Drinking too much can result in a hangover – aches, pains, headaches and even sickness. It can cause you to struggle at work the next day or even effect your normal routine. Popular hangover remedies include aspirin, coffee and extra sleep – but many people are just starting to understand the benefits of supplemental oxygen like Boost Oxygen to fight a hangover. It’s also important to understand how alcohol effects your circulatory system and causes a hangover – and how Boost Oxygen can help you feel better faster.
HOW ALCOHOL CAUSES A HANGOVER
Whenever you ingest any food or beverage, your body must metabolize it. What is metabolisation? Though this process, your body turns the food or liquid you ingest into the energy it needs. Your blood cells disperse it throughout your body for tissues and organs. Let’s examine this process further.
The most important player in this process is the liver – and oxygen is the main energy source to power the liver to enable proper metabolism. It uses the most oxygen out of any organ in your body (over 20 percent). In comparison the brain uses 18 percent, which is the second-most. Your liver and brain use nearly 40 percent of all oxygen you inhale.
When we drink alcohol, your liver must metabolize it just like any other food or beverage. The liver breaks down most of the alcohol you drink so that it can be removed from the body. This creates substances that are even more harmful than alcohol such as acetaldehyde, which is responsible for a lot of the negative effects of alcohol like headaches, flushing and dizziness.
When we drink alcohol, we become oxygen deficient because the liver and brain work hard to metabolize it. It takes 3 molecules of oxygen to metabolize 1 molecule of alcohol, thereby depleting your oxygen supply while your body metabolizes the alcohol throughout the night and the next morning.
Without sufficient levels of oxygen, this process can slow down and in an oxygen deprived state, the potentially toxic byproducts of alcohol remain in your system longer, leading to – you guessed it – the hangover. As you age, the hangover can get worse because your liver doesn’t have the same functionality as when you were younger.
Alcohol consumption also triggers the release of certain stress hormones that in turn constrict blood vessels. This elevates blood pressure. High blood pressure can also cause smaller vessels to plug up entirely. This can starve skin cells of oxygen, which is why some people experience red and blotchy skin when they drink.
This is also why you have a headache the next morning. Alcohol constricts the blood vessels in the head. When your blood vessels become narrower, the heart needs to work harder in order to move blood around your body. The day after drinking, it takes time for the blood vessels to relax and reopen to their original size, but your head is still hurting because your heart is working hard to try to get it necessary oxygen through constricted blood vessels.
HOW SUPPLEMENTAL OXYGEN LIKE BOOST OXYGEN CAN HELP
If you experience a hangover, 95% pure supplemental oxygen like Boost Oxygen works to counteract this blood vessel constriction and helps the blood vessels relax and open faster to their original size. It helps your body hasten the metabolisation process. It works rapidly so you don’t have to suffer as much pain from the hangover and you can get back to feeling better that much faster.
The air we breathe contains only around 21% oxygen – the majority is 78% useless nitrogen. Boost Oxygen portable 95% pure oxygen provides more than four times (4x) the oxygen we normally breathe in the air. With your liver and heart needing as much oxygen as they can get during a hangover to recover, using supplemental oxygen like Boost Oxygen only makes sense and can help you feel better faster.
So when you have that next get-together to drink with friends or go out to party, we hope you will bring along our portable and pocket-size canisters. Not only will it help you maintain oxygen levels while you drink and your body metabolizes the alcohol, but our canisters are also an interesting conversation-starter or icebreaker (also speaking to the social benefits of Boost Oxygen!). Make sure to also have our canisters nearby the next morning if you wake up suffering from a hangover.
The next time you head out to a party, drink a little too much and experience a hangover, Help Is Here with Boost Oxygen!
To read more about hangovers and the effects of alcohol on the body, we encourage you to visit these links:
Article: What does alcohol do to your veins and circulatory system?
Article: Alcohol And Its Impact On Health
Article: Why It’s So Hard To Recover After Drinking As You Get Older
Article written by Bill Banks - boostoxygen.com