Hangovers, yes, but always when I'd drunk the sort of amount where you'd expect a hangover. Last few years, I get these surprise hangovers that seem disproportionate to the amount of alcohol drunk. I also occasionally get much drunker than expected. Not in the falling down sense, but definitely in the remember less the next day, and talked more shit than usual sense.
Sailors drink beer after a regatta, at least the ones around here do. And spending 8-10 hours on a racing sloop in SF Bay in summer winds is indeed exercise.
Once the better half was in a bar in Point Richmond post race, the boat lived at the Richmond yacht club and the bar at the club was closed for renovations, so they adjourned to a local. He ordered an Anchor Steam and the bartender told him "We don't serve imported beers." I don't think he added ", buddy" but I believe it was heavily implied. Tho story always cracks me up.
I am just shy of having a hangover today, and I'm pretty sure it's not caused by dehydration. I had one beer last night and two glasses of wine. Three glasses of water over the course of the evening to go with that. I'm pretty sure I'm feeling so bad because 1. my dinner consisted mostly of cauliflower, with just a bit of meat, and 2. I slept several hours less than usual.
my dinner consisted mostly of cauliflower
You're sure the problem wasn't a bad stalk of celery? That can cause trouble.
I think that breathing troubles are part of a hangover. At least, when I'm at my usual bar I tend to get worse hangovers than if I'm at other bars with more up to date views on how much smoking should happen indoors.
There is also a certain triumph in hangover avoided. The most I ever drank in one evening is sanctified by off blogness, and I really just felt a bit off the next day. Oh and it was on Halloween. Happy Smearcase Avoids a Hangover For No Apparent Reason Day.
Now I feel bad that I didn't get you a present.
Today vegetables, tomorrow the world!
Perversely, I celebrated the holiday by having no-particular-reason reflux from 1 to 2ish last night.
You could have a holiday where the traditional gift is prilosec.
Hangovers don't have to be caused by "dehydration" in order to be prevented by drinking plenty of water; presumably those congeners need to be flushed from the body.
"You don't buy beer. You rent it for use as a congener dispersant."
Nothing looks more rented than rented beer.
What about living with a Swiss cheese and rented children?
presumably those congeners need to be flushed from the body.
a) most toxins aren't dealt with by being flushed from the body, they are dealt with by being metabolised into harmless metabolites. This is certainly the case for alcohol (ethanol) and I would imagine that it's also the case for the various ketones, esters, aldehydes etc which are collectively known as congeners, especially since some of them are actually intermediate stages in ethanol metabolism.
b) some toxins are flushed out through urine. But it's not true that therefore making yourself urinate more (by drinking gallons of water) will speed up this flushing process. Your body is structurally different from a sink trap.
c) a lot of non-metabolised toxins bioaccumulate because they are not water soluble but fat soluble. These cannot be made water soluble simply by your drinking a lot of water.
I've always been told to drink a bunch of glasses before going to sleep when you are drunk, and I think it does have an effect on the hangover. That would imply something something dehydration, no?
So far there seems to be no substance shown in an RCT to treat or prevent hangovers successfully. That review article from 2005 doesn't have anything for just drinking water before sleep, but I can't find other trials on that specifically.
I would imagine that it's also the case
Far be it from me to squelch a young man's imagination, but...for some medical imaging, you drink a dye before the test, and they make you drink a ton of water afterward to "flush" the dye from your system, so I would imagine...neither of us really knows what the answer is in this case, except that there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that drinking a lot of water with alcohol helps mitigate the hangover effect.
I would imagine they select the dyes to be as not toxic as possible. Except for Gadolinium, which was picked on the basis of flavor.
a big part of a hangover is due to the fact that alcohol prevents you from getting good sleep. it will put you to sleep, but it's a crappy sleep. and it dehydrates you.
||
I am reading about haunted houses, the same way I read spoiler-laden things about horror movies: I only like being very mildly scared, so I'm never going to see most horror movies or go through a haunted house, but I'm cuuuurious! It seems like the new trend in haunted houses is humiliation and creepy sex stuff. Huh. That sounds maybe not fun.
|>
I used to work with the woman who runs the main haunted house here. I see that they have an 18+ area that requires a waiver and has, among other things, sexual content and strong smells.
Dye != toxin.
I know this is just a way to make ≠ with a standard keyboard, but it's still hard not to read vehemence into ajay's comment.
"!=" is used by Stata. SAS uses "~=" or, if you're a traditional person, "NE".
The link in 35 says
But, in fact, the dehydration does not seem to be what's causing the hangover. You can fix the dehydration -- and you're still hung over.which isn't dispositive at all. I've never heard anyone argue that a big glass of water in the morning will stop a hangover*. The presumed mechanism is that the body, on a cellular level, uses water to process alcohol into harmless compounds; if you go to bed with insufficient water in your system, your body spends all night processing alcohol, reducing the H2O available for other purposes and being less effective at processing 100% of the alcohol.
Now, I'm not saying that this is clearly true (well, parts of it are definitively true, but I'm not claiming this is 100%, or even 50% of a hangover), but I am saying that nothing about it would make it logical to think that a glass of water in the morning will undo an existing hangover.
I'd add that many (most?) medicines, if taken too late, are less efficacious than if taken on time - certainly, if you take your antianxiety pill every morning at 9, then you forget one day and take it at noon because you're starting to feel anxious, you won't immediately feel better, and it may be too late entirely to head off an attack (not from personal experience, but reported by at least 2 people I know).
It may be, since this is just a record of an oral interview, that there's real science that the guy is citing poorly, but the evidence he provides tells us very little.
