Health
Here's why you're suffering a hangover – Scuttlebutt Sailing News
The United States Navy sailors and their families rely on Navy Times as a trusted, independent source for news and information on the most important issues affecting their careers and personal lives. Such as hangovers…
Debaucherous evening last night? You’re probably dealing with veisalgia right now.
More commonly known as a hangover, this unpleasant phenomenon has been dogging humanity since our ancestors first happened upon fermentation.
Those nasty vertigo-inducing, cold sweat-promoting and vomit-producing sensations after a raucous night out are all part of your body’s attempt to protect itself from injury after you overindulge in alcoholic beverages.
Your liver is working to break down the alcohol you consumed so your kidneys can clear it out ASAP. But in the process, your body’s inflammatory and metabolic reactions are going to lay you low with a hangover.
As long as people have suffered from hangovers, they’ve searched in vain for a cure. Revelers have access to a variety of compounds, products and devices that purport to ease the pain.
But there’s a lot of purporting and not a lot of proof. Most have not been backed up well by science in terms of usefulness for hangover treatment, and often their effects don’t seem like they’d match up with what scientists know about the biology of the hangover.
Hangovers are virtually guaranteed when you drink too much. That amount varies from person to person based on genetic factors as well as whether there are other compounds that formed along with ethanol in the fermentation process.
Over the course of a night of heavy drinking, your blood alcohol level continues to rise. Your body labors to break down the alcohol – consumed as ethanol in beer, wine or spirits – forming damaging oxygen free radicals and acetaldehyde, itself a harmful compound.
The longer ethanol and acetaldehyde stick around, the more damage they can do to your cellular membranes, proteins and DNA, so your body’s enzymes work quickly to metabolize acetaldehyde to a less toxic compound, acetate.
Over time, your ethanol levels drop through this natural metabolic process. Depending on how much you consumed, you’re likely to experience a hangover as the level of ethanol in your blood slowly returns to zero. Your body is withdrawing from high levels of circulating alcohol, while at the same time trying to protect itself from the effects of alcohol.
Scientists have limited knowledge of the leading causes of the hangover. But they do know that the body’s responses include changes in hormone levels to reduce dehydration and cellular stress.
Alcohol consumption also affects a variety of neurotransmitter systems in the brain, including glutamate, dopamine and serotonin.
Inflammation increases in the body’s tissues, and the healthy gut bacteria in your digestive system take a hit too, promoting leaky gut.
Altogether, the combination of all these reactions and protective mechanisms activated by your system gives rise to the experience of a hangover, which can last up to 48 hours.
Your misery likely has company
Drinking and socializing are cultural acts, and most hangovers do not happen in isolation. Human beings are social creatures, and there’s a high likelihood that at least one other individual feels the same as you the morning after the night before.
Each society has different rules regarding alcohol use, which can affect how people view alcohol consumption within those cultures.
Drinking is often valued for its relaxing effect and for promoting sociability. So it’s common to see alcohol provided at celebratory events, social gatherings and holiday parties.
In the United States, drinking alcohol is largely embraced by mainstream culture, which may even promote behaviors involving excessive drinking. It should be no surprise that overindulgence goes hand in hand with these celebratory social events – and leads to hangover regrets a few hours later.
Your body’s reactions to high alcohol intake and the sobering-up period can influence mood, too. The combination of fatigue that you experience from sleep deprivation and hormonal stress reactions, in turn, affect your neurobiological responses and behavior. As your body is attempting to repair itself, you’re more likely to be easily irritated, exhausted and want nothing more than to be left alone.
Of course, your work productivity takes a dramatic hit the day after an evening of heavy drinking.
When all is said and done, you’re the cause of your own hangover pain, and you’re the one who must pay for all the fun of the night before. But in short order, you’ll forget how excruciating your last hangover was. And you may very soon talk yourself into doing the things you swore you’d never do again.
Speeding up recovery
While pharmacologists like us understand a bit about how hangovers work, we still lack a true remedy.
Countless articles describe a variety of foods, caffeine, ion replenishment, energy drinks, herbal supplements including thyme and ginger, vitamins and the “hair of the dog” as ways to prevent and treat hangovers.
