December 9, 2012: Excessive smoking and drinking have many downsides, but a new study shows that smoking heavily while drinking alcohol leads to more severe hangover symptoms.
The study, conducted by a team of Brown University researchers led by Dr. Damaris Rohsenow and Christina Jackson, was based on data collected from 113 students at Midwestern University. The researchers paid special attention to data that could support the reliability of their results, such as whether students reported using drugs in the past year.
Dr Damaris Rochsenow said: “For the same amount of alcohol, people who smoke heavily on the same day are more likely to have a more intense hangover. And smoking itself was associated with an increased risk of hangover compared to non-smokers. This suggests the likelihood of a direct effect of tobacco smoking on the hangover.”
College students who participated in the study were asked to indicate the amount of alcohol they drank and the number of cigarettes they smoked. They were also asked to describe symptoms of a hangover, including levels of fatigue, headache, nausea and difficulty concentrating.
The researchers took into account the estimated blood alcohol level, taking into account differences between girls and boys, weight and the length of time in which the students drank alcohol. The studies were conducted on days after heavy drinking that caused hangover symptoms, and on days when alcohol was consumed in small quantities, to compare the effects.
The researchers examined the results and found that the more frequent smoking the day before, the higher the likelihood and intensity of a hangover the next day, but only in combination with heavy drinking. Heavy drinking is defined as approximately six beers per hour or a blood alcohol concentration of 110 mg/dL or higher.
The reasons why smoking and drinking are linked are still open to study, although the authors suggest it may be related to the pharmacological effects of nicotine on the nervous system.
Another study found that nicotine receptors in the brain contribute to an even greater subjective response to alcohol, Rohsenow said. Smoking combined with drinking alcohol increases the levels of dopamine in the brain, a substance that causes euphoria.
Tobacco smoke also creates the chemical acetaldehyde, which forms in tissues during alcohol consumption and is the cause of many unpleasant symptoms hangover. Acetaldehyde also increases the risk of acquiring certain types of cancer.
What is typical for a hangover?
A hangover is the painful symptoms after drinking too much alcohol. A hangover can happen at any time of the day, but is especially common in the morning after a night of heavy drinking. Physical symptoms usually include:
- headache;
- nausea or vomiting;
- dizziness;
- drowsiness;
- confusion;
- I'm thirsty.
In addition to physical symptoms, a person may also experience:
- anxiety;
- depression;
- regret;
- shame;
- confusion.
The severity of a hangover is directly related to the amount of alcohol a person drinks and how long they sleep, and how many cigarettes a person smokes, according to a new study.
Symptoms of a hangover may be accompanied by:
- urination (leading to dehydration);
- immune response;
- stomach irritation;
- poor sleep quality;
- low blood sugar;
- dilation of blood vessels.
Smoking a cigarette or two with whiskey or cognac has become a tradition for many. Perhaps this is due to film images, perhaps – the ability of nicotine to intensify and accelerate intoxication. However, tradition is present, and the lower quality alcohol a person drinks, the more tobacco he smokes. The most odious option is smoking only while drinking alcohol. What is the danger:
1. Nicotine is also a poison, like the breakdown products of alcohol. The liver cannot fully cope with two poisons at once, so the toxic effect on the body increases.
2. Tobacco smoke dries out the mucous membranes, so when drinking low-alcohol drinks, the volume of drinks increases due to the desire to “wash it down.”
3. Due to the vasodilating effect of nicotine, during smoking breaks a feeling of clarity and sobriety arises, which is why the volume of drinks also increases.
4. The taste of tobacco masks the taste of low-quality alcohol.
In addition to objective reasons, there are also purely individual ones, but the result, as a rule, is the same - a longer and more painful hangover, severe dehydration, and a morning cough. And in this situation, many make the biggest mistake: they cure a hangover with a cigarette.
