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Beat Hangover from Alcohol, Beer, Wine or Liquor (Spirits)

Dehydration the main feature of ethanol metabolism that causes hang over. Ethanol consumption, like consuming sugars, also causes oxidative stress to increase (one pathophysiology of aging science explanation). H2O or water has an ORAC value of 60,000, so to treat a hangover drink more water servings after drinking alcohol, or the next morning after a night of alcohol disturbed sleep. 


Consuming alcoholic beverages degrades sleep architecture, resulting in hangover disturbed restless or less restorative lower quality sleep. You might find yourself waking up earlier feeling spaced out or blank. Thats because the negative impact of drinking on your sleep reduced your brain's ability to shrink down & squeeze out metabolite funk. During normal higher quality sleep, this funk helps to purge & clean up the brain of toxic metabolic byproducts created by thinking & glucose oxidation in the brain. The cerebral spinal fluid takes this funk to your liver & kidneys for filtering into your urine. This is why alcoholic beverages produce strange smells in your urine. 

Ethanol or alcohol drinks also hard on your liver. In the liver, the dehydrogenase enzyme system converts ethanol to acetaldehyde & then to acetic acid (vinegar) & CO2 or carbon dioxide. The vinegar in your urine imparts that photo-chemical processing smell that reminds me of film developer, used on chemical film to render images from the film negatives. My journey into photography started back in the early 2000's at NewPort High School, where teachers Randal Francisco & Laressa Banton (sorry if spelling off) taught photography. A Canon AE1 manual SLR 35mm camera with a 50mm manual focus F1.4 lens, shooting onto Fujifilm 400 speed B&W film. Inside a dark room with a dim filter red colored incandescent monochromatic low photon energy light, the film was removed in total darkness in a special closet, then in the dim red light the film was introduced into developer, then fixative, then put into downward projection setups that enabled the small negative to cast the image captured onto special photo-paper which produced a positive image, which was then sent through developer, fixative & then distilled water rinsed several times to make printed images. I still have this Canon AE1 camera, but switch to digital in 2003 & mostly use my smartphone to record images & videos now in middle 2022. 

I had 2.5 servings of beer last night, where each serving was 12 fluid ounces & woke up 2x during the night to pee & experienced a transient loss of blood pressure, releasing more than 80 fl. oz. of urine into glass vessels where I perform quick visual estimates of the color & smell it to sniff for strange metabolites. I am even adapted at estimating the relative grey-scale transparency in low light conditions in the early AM, a rough estimate of "hydration" where lighter more transparent better, & darker opaque worse. How can I have 2.5 servings of beer, well one of them fell from the fridge while I was loading it, hit the bottom frame element & that caused a small tear in the aluminum can. The CO2 pressure in the can increased from the fall strike agitation, which increases turbulence & thus nucleation release of CO2 pressure that increases, forcing beer out of the tiny aperture with enough force to soak my clothes & part of the fridge with cold beer. I quickly grabbed a pint glass & opened the can to recover about 1/2 of the beer remaining. 12 of Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen & 12 oz Deadlift Imperial IPA, combines with ~6 oz of PBR to make 2.5 servings.  

Vitamin B12 consumed to metabolize ethanol, so when you wake up after having more than 1 serving of alcoholic beverages, take a multi-B vitamin or B12 supplement with a few servings of water. The antioxidant properties & hydrating properties of the water & metabolic benefits of the B12 will help your body recover. 

Avoid sugary carbs & consume health fats if you are feeling hung over. Your brain needs the water & fats & the rest of your body will metabolically & digestively benefit from plant-based mono-unsaturated fats like olives & olive oil & nuts & seeds, the latter of which are high in fiber great for digestion. This generally good nutritional advice. Similar to make sure your carbohydrate intake comes from vegetables & only derive simple sugars from fresh or dry fruit & berries sparingly. Eat higher quality smaller servings of meat, & try to eat more raw, whole, natural & organic foods. Avoid processed or refine veggie oils like the plague, they produce trans fats toxic like pesticides in your food when you cook in them- these are neurotoxic & cardiotoxic & completely unnatural. The human body has no idea what to do with veggie oils since they were never in the human diet in any significant amounts until 1912 when an unethical immoral group of criminals created hydrogenated cottonseed oil, Crisco, say neutral flavor butter alternative, that went on to sell in blockbuster profitable quantities after the manufacturer sent out cookbooks to everyone with an address in America in the 1960's, with instructions for how to cook with Crisco. Hydrogenated veggie oils are better for lubricating warmed engines & industrial equipment as a grease, then they are as a foodstuff in your body. I reason that refined vegetable oils, which are ultra-processed, are more toxic than alcoholic beverages consumed in moderation regularly.