But the evidence isn’t really there that any of these work effectively. They’re just not scientifically validated or well reproduced.
For example, Kudzu root (Pueraria lobata), a popular choice for hangover remedies, has primarily been investigated for its effects in reducing alcohol-mediated stress and hangover.
But at the same time, Kudzu root appears to inhibit the enzymes that break down acetaldehyde – not good news since you want to clear that acetaldehyde from your system quickly.
To fill this knowledge gap, our lab is working with colleagues to see if we can find scientific evidence for or against potential hangover remedies. We’ve focused on the benefits of dihydromyricetin, a Chinese herbal medicine that is currently available and formulated as a dietary supplement for hangover reduction or prevention.
Dihydromyricetin appears to work its magic by enhancing alcohol metabolism and reducing its toxic byproduct, acetaldehyde. From our findings in mice models, we are collecting data that support the usefulness of dihydromyricetin in increasing the expression and activity of enzymes responsible for ethanol and acetaldehyde metabolism in the liver, where ethanol is primarily broken down.
These findings explain one of the several ways dihydromyricetin protects the body against alcohol stress and hangover symptoms.
We are also studying how this enhancement of alcohol metabolism results in changes in alcohol drinking behaviors. Previously, dihydromyricetin was found to counteract the relaxation affect of drinking alcohol by interfering with particular neuroreceptors in the brain; rodents didn’t become as intoxicated and consequently reduced their ethanol intake.
Through this combination of mechanisms, we hope to illustrate how DHM might reduce the downsides of excessive drinking beyond the temporary hangover, and potentially reduce drinking behavior and damage associated with heavy alcohol consumption.
Of course, limiting alcohol intake and substituting water for many of those drinks during an evening out is probably the best method to avoid a painful hangover.
However, for those times when one alcoholic beverage leads to more than a few more, be sure to stay hydrated and catch up on rest.
Your best bet for a smoother recovery is probably some combination of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug like ibuprofen, Netflix, and a little downtime.
Background on authors:
Dr. Daryl L. Davies is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and a professor in the Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy. He also leads a leads a research team seeking to develop novel therapeutics for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and alcoholism and is considered a pioneer by his peers in the field of purinergic receptors and their role in CNS regulation of alcohol-induced changes in alcohol intake and signaling.
Dr. Terry David Church, is an assistant professor in the Department of Regulatory and Quality Sciences, and lecturer for the undergraduate program at the University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy.
Joshua Silva is a PhD student at the University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy. His doctoral project is titled “Dihydromyricetin (DHM) Increases Alcohol Metabolism and Reduces Alcohol-Induced Liver Injury.”
Source: https://www.navytimes.com
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The United States on Thursday raised the pressure on other Group of Seven leaders to share their vaccine hoards to bring an end to the pandemic by pledging to donate 500 million doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine to the world’s poorest countries.
The largest ever vaccine donation by a single country will cost the United States $3.5 billion but Washington expects no quid pro quo or favours for the gift, a senior Biden administration official told reporters.
U.S. President Joe Biden‘s move, on the eve of a summit of the world’s richest democracies, is likely to prompt other leaders to stump up more vaccines, though even vast numbers of vaccines would still not be enough to inoculate all of the world’s poor.
G7 leaders want to vaccinate the world by the end of 2022 to try to halt the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 3.9 million people and devastated the global economy.
A senior Biden administration official described the gesture as a “major step forward that will supercharge the global effort” with the aim of “bringing hope to every corner of the world.” “We really want to underscore that this is fundamentally about a singular objective of saving lives,” the official said, adding that Washington was not seeking favours in exchange for the doses.
Vaccination efforts so far are heavily correlated with wealth: the United States, Europe, Israel and Bahrain are far ahead of other countries. A total of 2.2 billion people have been vaccinated so far out of a world population of nearly 8 billion, based on Johns Hopkins University data.
U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have agreed to supply the U.S. with the vaccines, delivering 200 million doses in 2021 and 300 million doses in the first half of 2022.
The shots, which will be produced at Pfizer’s U.S. sites, will be supplied at a not-for-profit price.