In a hangover, the body experiences enormous stress: the disturbed water-salt balance negatively affects metabolic processes, poisoning by alcohol breakdown products continues, the cardiovascular system works under overload, since the vessels are narrowed, and the lack of fluid makes the blood more viscous. And the effect of nicotine on the body in this state is a serious blow.
Firstly, under the influence of nicotine, the blood vessels dilate for a while and the pressure drops even lower. This leads to dizziness, nausea, and sometimes loss of consciousness. Secondly, cigarette smoke dries out the mucous membranes, aggravating the already unpleasant sensation, irritating the esophagus. Third, cigarettes are often combined with coffee, which masks these effects. As a result, a person may feel dizzy and lightheaded not immediately, but after several hours. You may also experience decreased concentration, fatigue, tremor (involuntary shaking) of the limbs, or diarrhea.
How to properly treat a hangover
Since we regularly encounter the consequences of improperly treating a hangover, I would like to give some practical recommendations:
1. Your body is poisoned by alcohol breakdown products. To remove toxins, take enterosorbent - Enterosgel
2. You have lost a lot of water and salts, so drink more fluids, e.g. mineral water without gas
3. Painkillers should be taken only when your head hurts. Any other pain during a hangover (stomach, liver) requires the attention of doctors!
4. Don’t drink coffee in the morning; it’s better to choose strong, sweet tea
5. If the discomfort does not go away and the symptoms of poisoning become more and more obvious, call an ambulance or consult a doctor
6. Try to minimize your consumption of alcohol, especially carbonated, very sweet and non-certified drinks.
And remember that alcohol and nicotine are poisons that poison the entire body.
Many of us, especially non-smokers, have a great desire to smoke during a “feast”.
A few cigarettes will have no effect on your future hangover and will most likely even alleviate it, but will have a more negative impact on your future well-being.
This fact is based on the induction of the synthesis of certain enzymes that are directly or indirectly responsible for the bioprocessing of alcohol.
On the “rest” day, the enzymatic activity of the liver should be stable and remain at a very high level. This is how we will increase liver productivity on the day we drink alcohol.
The activity of these enzymes increases due to the intake of biologically active substances - for example, vitamins or hormones. They act as inducers of microsomal enzymes.
In everyday conditions, they can be found in such forms as: aspirin, caffeine, ethanol, quinine, sex hormones, etc.
Chinic, for example, is contained in tonic water (this can be Schweppes or Evervess), cortisol - for emotional experiences, and most sex hormones - for sexual desire.
Another household activator of the synthesis of these enzymes is ordinary aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid). It must be taken a day before the party in an amount of 0.3-0.5 mg. Taking this drug during a feast is strictly prohibited.
If you decide to take the upcoming holiday seriously and not fall face first into the salad, you can make yourself a mini-cocktail a few hours before the feast.
It is necessary to mix any high-quality tonic with vodka in a ratio of 3:1. You need to drink this drink 2-3 hours before your main alcohol intake.
The fact is that small amounts of alcohol + quinine (contained in tonic) accompany the production of the enzymes we need, and our body will meet the main portions of alcohol in full combat readiness.
Why do we want to smoke when we drink?
Very often at “alcoholic” holidays you can see a bolt from the blue - a cigarette in the hands of a non-smoker.
This craving for smoking is explained by the fact that alcohol removes a person’s moral and psychological inhibitions and he can commit rash acts. Everything, as usual, lies in our biology.
When exposed to alcohol, significant inhibition of the cerebral cortex begins, which is responsible for human behavior and social behavior.
Alcohol liberates a person and activates many instincts and needs: hunger, libido, aggression, etc. Also, their own prohibitions are lifted: do not smoke, do not eat fatty foods, do not kiss strangers.
If the drinking limit is significantly exceeded, a person becomes completely different from himself and begins to do unthinkable things, in a word - weird.
Alcohol has a positive effect on some people - they become more talkative, more interesting and cheerful, that is, they remove their moral barriers and some shyness.
Others, in turn, become more aggressive and uncontrollable. Therefore, you should always know your limit and not let alcohol get the better of you.
