So, what'll it be, Mister...
The name's Bond.
Ionic bond.
Taken, not shared.
Hello and welcome to The Lab, where we take your questions and turn them into experiments
every Sunday.
My name's Mitch and I'm Greg and today we're going to be getting drunk in the name of science.
So study's actually show that it's really hard when you're drinking to predict how drunk
you actually are, so we're gonna play with that a little bit.
We're going to be doing something else.
Oh yeah, we're gonna actually also be seeing if can trick a breathalyzer into thinking
we're not drunk after we've already had quite a bit to drink.
And we're gonna test some scientific theories about whether or not you can sober up really
quickly.
So we're essentially going to have a really fast party.
Test #1.
To start, we want to say that obviously we are here trying to have a talk about alcohol
as a chemical that enters your body and is a poison and is something that can be very
addictive.
So, we're not condoning alcohol, but we're trying to, you know, scientifically look at
what it does to our bodies as something that many people in our society do it's a really
strong custom and part of our culture.
On that note, cheers!
So, an interesting thing about beer that relates to science is that Niels Bohr, who was a Danish
scientist, after receiving the Nobel Prize, Karlsberg, a very famous Danish--Danish famish--brewery
actually opened a line of beer right directly to his house on tap so that Niels Bohr after
receiving his Nobel Prize got to have beer whenever he wanted.
I feel like more people who try to get Nobel Prizes if they knew that was the reward.
Mmm!
Ah!
Did you know that a "butt" is a Medieval measurement--like B, U, T, T, like my butt--is 126 gallons of
wine?
Yeah, uh, did not know that.
Oh, the oaky texture is divine.
Oh, it smells like a $4 wine, doesn't it?
*burping* So, next up, we have a Canadian delicacy known as the caesar.
Mmm!
Tastes like Zoodles.
It is like spicy.
Tastes like Zoodles.
I'm feeling kind of tipsy.
Studies actually show that when you think that you're the most drunk, your actual peak
drunkenness is 25 minutes after you actually think that it is.
So, I'm feeling very drunk right now and so I'm worried about myself in 25 minutes.
Over here we've got sober, feeling good, this is you know, where you can and can't drive,
and so we are going to take our little action pieces and decide and estimate where we are.
Here's 0.09 because I think that I couldn't drive.
I think if a cop stopped me right now, I'd be like, I'm sorry, here's my jail time.Ithink
I'll put mine a little lower, like probably right on 0.08.
*blowing into breathalyzer* 0.02!
So I actually was overestimating.
That's how careful I am.
*blowing into breathalyzer* 0.03!
Okay, so I'm at the feeling good section.
Yeah, do you feel good?
I feel good.
That's true.
But I mean, I would probably feel good here too.
I feel like if I was the government of Canada, I would be like, lower that to like 0.03.
According to science, drinking diet drinks with your alcohol will get you drunk faster.
And it does make sense and it is true because what happens is the sugar acts as a meal so
it holds the alcohol in your stomach for longer and your stomach actually absorbs alcohol
much slower than your small intestine.
So when you drink diet cokes, the alcohol makes its way to your small intestine faster,
therefore where it is absorbed more, so if you really, for whatever reason, want to get
drunk very fast, you do use diet cola.
Okay--this is too much to go on the internet.
I am so ashamed.
Wait, everyone keeps talking about the internet.
What's the internet?
I like don't know what it is.
Everyone's always like, what's it like to have a job on the internet and I'm like "what?"
Did you know that the British Navy actually found that rum would stop their scurvy when
they're at sea?
Did you know that?
Do you believe that?
No.
It was an interesting finding until they realized it was actually the lime that they were putting
in their rum that was helping to fight off the scurvy but they for the longest time thought
that the rum itself had some magical ingredient.
Oh, the British.
*does bad Cockney accent* Oh, that alcohol will save you.
Rum innite?
This is one of my favourite drink.
Yeah, rum and coke.
This is Mitch's poison.
Ohhh, Ah!!! *laughs* We're going to do some vodka and coke, also known as a "voke".
OOOOH, that's university!
One weird thing about vodka is that it actually goes bad and you're not supposed to keep it
for more than 12 months.
Really?
Why do we feel this way?
We're obviously intoxicated at this point.
What is alcohol doing to us?
Actually, alcohol is slowing down our brain and our neuron's responses...
There are two different types of neurons.
Some are excitatory and some are inhibitory.
And so alcohol actually slows down the excitatory neurons and stimulates the inhibitory neurons.
Now, normally those inhibitory neurons help to guide your thoughts, so that your brain
isn't just being stimulated crazily.
But alcohol actually stimulates those more, so you shut down a lot of the process in your
brain.
You stop paying attention to those external sources or noises around you that your brain
is really good at picking up.
You think a lot about nothing.