“Our partnership with the U.S. government will help bring hundreds of millions of doses of our vaccine to the poorest countries around the world as quickly as possible,” said Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla.
‘DROP IN THE BUCKET’
Anti-poverty campaign group Oxfam called for more to be done to increase global production of vaccines.
“Surely, these 500 million vaccine doses are welcome as they will help more than 250 million people, but that’s still a drop in the bucket compared to the need across the world,” said Niko Lusiani, Oxfam America’s vaccine lead.
“We need a transformation toward more distributed vaccine manufacturing so that qualified producers worldwide can produce billions more low-cost doses on their own terms, without intellectual property constraints,” he said in a statement.
Another issue, especially in some poor countries, is the infrastructure for transporting the vaccines which often have to be stored at very cold temperatures.
Biden has also backed calls for a waiver of some vaccine intellectual property rights but there is no international consensus yet on how to proceed.
The new vaccine donations come on top of 80 million doses Washington has already pledged to donate by the end of June. There is also $2 billion in funding earmarked for the COVAX programme led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the White House said.
GAVI and the WHO welcomed the initiative.
Washington is also taking steps to support local production of COVID-19 vaccines in other countries, including through its Quad initiative with Japan, India and Australia.
(Reporting by Steve Holland in St. Ives, England, Andrea Shalal in Washington and Caroline Copley in Berlin; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Keith Weir;Editing by Leslie Adler, David Evans, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Giles Elgood and Jane Merriman)
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Both the United States and China have pledged large donations of COVID-19 vaccines to countries around the world. Washington has promised 80 million doses, three-quarters of which will be delivered via the international vaccine initiative COVAX, in what has been seen as an effort to counter China’s widening vaccine diplomacy. It began deliveries last week.
China had shipped vaccines to 66 countries in the form of aid, according to state news agency Xinhua. Beijing has not disclosed an overall figure for its donations but Reuters calculations based on publicly available data show at least 16.57 million doses have been delivered. China has also pledged to supply 10 million doses to COVAX.
VACCINES DONATED BY U.S. (plan for the first 25 mln):
Regional partners and priority recipients
COUNTRY/TERRITORY PLEDGED DELIVERED
Including Canada, Mexico, 1 mln to S.Korea in June
South Korea, West Bank and
Gaza, Ukraine, Kosovo,
Haiti, Georgia, Egypt,
Jordan, India, Iraq, Yemen,
United Nations
TOTAL 6 mln 1 mln
Allocations through COVAX
South and Central America
COUNTRY/TERRITORY PLEDGED DELIVERED
Brazil, Argentina, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador,
Paraguay, Bolivia,
Guatemala, El Salvador,
Honduras, Panama, Haiti,
Dominican Republic and other
Caribbean Community
(CARICOM) countries
TOTAL 6 mln
Asia
COUNTRY/TERRITORY PLEDGED DELIVERED
India, Nepal, Bangladesh,
Pakistan, Sri Lanka,
Afghanistan, Maldives,
Malaysia, Philippines,
Vietnam, Indonesia,
Thailand, Laos, Papua New
Guinea, Taiwan, and the
Pacific Islands
TOTAL 7 mln
Africa
COUNTRY/TERRITORY PLEDGED DELIVERED
To be selected in
coordination with the
African Union
TOTAL 5 mln
VACCINES DONATED BY CHINA (source – Reuters calculations and official data):
Asia Pacific
COUNTRY/TERRITORY PLEDGED DELIVERED
Afghanistan 400,000
Bangladesh Second batch of First batch of 500,000 delivered
600,000 on May 12
Brunei 52,000 in Feb
Cambodia 1.7 mln as of April 28
Kyrgyzstan 150,000 in March
Laos 300,000 in Feb
800,000 in late March
300,000 in late April
Maldives 200,000 in early March
Mongolia 300,000 in late February
Myanmar 500,000 in early May
Nepal 800,000 in late March
1 mln in early June
Pakistan 500,000 in early Feb
250,000 in Feb
500,000 in March
Philippines 600,000 in late Feb
400,000 in late March
Sri Lanka 600,000 at end March
500,000 in late May
Thailand 500,000 in May
500,000 in June
Timor-Leste 100,000 100,000 in early June
TOTAL 11.052 million
Africa
COUNTRY/TERRITORY PLEDGED DELIVERED
Angola 200,000 in late March
Algeria 200,000 200,000 in Feb
Botswana 200,000 in April