Is it true that smoking occasionally is not harmful?
Many people are interested in whether occasional smoking on holidays is harmful and how the body reacts to the constant use of tobacco in small doses.
Analyzes and studies show that a person who smokes 3 cigarettes a day increases their chances of developing cardiovascular diseases by 10%.
If you smoke once a month, but let’s say 15 cigarettes per evening, then the body simply does not have enough time to completely remove tobacco smoke products from the body and over time they will only accumulate and worsen your situation.
Is there a way to cleanse the lungs of tobacco tar?
The only way to solve this problem is time. For example, 10 years of smoking requires 8 years of waiting to completely cleanse the body. This process can be accelerated through active physical activity. proper nutrition and avoiding passive smoking in every possible way.
People who have completely decided to quit smoking must have great patience. There are two main cycles - small (1 year) and large (3 years). It is during this period that complete withdrawal from cigarettes occurs.
There are a number of medications that can help in your battle with nicotine. Most of them contain a substance such as an H-cholinergic receptor agonist or something similar, but they are not able to help everyone.
For the majority of people, the best method In order to quit smoking you will need acupuncture from a specialized doctor.
Waking up after a party with a heavy head and a wobbly body is, of course, not the worst thing that can happen in life. But, you must admit, this is quite unpleasant. However, hangover can be avoided or minimized. Find out how to do this in our short anti-hangover guide.
A hangover's best friend is cigarettes
Smoking while drinking alcohol motivates you to drink more, according to the conclusion of a study published in 2005 in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Scientists observed American students who kept special diaries where they wrote down how much they drank and how they felt afterwards. The same paper suggests that smokers suffer more from hangovers. Nicotine and other substances contained in cigarettes enhance the pharmacological effect of alcohol consumption.
The darker your alcohol, the worse you'll feel in the morning.
Drinks such as bourbon, rum and red wine are more likely to cause severe hangovers. This is due to the fact that they contain an increased concentration of congeners. These are fermentation byproducts that the body converts into formaldehyde, a toxic substance that makes people suffer in the morning.
An experiment that compared the effects of drinking whiskey and vodka found that whiskey drinkers tended to feel worse the next day. However, you can reduce the risk of consequences of drinking whiskey. Alcohol metabolism researcher James Schaeffer advises drinking it neat and alternating with water.
Much depends on genes
The severity of a hangover is closely related to how efficiently the body breaks down alcohol and its byproducts. Certain genes are responsible for the production of the key enzyme involved in this process, aldehyde dehydrogenase. This enzyme destroys acetaldehyde, a breakdown product of alcohol that causes hangover.
Approximately 25-30% of people are hangover-resistant: they have very good ethanol metabolism. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health reports that Asians cannot boast of this feature - as a rule, they produce less aldehyde dehydrogenase and, accordingly, they react worse to alcohol.
Eat protein
You can prevent a hangover by eating food containing protein - it makes the stomach work. Proteins take longer to digest, so meat, nuts or cheese are the best ways to stay drunk after your second drink. However, food that is not rich in protein will also help. One way or another, food absorbs and dilutes the alcohol. The surest way to a severe hangover is to drink on an empty stomach.
Sparkling alcohol makes hangovers worse
Champagne, beer and any other alcoholic drink, containing carbon dioxide, increases hangover symptoms. The gas helps open the pylorus, the muscle that connects the stomach and duodenum. Beer and sparkling wine enter the small intestine faster, which means alcohol penetrates the blood faster. The higher the blood alcohol content, the worse it is in the morning. To avoid this, you need to drink such drinks with water.
And more about the benefits of water
Terrible headache with a hangover - the result of dehydration. The brain is especially affected. Yes, yes, alcohol literally dries out your brain. It suppresses vasopressin, the hormone responsible for water balance. Due to a lack of vasopressin, water leaves the body along with urine, and therefore during a hangover there is an irresistible thirst. There is only one conclusion: more water while drinking alcohol means less headaches later.
