- 85% of adults have drank alcohol in their life.
It's an extremely popular drug that decreases
specific neuronal excitation in your brain
with biological byproducts that have a huge impact
on your body.
So if you're wanting to partake in a bevy,
short for beverage,
is there an ideal time for your physiology?
Is it better to day drink or drink at night?
- When you drink a shot of vodka,
20% of the alcohol is absorbed by the stomach,
80% in the small intestine,
where it goes into your bloodstream,
then to your liver to be metabolized.
Ethanol gets into cells by passive diffusion.
So the more you drink, the faster you get drunk.
And when alcohol accumulates and finally gets to your brain,
it suppresses the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate,
which causes information transfer in the brain
to become slower with only the largest signals
making it through.
You feel less, perceive less, notice less,
and remember less.
So a check for drinking at night
is that day drinking alcohol won't allow you
to complete your daily tasks.
- A check for day drinking is that we've been doing it
for millions of years.
Known as the Drunk Monkey Hypothesis,
the only reason you're able to drink alcohol right now
dates back to a gene mutation
that occurred 10 million years ago in your ancestors.
A monkey-looking eutherian mammal,
which is the common ancestor to you
and the chimpanzee, of course,
had a mutation in their enzyme, alcohol dehydrogenase,
which made this enzyme 40 times more effective
at metabolizing alcohol.
This specific mutation in the alcoholic dehydrogenase meant
that no longer would small amounts of alcohol be poisonous
but now it could be a viable energy source.
This hypothesis also recognizes
that around 10 million years ago
was when our common ancestors stopped living in the trees
and began living on the ground.
This new mutated alcohol-metabolizing enzyme was beneficial
as it made the copious amounts of fermenting fruit
on the forest floor accessible as a new dietary niche.
Essentially, mutations sound bad,
but sometimes they allow us humans
to get absolutely sloshed, bro.
And our ancestors were likely eating
these fermented fruits during the day.
They were also getting lots of new energy.
But while drinking alcohol may increase your caloric energy,
and while day drinking you might be like kinda giddy,
like shots-on-the-patio energy, like woo-hoo,
that will quickly go away
and you will become a lethargic afternoon mess,
which kind of creates a check for drinking at night.
Any excited extroversion you feel while drinking
is due to the suppression of brain firing
in the prefrontal cortex.
This part of your brain controls your impulses
and restrains behavior.
Therefore, alcohol suppressing this inhibitory part
of your brain causes you to loosen up
and become a bit more extroverted.
For example, once while drunk, I became very extroverted
and invited everyone in my university residence
into my tiny room to have a dance party.
And while blasting Kesha's "This Place About to Blow,"
the floor almost caved in, the cops were called,
and I was fined for having an illegal rave.
Ding.
But this drunk extroversion won't last long
due to your liver.
In your liver is where the famous enzyme
alcohol dehydrogenase lives.
And it breaks down the ethanol into acetaldehyde.
The buildup of acetaldehyde causes incoordination,
memory problems, and sleepiness.
So day drinking leads to these byproducts building up
in your body during the day,
causing you to lose coordination,
forget things, and become sedated.
In fact, drinking during the day is related
to higher injuries in sports, which seems a little obvious.
All of this is a check for drinking at night.
- Perhaps the guess point for day drinking,
or rather the point against night drinking,
is that it negatively affects your sleep.
Since we now know that alcohol inhibits
the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate,
when alcohol leaves your system,
the brain kind of over-corrects
and there's a rebound of glutamate,
which leads to excitability and irritation.
Drinking at night means this excitable rebound
happens when you're trying to sleep.
This ends up dismantling your sleep through the night,
cutting it up into tiny little bits
and actually interrupting your sleep cycle
in a way that a lot of people
don't even realize is happening.
But you may be saying, "But alcohol helps me get to sleep."
But electrical brainwaves show
that sleeping while intoxicated is not natural sleep.
