Alcohol, Hangovers & How to Cure a Hangover Based on Science

00:00:00.000 | [silence]

00:00:03.080 | Hangover is a constellation of effects

00:00:06.120 | ranging from headache to nausea

00:00:09.200 | to what's sometimes called anxiety,

00:00:11.580 | which is anxiety that follows a day of drinking.

00:00:14.860 | Anxiety, I think we can understand physiologically

00:00:19.280 | if we think about that process of alcohol intake

00:00:23.940 | increasing the amount of cortisol

00:00:25.980 | and the ratio of cortisol to some other stress hormones.

00:00:29.600 | That well explains why some people wake up the day after

00:00:33.260 | or even the day after a night drinking

00:00:37.800 | and feel anxious and not well and stressed

00:00:40.480 | for reasons they don't understand.

00:00:42.280 | So if you're somebody who experiences anxiety,

00:00:46.320 | then again, I refer you to the master stress episode

00:00:49.520 | that we put out some time ago

00:00:51.400 | and you can find that hubermanlab.com.

00:00:53.360 | Tools to deal with anxiety, tools to deal with stress

00:00:55.520 | ranging again from behavioral

00:00:56.920 | to nutritional supplement-based, et cetera.

00:00:59.920 | That of course is not justification for going out

00:01:02.840 | and drinking so much

00:01:03.720 | that you get anxiety-induced hangover.

00:01:07.080 | But for those of you that are experiencing

00:01:09.000 | post-alcohol consumption anxiety, as it were,

00:01:12.440 | that could be a useful resource

00:01:13.860 | because I certainly don't want anyone

00:01:15.440 | experiencing uncomfortable amounts of anxiety

00:01:18.200 | and there are great tools and resources for that.

00:01:20.600 | Now, the other aspects of hangover,

00:01:23.160 | such as the stomachache or headache

00:01:27.400 | or feelings of malaise or fogginess,

00:01:30.200 | those can be related to a number of different things

00:01:31.840 | and probably are related to a number of different things.

00:01:34.200 | First of all, the sleep that one gets after even just one,

00:01:39.080 | yes, even just one glass of wine or a beer

00:01:43.000 | is not the same sleep that you get

00:01:44.740 | when you don't have alcohol circulating in your system.

00:01:47.320 | And not trying to be a downer here,

00:01:48.680 | but this was discussed in the Huberman Lab podcast episode

00:01:51.720 | where I had Dr. Matthew Walker from UC Berkeley on,

00:01:55.160 | and of course, Dr. Walker is a world expert in sleep,

00:01:58.880 | runs one of the preeminent laboratories

00:02:00.600 | studying sleep and its effects,

00:02:02.560 | wrote the incredible book "Why We Sleep" and so on.

00:02:05.600 | Dr. Walker told me, and it certainly is supported

00:02:09.320 | by lots and lots of quality peer-reviewed studies

00:02:12.360 | in animals and in humans,

00:02:14.080 | that when alcohol is present in the brain and bloodstream,

00:02:17.480 | that the architecture of sleep is disrupted.

00:02:19.320 | Slow-wave sleep, deep sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep,

00:02:22.200 | all of which are essential

00:02:23.120 | for getting a restorative night's sleep are all disrupted.

00:02:25.320 | So for those of you that are drinking a glass or two of wine

00:02:28.760 | or having a hard liquor drink or a beer

00:02:32.760 | in order to fall asleep,

00:02:34.440 | the sleep you're getting is simply not high-quality sleep,

00:02:36.960 | or certainly not as high quality as the sleep you'd be

00:02:38.960 | getting if you did not have alcohol in your system.

00:02:42.000 | Of course, when we're talking about hangover,

00:02:43.820 | we're talking generally about the consumption

00:02:46.160 | of more than just one or two drinks.

00:02:48.600 | Of course, for some people, one or two drinks

00:02:50.360 | is probably sufficient to induce hangover,

00:02:52.260 | but for most people, it's going to be having three or four,

00:02:54.960 | exceeding their typical limit, as it's called.

00:02:57.640 | Again, not the legal limit, that's a whole other business.

00:03:00.760 | But when one ingests too much alcohol for them,

00:03:04.240 | one of the reasons they feel terrible the next day

00:03:08.360 | is because their sleep isn't really good sleep.

00:03:10.400 | In fact, it's not even sleep,

00:03:11.920 | it's often considered pseudo-sleep,

00:03:13.880 | or at least that's what it's called

00:03:14.800 | in the sleep science field,

00:03:16.120 | because people are in kind of a low-level hypnotic

00:03:19.080 | kind of trance, it's not real sleep,

00:03:20.600 | they're multiple bouts of waking up,

00:03:22.000 | they may not even realize they're waking up multiple times.