Women suffer more from hangovers
When it comes to hangovers, gender equality will never be achieved - after all, men and women have different bodies. Yes, humans are approximately 80% water, but this figure varies. Women's bodies tend to have more fat, which contains less water, while men have more muscles, almost entirely composed of water. Therefore, if a man and a woman with the same weight drink the same amount of alcohol, the woman will have a stronger hangover - after all, there is less water in which alcohol dissolves in her body.
Hangovers cause heartburn
It is much easier to get heartburn while drinking alcohol than in any other situation. The fact is that alcohol promotes the liver's production of cytokines - small molecules that, among other things, cause heartburn. By the way, the same molecules cause pain and chills during the flu.
There is no exact answer to the question of why alcohol affects the production of cytokines. In any case, this is the liver's response to the alcohol that it has to cope with. Scientists suggest that the fact of heartburn may be related to the amount of drinking, so they advise consuming alcohol within reasonable limits.
Pills don't always help
All kinds of anti-hangover remedies do not guarantee getting rid of it. There are a lot of factors that cause a hangover, and so far they have not come up with a magic pill that affects each of them. However, activated carbon never hurts.
Hangovers are very expensive
It damages not only health, but also the economy. For example, a study published in 2000 in the Annals of Internal Medicine estimated that hangovers cost the U.S. economy $148 billion annually. This is all due to the low productivity of those who come to work after drinking. The stronger the hangover, the worse the reaction, attention and memory. The study also showed that in such cases, the risk of work-related injuries increases among employees who drank the day before - even if they now have zero ppm of alcohol in their blood.
A new study suggests that hangovers may be worse if you smoke while drinking. People who smoked on the same day they drank alcohol were twice as likely to report severe hangover symptoms compared to those who only drank. In a study of college students, drinking was defined as drinking five or six beers per hour.
Experts do not link the study to the fact that drinking and smoking, either separately or together, can have much worse consequences than the symptoms of a hangover. Smoking increases the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke, and drinking alcohol can lead to alcohol addiction, alcohol poisoning, car accidents and unsafe sex.
“In general, people smoke more when they drink because nicotine counteracts some of the sedative effects of alcohol,” says researcher Associate Professor J. Damaris Rosenow. She is a professor of behavioral and social sciences at the Center for Research on Alcohol and Drug Addiction at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
"People also tend to feel better when they smoke while drinking because the brain's production of chemical substance- dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for the pleasure chemical in the brain. The results were published in the journal Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.
Bad combination
“Exactly how smoking makes hangovers worse is not completely understood. Alcohol and smoking can disrupt sleep, which can make the hangover feel much worse,” says J. Rosenow. Moreover, a dopamine rush may also be accompanied by a deficiency of this chemical in the brain. The study involved 113 students from a Midwestern university. They participated in a daily survey for eight weeks. The questions asked how much they drank or smoked in a day and what their hangover symptoms were.
According to the study, students smoked about seven cigarettes a day, and this number rose to 10 on heavy or heavy days. Students reported drinking more than two beers a day on average, and more than 10 on heavy drinking days. " The best way To avoid a hangover, don't drink so much, but if you smoke, it makes it worse, which means it gives you another reason not to smoke,” she says.
Drinking is a risky business
Corey Treven is the Student Assistance Program Coordinator for Caron Treatment Centers in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. “Using cigarettes while drinking can certainly make your hangover worse,” she says. “But binge drinking is common in many colleges and has more serious consequences than a bad hangover.” “Attention should be focused not only on the short-term hangover, but also on the potential for addiction and other harmful consequences,” she says.
Patricia Hinken, director of addiction recovery services at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York, agrees with these findings. “Having a hangover associated with drinking, as we know, is extremely risky,” she says. A hangover is a red flag that you've had too much to drink. It shouldn't be the norm. Getting drunk with friends is not socializing with friends. “The social norm for drinking is one or two bottles of beer with friends,” says P. Hinken.