*it is true that, if I wake up feeling crappy, but not quite hung over, a giant glass of water will often make me feel better in short order, but this guy is talking about reversing an extant hangover
Your body is structurally different from a sink trap.
I'll deny this to my dying breath.
I'm told vodka is different, but I've never drank enough vodka to test this.
One of the worst hangovers I've ever had - lie semi-conscious in bath, occasionally get out to throw up - was after drinking neat vodka.
Let's all go trick or treating in the drizzle.
It's not a bad rain, but it seems like every year it rains.
I would prefer to be somewhere like Va where it's noticeably fall but warmer than New England is right now. But I'm not trick or treating.
It was a lovely warm day today, great evening for it.
It was a lovely warm day today, great evening for it.
Luckily, my street has a graveyard.
Blustery, wet snow here. We bundled the kids up and all but made them trick or treat. They feel better after three pounds of candy.
I like slightly cool days like today. Mid-50s or so? Perfect.
Although after a hellish week of nonstop meetings I still have to write two talks and prepare a lecture for my class before Tuesday morning. Blech.
One of the other dads has beer on his breath.
We loved the annual Halloween costume madness - the kid figuring out what he wanted to be, making his costume together, and then he got many years of dress up play out the costumes, often in fabulous mashups. Then at 11 years old he was in the lowest grade of the upper school and it all stopped abruptly, costumes were for little kids. We were bummed, by I knew it was only a hiatus, and would end when he figured out the girls like a guy in a good costume.
Turns out I was right, but we could have used a bit more lead time than at the breakfast table this morning. That was the fastest costume ever made. Tip - every household should have a top hat on hand for emergencies.
The number of full sized candy bars indicates an improving economy.
One of the other dads has apparently commenting from Moby's phone.
99: More tooth decay, obesity and diabetes. Thanks Obama!
Cold and blustery in Chicago. Rode up Western into the teeth of it, in lower gear; almost brought to a stop at Grandville.
Sitting by the door, only one kid all evening so far.
Jesus, I'd forgotten how tiring this whole gainful-employment wheeze was. Just took a percocet and some muscle relaxants in hopes of not hurting or twitching for awhile.
Hallowe'en decos up, candy purchase, about a dozen kids served so far.
the girls like a guy in a good costume
Oh, rather! I say, did he dress as Mephistopheles this year, or did he just stick with Pierrot?
81: The Haunted Basement, started by a close friend of mine, and at which I volunteered in its first iteration, got into the New Yorker!!!!
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/haunted-house-smell-death
I wrote "In This Style 1/6" on an index card and stuck it in the hatband, spiked his hair crazily, he wore crazily mismatching clothes and a flamboyantly colorful scarf of mine tied as a wacky bowtie. 10 minutes flat to Mad Hatter.
And it appears to have worked as I am now getting texts from random phones asking me to please make sure my son knows where the party is at, and on following up with him his replies mention girls' names I've never heard before. I feel like I'm looking at the next 5 years of my life...
Very well played dairy queen.
Ummmm but it's 10/6, not 1/6, DUH. Who are these girls.
I got it right on the card, neb!
I'm sure they're all lovely perfectly nice girls, there just suddenly seem to be an awful lot of them, and all somewhat alarmingly intent on communicating with my son.
Or someone whose phone number was a transposed version of your son's.
I'm confused on how/why the texts are coming to you. Maybe I'm coming in late.
They are trying to make sure they get him to the party, I guess they got my number from the school annuaire or a parent's phone or something. He's at the party now, so everyone's dropped me.
I guess it's the modern equivalent of girls you've never heard of before calling, only texts seem more abrupt. But I've got years ahead of me to adjust!
107: The Mad Hatter (f.) who came to our house had brought a teacup to receive the candy and then dumped the cup into her basket. That was pretty awesome!
Business picked up despite the weather. Large groups, Korean, Mexican, white, South Asian, A-A. All groups mixed in age, older looking after younger, but homogeneous as to the ethnicity. A few stragglers, big boys, teenagers. Lights out at 8:30, I judged the candy well. Just a half dozen Reeses, which my wife loves left.
We didn't give away hardly any candy and the way people were dumping it on us at the end of the night suggested nobody else saw many customers either.
Ooooh, excellent touch!
There's a great mad hatter song by Satie in Trois Mélodies, he's marvelously surprised to note his watch is running three days late and it gets better from there.
We only had about 2 dozen. It's chilly here, but dry. Also, some miscreant stole my stroboscopic black plastic skull off the front porch.
Oh anonymous or poorly identified teenage girls, you are A OK in my book, we've got our Friday nights back! May not be every Friday night, but we made good use of it. Lovely.
And kid is now being retrieved from party, where presumably a good time was had
Sadly we live in SF's lamest neighborhood for trick or treating, so a big fat zero on that score.
This makes me relieved the kid is taking a break from the Russians: http://instagram.com/p/u1y_MBnrZr/
And lastly, is it just me or is the entire range of aerin lauder cosmetics unutterably boring, and although I long for a world where everyone would recognize that jamie kenney is a stupendously good writer would I actually feel uncomfortable in that world? Could the LRB at least give him a paying gig now that we all know Diski is dying?
So, I did empirical research on the beer-hangover relationship last night, and this morning. Dodgy fried chicken, plus a pint of water before bed, did indeed stave off the worst of it.
123: Some of us are eating breakfast here.
Not drinking crappy beer from what were certainly taps that weren't cleaned enough, like I used to do in uni, getting thirty beer to split with 1-2 friends five minutes before happy hour ended and then drinking them the rest of the night, helps a lot in avoiding hangovers I've found.
Drinking good beer from clean taps and drinking water to go along with it instead makes a helluva difference.