00:03:24.920 | Okay, so there's the sleep-induced effects.

00:03:26.680 | Then there are the disrupted gut microbiome effects,

00:03:30.920 | some of which we talked about earlier,

00:03:32.200 | so now you understand the mechanism

00:03:34.040 | of alcohol destroying good, healthy gut microbiota,

00:03:38.600 | which then leads to leaky gut and things of that sort.

00:03:41.320 | But one could imagine, again, could imagine,

00:03:44.040 | and there is some evidence starting to support this,

00:03:46.800 | that, again, ingesting low-sugar fermented foods

00:03:50.560 | or maybe in prebiotic or probiotic

00:03:52.360 | to support the gut microbiome

00:03:53.800 | might assist in some of the gut-related malaise

00:03:57.640 | associated with hangover.

00:03:59.240 | In other words, get those gut microbiota healthy again

00:04:02.480 | as quickly as possible,

00:04:03.400 | or maybe even before you drink,

00:04:05.120 | have those gut microbiota healthy.

00:04:06.400 | I would hope that you would do that.

00:04:07.240 | I think everybody should be doing something

00:04:08.600 | to support their gut microbiome,

00:04:09.980 | whether or not it's the ingestion

00:04:11.020 | of low-sugar fermented foods daily

00:04:12.840 | or at least on a regular basis,

00:04:14.600 | or ingestion of probiotic or prebiotic.

00:04:17.000 | The gut microbiome is so important

00:04:18.520 | for so many different things.

00:04:20.160 | In terms of hangover and headache,

00:04:24.040 | we know that that's caused by vasoconstriction,

00:04:27.080 | the constriction of blood vessels

00:04:28.560 | that tends to occur as a rebound after a night of drinking.

00:04:31.960 | Alcohol can act as a vasodilator.

00:04:33.840 | It can dilate the blood vessels.

00:04:35.120 | Part of that is associated with the increase

00:04:38.360 | in so-called parasympathetic tone.

00:04:40.380 | We have an autonomic nervous system.

00:04:41.840 | It's got a sympathetic component.

00:04:43.980 | These are neurons that make us more alert.

00:04:46.240 | And if they're very active, they make us very stressed.

00:04:48.600 | There's also the parasympathetic aspect

00:04:51.700 | of the autonomic nervous system.

00:04:52.720 | This is all just fancy geek speak

00:04:54.220 | for the parts of your brain and body,

00:04:56.000 | the nerve cells that make you very relaxed.

00:04:57.640 | When you're very relaxed, there tends to be vasodilation.

00:05:01.760 | It allows for more movement of blood

00:05:04.080 | and other things through the bloodstream.

00:05:06.480 | And alcohol tends to induce some vasodilation,

00:05:09.720 | at least in some of the capillary beds.

00:05:11.400 | And then when the alcohol wears off,

00:05:13.400 | there's a vasoconstriction and people get brutal headaches.

00:05:17.160 | That's why some people will take aspirin or Tylenol

00:05:20.000 | or Advil or things like that,

00:05:22.500 | the sort of non-steroid anti-inflammatories.

00:05:24.920 | I should mention, there's a lot of literature coming out

00:05:27.640 | that some of these non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs

00:05:31.360 | are not good for us for a number of different reasons.

00:05:33.560 | The way they impact the liver,

00:05:35.400 | the way they impact the immune system,

00:05:37.360 | and no surprise, the way they impact the gut microbiome.

00:05:40.920 | So I'm not one to tell you what medications

00:05:43.480 | to take or not take,

00:05:44.420 | but you certainly would want to do a quick web search

00:05:46.820 | of effects of non-steroid anti-inflammatories and aspirin

00:05:51.820 | before you start taking those

00:05:54.000 | or stop taking those for that matter.

00:05:56.700 | Generally, they will alleviate headache,

00:05:58.200 | but they can often have other issues,

00:05:59.960 | including liver issues.

00:06:00.880 | And keep in mind the night after drinking,

00:06:02.880 | your liver has already taken a beating

00:06:05.040 | because of the need of the liver to convert alcohol

00:06:09.600 | from acetaldehyde into acetate,

00:06:11.880 | which is now a pathway that you well understand.

00:06:14.080 | So I'm not certain.