Picture this: Magic School Bus.
Coming to Netflix.
And then like a weird live-action lizard running up Julianne Moore's arm and it's like, "Get
in the bus."
And it's like 2017.
I would be like *breathes heavily*.
I have to pee pretty bad.
Are you at that point?
I can explain this.
So, in our kidneys, it's really important that you have your anti-dieuretic hormone
which re-absorbs water back into your body, because you don't want to just get rid of
water, because water is what makes you live.
And so, alcohol binds to that anti-dieuretic hormone and so when it binds to it, therefore
you don't re-absorb water back into your body, you just piss it all out.
That's why when you go out to bars and you drink lots of beer, you just pee all the time
and therefore you become dehydrated and therefore you become hungover and therefore you have
to pee really bad right now, because alcohol's binding to your anti-dieuretic hormone and
that's why you have to pee.
Also, the most important thing in the world is science.
Girl, I'm gonna whip out some diet--straight to the brain.
Straight to the small intestine.
True.
So are you near blurred vision and speech, or are you close to sad?
I think that I'm probably at 0.10 and I have zero idea what's going on.
Your turn!
I think I'm probably 0.13.
You're drunker than me!
*laughing* We should pose with it like our baby.
Tharr she blows!
*breathes in loudly* 0.08!
If any cop were to pull me over right now and was like "you can go sir!"
I'd be like "no, no, no, no!
You're protecting the people.
Don't let me go."
Lower it Canada!
I'm 0.08 as well.
Consider that in most places, 0.05 is the limit, so we're actually over it.
You can't really predict.
We've been so bad at not only predicting it.
I kind of thought we'd be like "oh, we're always feeling good," but we're more drunk.
I honestly thought that we'd be like more drunk but actually down here.
So, one myth I've come across on the internet is that peanut butter can actually stop or
hide the fact that you're drunk.
And another theory is that if you suck on a penny, you can actually do a breathalyzer
test and the results will be a lot lower than you think that they are.
Allegedly, the sodium in the peanut butter binds to the ethanol in the alcohol and somehow
stops the breathalyzer from picking it up.
I think that the science for the penny...
It's just a rumour.
Mmm, I love peanut butter.
Ew.
I can't believe I'm doing this.
How's the penny?
I'm sucking on the Queen right now.
This is so gross.
I went down .01!
Wow!
It went down!
So mine may have gone down a little bit, but it's still above the legal limit.
This did not make any drastic change to what I was doing.
I think a 0.01 change is negligable enough that it doesn't necessarily mean it could
have been anything.
It definitely is not just from sucking on a penny.
I would still be in trouble and have a DUI--I would be over the limit.
Okay, so scientists have shown that potentially honey could be the cure for your drunkenness.
And what they did, is that actually got mice intoxicated.
They found out that when they gave mice honey and certain ones not, the ones that got honey
were actually better able to perform specific climbing tests better and were able to have
their dexterity be heightened.
And so essentially they were like "okay, honey maybe has done some stuff to these mice",
but they don't know exactly why.
So we are going to be the first human subjects who clearly right now are drunk.
This is not okay though because like mine's gone down by zero.
It's like SO, SO intensely full of glucose and sugar that I actually think my body's
like.
Maybe these mice were just like shocked.
*gagging* I don't think this is a reasonable way to sober up, because you just feel sick.
In the study, the scientists argue that it increases otonomic activity, kind of as if
we were just saying, like if a cop shows up at a party, and all of a sudden you think,
I know exactly what to do.
I'm only .01 down below of where I was before and I feel like that would be a natural progression
from the wait.
Mine stayed the same.
In this case it did not work.
In the meantime, it's time for THIS WEEK IN SCIENCE TALK!
So this week, we're hungover.
A one-year-old girl with leukemia has receieved modified immune cells from a healthy donor,
which has put her cancer into remission.
This type of therapy has actually already been done on an HIV patient in the past, where
they took healthy t-cells from another subject and put them inside of him.
This gene-editing technology could be a glimpse into the future of medical care.
Soon scientists will be intimately studying how 10,000 New Yorkers live their lives, where
they go, what they eat, how they grow, etc.
This will help to gain new bio-medical and sociological information to help inspire new
groundbreaking studies.
*singing* THIS DATA WILL INSPIRE YOU.
Swedish scientists have discovered that high-intensity-interval-training, or working out really hard for short periods
of time, offers the same endurance benefits as longer, more time consuming exercizes that
are less intense.
This really intense training creates free radicals that break down calcium levels, ultimately
increasing the power of muscle cells.
Less gym time means more Zelda time.
Thanks again for watching another episode of the Lab.
Don't forget to follow us on Instagram or Twitter, with our handles right here.
We're gonna go drink a bunch of water and sleep, so subscribe to our channel and we'll
see you next week.
Peace.