I’m not a huge drinker. People always talk about getting different kinds of drunk on different kinds of alcohol. To your body, isn’t alcohol just alcohol? Sure, proof would matter, but does your body know the difference beyond that?
In: Biology
So, your body is made up these tiny building blocks, called ‘cells’. Each of these cells is like an empty container, and it wants to be filled with water. When all those cells are empty, your body need water, and that’s called ‘dehydration’.
There are a number of things that can cause dehydration. If you eat or drink certain foods, you might start to feel thirsty (yes! you can drink something that will make you even more thirsty! i swear! we’ll make really sugary lemon aid later!)
So, one of the big things about being hung over is that your body is dehydrated. That means all those cells we talked about are empty.
Now, let’s say you had 5 beers. the beer is ‘watered down’ alcohol. So, those cells wont be as empty/dehydrated because of the water in the beer.
But you can have 5 glasses of wine. Glasses of wine are smaller than a beer. So the alcohol content is higher, and there’s less ‘watered down’ drink in there. So those cells will be more empty/dehydrated than if you had the beer.
Further more, you could have a straight up shot of alcohol. That has nothing else. it’s just the alcohol. So those cells are even more empty/dehydrated than if you had the wine (or, obviously, the beer).
Finally, you could have a drink like a margaretta (that’s what mommy like to drink out of those silly looking cups). She puts salt around the edge of the glass! salt will make you even more thirsty. So, if she had 5 of those drinks, the cells are going to be even more empty/dehydrated than if she drank just the shots!
That was my first attempt to actually explain like you were 5. I pretended I was telling this to my nearly 5 year old child.
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