00:06:15.720 | And in fact, I believe it's not the greatest idea

00:06:17.620 | to burden your liver further through the use of things

00:06:21.560 | that are going to cause it to have to work harder

00:06:24.040 | and metabolize things

00:06:25.080 | if the goal is simply to alleviate a headache.

00:06:27.740 | There's a lot of kind of lore, old school lore

00:06:31.000 | about how to relieve a hangover.

00:06:32.120 | We already talked about how eating food won't do that,

00:06:35.120 | but eating food will prevent the rapid absorption

00:06:38.680 | of even more alcohol into the bloodstream.

00:06:40.960 | There's the lore that one should simply ingest more alcohol.

00:06:44.720 | What terrible advice that is.

00:06:46.320 | That's just going to delay an even worse hangover.

00:06:48.520 | However, I'd be remiss if I didn't say

00:06:51.280 | that the reason that that myth came to be,

00:06:54.480 | or that I should say that truth came to be,

00:06:57.440 | because indeed ingesting more alcohol

00:07:00.200 | will alleviate a hangover,

00:07:01.720 | but then a worse hangover will show up.

00:07:03.800 | The reason that came to be

00:07:04.640 | is because ingestion of more alcohol

00:07:06.440 | will cause those constricted vessels

00:07:08.840 | that are giving the headache to dilate again.

00:07:11.080 | But of course, ingesting more alcohol

00:07:12.720 | to relieve a hangover is simply a bad idea.

00:07:15.040 | Just don't do it.

00:07:15.880 | I think this is called the hair of the dog approach.

00:07:17.760 | Maybe someone can put in the show note captions on YouTube

00:07:20.320 | why it's called the hair of the dog.

00:07:22.120 | I can come up with a few ideas,

00:07:24.400 | but they're not going to be very good ones.

00:07:27.480 | And some of them would probably even be outright ridiculous.

00:07:31.020 | So do not ingest more alcohol

00:07:33.000 | simply to try and recover from a hangover.

00:07:35.640 | I know many people have tried that one before,

00:07:37.800 | but that's a terrible idea.

00:07:39.600 | Now, one thing that you'll also hear out there

00:07:41.140 | is that deliberate cold exposure,

00:07:43.240 | for instance, taking a cold shower might relieve hangover.

00:07:46.260 | I find this one particularly interesting

00:07:47.800 | because we've done episodes

00:07:49.160 | on the benefits of deliberate cold exposure.

00:07:50.920 | We have an entire episode about that.

00:07:52.880 | You can find it again, hubermanlab.com.

00:07:55.440 | There are direct links to some of the tools

00:07:57.120 | related to deliberate cold exposure.

00:07:58.920 | And we have an entire newsletter

00:08:01.760 | on deliberate cold exposure protocols

00:08:03.520 | you can find on hubermanlab.com,

00:08:04.880 | go to our neural network newsletter.

00:08:06.760 | So those of you that are interested in ice baths

00:08:08.720 | and cold showers and ways to leverage those,

00:08:11.200 | you can find that there.

00:08:12.500 | What you won't find there is a description

00:08:14.240 | of how to use deliberate cold exposure

00:08:15.680 | for sake of treating hangover.

00:08:17.160 | But here I went into the literature

00:08:18.480 | and I found something kind of interesting.

00:08:20.140 | There is some evidence that increasing levels

00:08:22.960 | of epinephrine in the bloodstream

00:08:25.040 | can actually help with alcohol clearance.

00:08:27.760 | That was very surprising to me.

00:08:28.980 | And I want to point out

00:08:29.820 | this is not a large and robust literature,

00:08:32.080 | but there's some evidence pointing to the fact

00:08:33.960 | that when levels of epinephrine adrenaline

00:08:35.960 | are raised in the brain and bloodstream,

00:08:38.000 | that some of the components of alcohol metabolism

00:08:40.200 | can be accelerated

00:08:41.240 | and some of the inebriating effects of alcohol

00:08:44.040 | can be reduced.

00:08:44.880 | So maybe this old school lore of taking a cold shower

00:08:47.400 | actually has something to it.

00:08:48.720 | So in thinking about the use of deliberate cold exposure

00:08:51.080 | in order to reduce the effects of hangover

00:08:53.620 | or to more rapidly clear alcohol

00:08:57.120 | from the brain and bloodstream,

00:08:58.800 | I want to be very clear

00:09:00.160 | and I want to emphasize your safety.

00:09:03.580 | The way to do that is to understand

00:09:05.460 | that alcohol lowers core body temperature, okay?

00:09:08.880 | It can make people slightly hypothermic.

00:09:11.600 | It's going to drop core body temperature.

