Why Does Alcohol Dehydrate The Body?(Transcript)
My name is Kevin O’Hara for Alcohol Mastery and today I’m asking the question, “Why does alcohol dehydrate the body?“
A Night on the Piss!
When I used to drink it was a common thing to say that we were going out for a night on the piss. Basically, that’s exactly what we were doing. We were filling ourselves up with alcohol and emptying ourselves back out into the urinal.
The Case Study
The answer really goes back to the 1950s, back to some studies that were done by some hospital researchers who decided to crack up a bottle a whiskey to settle whether a pint of beer makes you urinate more than a pint of water.
And it does!
Flushing the Water From Your System
So basically, it took three volunteers who were given the opportunity to sink an nice drop of whiskey about five hours after breakfast on an empty stomach. And then they were tested for the next 6 hours to see how much they were actually urinating. Over the next few weeks, they tested the volunteers again with various amounts of whiskey and various amounts of water. Same test, just a different liquid. What they basically found was that the bourbon made the participants urinate 120 millilitres more than the water. So that was 120 ml worth of dehydration.
Hydration for Halting the Hangover
They also wanted to test the theory whether you drink water along with your alcohol that it makes you less dehydrated then you’ve got less of a hangover. So they gave five shots of whiskey along with a pint and a half of water. The dehydration was actually less, but not significantly.
Does Beer Rehydrate or Dehydrate?
So in the next video I’ll be asking the question, “Does beer rehydrate or dehydrate?” We’re looking a little bit more into it then.
The Science
Thanks for visiting the site.
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
Kev
Nice video.
I didn’t quite catch that thing causing the dehydration.
Was it ocquaporins? At least that was it sounded like it..?
Thanks