Cameroon 200,000 in April
Congo 100,000 100,000 in March
Egypt 600,000 in March
Ethiopia 300,000 in late March
Equatorial Guinea 100,000 in Feb
Guinea 200,000 in early March
Mozambique 200,000 in late Feb
Namibia 100,000 by early April
Niger 400,000 in late March
Sierra Leone 240,000 by late May
Togo 200,000 in April
Uganda 300,000
Zimbabwe 200,000 in Feb
200,000 in March
100,000 in May
TOTAL 3.74 million
South America
COUNTRY/TERRITORY PLEDGED DELIVERED
Bolivia 100,000 in late Feb
100,000 in late March
Venezuela 500,000 in early March
TOTAL 700,000
Europe & Middle East
COUNTRY/TERRITORY PLEDGED DELIVERED
Belarus 100,000 in Feb
300,000 in May
Georgia 100,000 at end April
Iran 250,000 at end February
Iraq 50,000 in early March
Montenegro 30,000 in early March
North Macedonia 100,000 in May
Syria 150,000 in late April
TOTAL 1.08 million
(Reporting by Roxanne Liu and Ryan Woo in Beijing and Cooper Inveen in Dakar; Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare, Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus now:
Australia’s Melbourne to exit lockdown
Australia’s second largest city Melbourne will exit a hard lockdown as planned on Thursday night, Victoria state authorities said, although some restrictions on travel and gatherings would likely remain for another week.
After two weeks in a strict lockdown that forced people to remain at home except for essential business, Melbourne’s five million residents will get more freedom to step outside from 11:59 p.m. local time (1359 GMT) on Thursday.
However, people must stay within 25 km (15 miles) of their homes, officials said, in an effort to stop transmission during an upcoming long weekend. There will also be a total ban on house gatherings and masks will be mandatory indoors.
Deliveries of Thai-made AstraZeneca vaccines delayed
Malaysia and Taiwan are expecting deliveries of AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured in Thailand to be delayed, officials said, the latest countries to report a holdup with orders from the Thai plant.
The delay comes amid concerns over AstraZeneca’s distribution plans in Southeast Asia, which depends on 200 million doses made by Siam Bioscience, a company owned by Thailand’s king that is making vaccines for the first time.
Any questions about Siam Bioscience meeting production targets are sensitive because King Maha Vajiralongkorn is its sole owner. Insulting Thailand’s monarchy is a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Indonesia aims to speed up vaccinations
President Joko Widodo said on Wednesday he hoped Indonesia’s vaccination rollout will hit one million shots a day by July, as authorities opened up inoculations to anyone aged over 18 in Jakarta to contain increased transmission in the capital.
Health officials in the world’s fourth most populous country, which aims to vaccinate 181.5 million people by next year, are trying to speed up the rollout after facing some supply issues.
The president said he wanted vaccinations to hit a targeted 700,000 doses a day this month and then rise again.
Singapore finds Delta most prevalent among variants
Singapore has found the Delta variant of the coronavirus to be the most prevalent among local cases of variants of concern (VOCs), according to health ministry data, highlighting its level of infectiousness.
There were 449 local cases with VOCs as of May 31, of which 428 were the Delta variant first detected in India and nine of the Beta variant first identified in South Africa.
Singapore reported its 34th death due to COVID-19, taking its toll from the pandemic beyond the 33 casualties recorded during the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak.
U.S. forming expert groups on lifting travel restrictions
The Biden administration is forming expert working groups with Canada, Mexico, the European Union and the United Kingdom to determine how best to safely restart travel after 15 months of pandemic restrictions, a White House official said on Tuesday.
Another U.S. official said the administration will not move quickly to lift orders that bar people from much of the world from entering the United States because of the time it will take for the groups to do their work.
The groups will be led by the White House COVID Response Team and the National Security Council and include the Centers for Disease Control and other U.S. agencies.
(Compiled by Linda Noakes; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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