00:09:14.020 | So if you were inebriated

00:09:16.500 | and you went and got into a body of water, right?

00:09:19.060 | A pool or a lake or something,

00:09:21.080 | first of all, that's extremely dangerous

00:09:22.920 | to do while you're inebriated, right?

00:09:24.600 | People drown all the time.

00:09:25.840 | People drown, they die as a consequence of doing that.

00:09:28.200 | So please don't do that.

00:09:30.000 | But also if it's a very cold water,

00:09:32.120 | your core body temperature is going to drop even further.

00:09:34.820 | Now, if you've heard the episodes that I've done

00:09:36.560 | on deliberate cold exposure,

00:09:38.720 | previously I've talked about how normally

00:09:41.120 | when people are not ingesting alcohol,

00:09:43.360 | they get into an ice bath or a cold shower

00:09:45.120 | and their body temperature initially dips,

00:09:46.880 | but then it rebounds and increases.

00:09:48.480 | That's a process that's going to occur

00:09:50.000 | when people do not have alcohol in their system.

00:09:52.640 | When you have alcohol in your system,

00:09:54.040 | one of the reasons that you become hypothermic

00:09:56.720 | is because there's a disruption

00:09:58.240 | in those hypothalamic brain areas,

00:09:59.680 | in particular the brain area

00:10:00.700 | called the medial preoptic area

00:10:02.520 | that regulates core body temperature.

00:10:04.480 | So it's not so much that alcohol makes you cold,

00:10:07.040 | it's that alcohol disrupts the central command centers

00:10:10.540 | of the brain that control temperature regulation,

00:10:12.880 | and that leads you to be slightly hypothermic.

00:10:15.800 | So if you then go get into a very cold lake

00:10:18.220 | or you get into even a cold shower or an ice bath,

00:10:21.600 | there's the possibility of you going very, very far

00:10:24.840 | down the ladder into very hypothermic territory,

00:10:28.280 | and that can be very dangerous.

00:10:29.800 | Now, in terms of dealing with hangover,

00:10:31.440 | when the alcohol has been largely cleared from your system,

00:10:34.280 | well, that's where some of this kind of old lore

00:10:37.000 | combines with some of the modern science and says,

00:10:39.680 | well, if you can spike adrenaline

00:10:41.360 | and certainly getting into an ice bath

00:10:44.280 | or getting into a cold shower

00:10:45.920 | or any kind of cold body of water,

00:10:48.200 | provided you can do that safely,

00:10:49.420 | that will sharply increase your adrenaline

00:10:51.720 | and I should say your dopamine, that's been shown,

00:10:53.800 | and we've talked about this on the podcast before,

00:10:55.440 | you get these long extended increases,

00:10:57.840 | several hours of increases in dopamine

00:10:59.500 | from deliberate cold exposure.

00:11:00.860 | It's well-documented in humans, by the way.

00:11:03.280 | So one could imagine using deliberate cold exposure

00:11:07.000 | as a way to accelerate the recovery from hangover.

00:11:10.960 | Provided that's done safely,

00:11:12.340 | I think there's no reason to not explore that,

00:11:14.560 | and if you wonder what safely is

00:11:16.920 | and what temperatures to use,

00:11:18.320 | please check out the episode on deliberate cold exposure.

00:11:21.600 | Cold showers, therefore, might actually be one way

00:11:24.920 | to at least partially relieve hangover.

00:11:26.720 | Certainly the science from various places

00:11:29.800 | in the literature converge to say that,

00:11:31.360 | but again, be careful, please, please, please be careful

00:11:34.740 | not to get into cold water when you are inebriated.

00:11:38.240 | It's absolutely dangerous for all the obvious reasons

00:11:41.240 | and it's dangerous also for the non-obvious reasons,

00:11:43.760 | not the least of which is the dramatic decreases

00:11:46.860 | in core body temperature

00:11:48.040 | that can make you dangerously hypothermic.

00:11:50.440 | Now, how would you go about using deliberate cold exposure

00:11:52.720 | to accelerate recovery from hangover?

00:11:54.600 | Well, there I would look to the kind of standard protocols

00:11:57.480 | of, you know, one to three minutes

00:11:58.640 | or maybe even six minutes if you can tolerate it,

00:12:00.280 | or if you're really cold adapted,

00:12:02.360 | maybe you do seven or 10 minutes in a cold shower,

00:12:04.820 | although that could be a lot.