Take a nap the day after you drink & experience hangover sleep disturbances. Drink more water when hungover. Go for a walk, hike or do something physically intense to generate a good full body sweating event that helps purge funky cells & provides the physiological, mental & emotional benefits of being active. Rain, sun, cloudy or otherwise, get outside & work until your sweating, with great intensity. Movement & activity combats the negative effects of living a sedentary western lifestyle, reducing your chances of experience clotting, embolism or stroke by keeping your blood moving, by getting your heart rate up & by pumping water through your apocrine systems to help your skin quality improve even as aging & photoaging from UV exposure from sunlight exposure make your skin look worse over time. Use a daily moisturizer to combat the effects of aging, with hyaluronic acid at times to brighten & lighten the skin gently. Avoid drying out your skin or abrading it too much, but if you have skin layer accumulation or blackheads or white heads, consider eating less sugar, exfoliate & clear your pores. Avoid harsh soap or detergents & gentle exfoliate with cool or warm water. The oils in your skin are they to keep your skin supple & flexible, so you do not want to remove all the oils. Being overly clean OCD style with your body bad for your beneficial skin flora ecosystem of microbes that live on healthy skin. Being a little "dirty" by taking a shower or bath every other day or every 3rd day, better than showering daily. 

Do not drink alcohol, beer or wine or booze every day. Take breaks from alcohol. This can help to lower your alcohol tolerance so that you can get an enjoyable buzz with fewer or small servings. Alternate between water & beer or wine or liquor. I know that beer 88-94% water & that wine 80-88% water & that even Vodka & other spirits are 60% water. If you drank straight or pure ethanol, which has an almost metallic floral aroma & smell & lower viscosity than water which you can see as tighter bubbles & faster resolving turbulence if you shake 100% ethanol in a glass container vigorously & then observe its physical movement properties & compare those to water. Ethanol an empty calorie to the human body which promotes metabolic syndrome disorders, the formation of harder to remove belly fat & worse. Ethanol has a sharp dose to toxicity curve, like fentanyl, when a little bit fun, but just a little more dangerous & toxic & deadly with alcohol poisoning very common worldwide. 

I ended up in a small regional hospital with acute alcohol poisoning in 2008, after drinking 13 "Irish Car Bomb" drinks within about 2 hours, in Brian & Michelle's kitchen. Made with a 2/3 filled large glass of Guiness Stout beer, into which is added (dropped into) a 2 oz shot glass with 1 oz of Baileys Irish Cream mixed with 1 oz of Irish Whisky, that sort of taste like "chocolate milk". It was summer break around the 4th of July & I was celebrating graduating college & obtaining my final degree, a Bachelor of Science of Environmental Science, from the University of Washington. The hospital forged my signature for admission since I was unconscious, hooked me up to saline drip & gave me water. I woke up with my head pounding feeling very hung over & still drunk. I walked laps around the hospital & then finished up the paperwork for billing & left. They charged me over $1000 for that, after negotiating for a poor college student discount that was reduced to ~$630, making each of those drinks cost a lot more. 

People like to blame big tobacco, big alcohol, big pharma, big oil & other large corporations for problems created by the big candy companies or big soda pop company products. No one forces anyone to buy anything or to consume anything. Have more personal accountability & integrity & make wiser choices & learn from your mistakes. No one is perfect & no one has all the answers, so like the Bible says, drink to be Merry, not to be drunken. Getting drunk toxic to your body & brain & I explained why above. Hangover cure a combination of drinking more water, getting B vitamins, eating health fats, taking a nap & avoiding excess alcohol consumption. Cut back on your drinking to protect your kidneys & liver & brain. Aging already hard enough on the body. Life is complicated & alcohol causes brain damage, which can make it harder to make wise choices, to plan & execute your plans effectively. Drink less & be smart about drinking. Time is your friend for getting sober. It takes many hours for your body to metabolize ethanol to remove it from your blood. You're actually breathing out ethanol vapors because when ethanol in your blood, it goes to your lungs, where it evaporates into your outgoing breath. Inside a breathalyzer or BAC measuring device, that ethanol vapor in your breath interacts with a small semiconductor or noble metal fuel cell to produce a voltage, which is mathematically compared against a reference formula to device your blood alcohol content or BAC from the circuit voltage created by ethanol vapor in your breath. This is also why people can smell alcohol on your breath easily. 

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