It's more sedated, similar to anesthesia.
In fact, alcohol is one of the strongest sedatives
of the integral REM sleep,
the type of sleep which causes dreams.
When the liver metabolizes alcohol,
it produces ketones and aldehydes.
The aldehydes block the brainwaves needed to generate
this powerful REM dream sleep,
which can have astounding effects.
REM sleep is so essential for a lot of functions
in your body and brain, including memory and association.
One study got a group of college students together
to study them for a week.
On day one, they learned a novel
computer programming language, or a new form of algebra.
By the end of day one, they were tested
and all had a proficiency of understanding around 90%.
Over the coming week, a control group slept naturally;
a second group got a little drunk every night before bed
on two to three shots of vodka,
which was based on their body weight;
and a third group slept naturally on day one to two
and then had alcohol before bed starting on day three.
Seven days later and they were all tested again.
People in the control group without alcohol at night
remembered everything they had learned
and showed enhanced abstraction and retention of knowledge.
The group who drank before bed since day one
forgot more than 50% of their knowledge.
And the group that started drinking after day two
forgot around 40% of their knowledge.
So day drinking actually allows your body enough time
to metabolize the alcohol so you can get a good sleep.
A check for day drinking for sure.
- Some people argue that day drinking a mimosa
with the sweethearts
or knocking back a cold brewski with the boys
makes them feel better than having a dark whiskey
on the rocks at night while talking about philosophy.
But does the type of alcohol that you're drinking
affect how you enjoy it?
One survey found individuals reported
higher negative expectancies
after drinking shots of distilled spirits
and higher positive expectancies
after drinking wine and beer.
Another study found that 29.8% of respondents
reported feeling aggressive when drinking spirits.
Spirits is such a weird word for a type of alcohol.
There is no physiological evidence the type of alcohol
you are drinking affects your mood,
but instead it's how you perceive
the alcohol will affect you that affects you.
A really important thing is your mood
prior to starting to drink.
It will be exacerbated by the effects of the alcohol.
So for example, if you are a day drinking on a Sunday
and extremely anxious about having to work on the Monday,
you're not gonna enjoy your time.
Whereas if it's a Friday night, you're kicked back,
you're done work and you're having a brew,
that's gonna be a bit more fun.
- An iconic check for day drinking is that it usually means
you'll be getting to eat a meal.
And who doesn't wanna eat more food?
Food plays a huge role in how alcohol is absorbed.
If you have food in your stomach,
it absorbs some of the alcohol
instead of going directly into the bloodstream
and physically slows it from reaching the small intestine
where, with its large surface area,
a lot of alcohol is absorbed very quickly.
So day drinking with food means you get drunk less fast.
- But in the end, alcohol is pretty physiologically,
disgusting, dangerous, and quite addictive drug.
Excessive chronic alcohol intake
leads to neurological disorders, cardiovascular disorders,
liver disease, cancer, et cetera.
If you wanna remember things, perceive the world around you,
be coordinated, get a good night's sleep,
you're gonna have to skip alcohol altogether.
- If I had to choose one, I'm kind of stumped
because I don't love day drinking 'cause I feel gross,
but I care so much about my sleep
that I don't like drinking at night
knowing it's gonna mess everything up.
- Sound like you shouldn't drink at all. (laughs)
- Yeah. Like maybe I just need to stop drinking.
- I, like, don't really like drinking period.
It's like kind of the...
It makes me, you know, like, wanna cry.
But I do find that if I see people on a patio
drinking during the day, I'm like, "Ooh, I wanna do that.
"That feels fun."
And then when I'm doing it, I'm like, "Is this even fun?"
I think it's like FOMO is what makes me wanna day drink.
- If you wanna watch us get intoxicated
and talk on our podcast about alcohol even more,
we'll put links on the screen or in the description below.
- Make sure you're subscribed.
And we will see you in a few weeks for a new science video.
Peace.