00:12:05.700 | Most people are going to experience a sharp increase

00:12:09.360 | in epinephrine and adrenaline

00:12:10.700 | and a long-lasting increase in dopamine

00:12:13.280 | from one to three minutes of deliberate cold exposure,

00:12:16.520 | ideally done immersion up to the neck,

00:12:18.240 | again, do this safely, please, please, please,

00:12:20.360 | or a cold shower where you're getting under the shower

00:12:22.280 | as much as possible.

00:12:23.100 | How cold?

00:12:23.940 | Well, that's going to vary person to person.

00:12:25.760 | I suggest making it as cold as is uncomfortable,

00:12:28.580 | such that you really want to get out,

00:12:29.940 | but then you know you can stay in safely

00:12:31.340 | without, for instance, giving yourself a heart attack,

00:12:32.860 | because if the water is really, really cold,

00:12:34.480 | of course you can give yourself a heart attack.

00:12:35.800 | Most showers won't go that cold,

00:12:37.460 | although probably some will.

00:12:39.460 | Again, please use caution, spike your adrenaline,

00:12:41.860 | spike your dopamine with deliberate cold exposure safely.

00:12:44.940 | Other components of hangover that could be good targets

00:12:47.260 | for trying to alleviate hangover,

00:12:49.020 | and here I hope you are getting the picture

00:12:51.040 | because it is accurate to say

00:12:53.160 | that hangover is a multifaceted phenomenon.

00:12:56.800 | It's not like one molecule in one receptor.

00:12:58.620 | It's a bunch of things happening in the brain and body,

00:13:00.860 | but is the dehydration associated with alcohol.

00:13:03.920 | Alcohol is a diuretic for multiple reasons.

00:13:06.860 | It causes people to excrete not only water,

00:13:09.840 | but also sodium.

00:13:10.920 | Sodium is an electrolyte,

00:13:12.120 | critical for the function of neurons.

00:13:13.720 | So making sure that you have enough sodium,

00:13:15.640 | potassium, and magnesium, so-called electrolytes,

00:13:18.520 | is going to be important for proper brain function,

00:13:22.040 | bodily organ function.

00:13:23.640 | Even for people that have just had one or two drinks

00:13:25.680 | the night before,

00:13:26.520 | it's likely that your electrolyte balance

00:13:28.960 | and your fluid balance is going to be disrupted,

00:13:31.360 | and that's because alcohol also disrupts

00:13:33.560 | the so-called vasopressin pathway.

00:13:35.400 | I talked a lot about vasopressin

00:13:37.560 | and the way that it interacts with

00:13:40.060 | and controls different aspects of water retention

00:13:42.680 | and water release from the body in the form of urine

00:13:45.240 | in the episode on salt.

00:13:47.240 | So again, I'm referring to hubermanlab.com

00:13:50.800 | as the site where you can find that episode

00:13:52.300 | on salt balance and ways to restore electrolyte balance.

00:13:55.160 | Having your electrolytes at the proper levels

00:13:58.800 | before you drink is ideal.

00:14:00.400 | Some people will say for every glass of alcohol

00:14:03.260 | that you drink, you should drink one glass of water.

00:14:05.920 | I would say better would be two glasses of water

00:14:09.120 | given the dehydrating effects of alcohol,

00:14:11.100 | and even better would be water with electrolytes.

00:14:13.600 | That certainly would set you up

00:14:15.080 | for a better day the next day.

00:14:16.920 | And if you don't manage to do that,

00:14:19.200 | 'cause I suppose it's kind of geeky walking around

00:14:20.720 | with electrolyte packets out at the bar or whatnot,

00:14:24.120 | although, you know, geeky in my book is a good thing,

00:14:28.160 | the next day you could take some electrolytes upon waking,

00:14:31.600 | maybe even some before you go to sleep

00:14:33.680 | at the night of drinking.

00:14:35.000 | So hangovers made worse by disturbed sleep,

00:14:38.080 | made worse by disrupted gut microbiome,

00:14:39.920 | made worse by disrupted electrolytes,

00:14:42.080 | made worse by the depletion of epinephrine and dopamine.

00:14:45.480 | That's why replenishing the microbiome with fermented foods,

00:14:48.880 | low-sugar fermented foods, that is,

00:14:50.760 | that's why using safe, deliberate cold exposure

00:14:54.640 | for spiking adrenaline and for increasing dopamine,

00:14:59.000 | and that's why consuming electrolytes

00:15:01.680 | are all going to be beneficial.

00:15:03.260 | [upbeat music]

00:15:05.840 | (upbeat music)

00:15:08.420 | (upbeat music)

Alcohol, Hangovers & How to Cure a Hangover Based on Science | Dr. Andrew Huberman

Chapters