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 inflammation 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 alcohol dehydrogenase meant that no longer would small amounts of alcohol be poisonous but now 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 kind of goody like shots on the patio energy like
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 pre-frontal 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 blue the floor almost caved in the cops were called and i was fine for having an illegal rave 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 biggest 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 brain waves show that sleeping while intoxicated is not natural sleep it's more sedative 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 blocked the brain waves 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 percent 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 percent 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 on 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 day drinking on a sunday and extremely anxious about having to work on the monday you're not going to 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 going to 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 want to 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 like a pretty physiologically disgusting dangerous and quite addictive drug excessive chronic alcohol intake leads to neurological disorders cardiovascular disorders liver disease cancer etc if you want to remember things perceive the world around you be coordinated get a good night's sleep you're gonna have to skip alcohol all together if i had to choose one i'm kind of stumped because i don't love daydreaming because i feel gross but i care so much about my sleep that i don't like drinking at night knowing
it's gonna sound like you shouldn't drink at all yeah like maybe i just need to stop drinking i like don't really like drinking period it's like kind of yeah like it makes me you know like want to cry but i do find that if i see people on a patio drinking during the day i'm like whoo i want to 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 what is what makes me want to day drink if you want to 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
