What is a Hangover
What's a hangover really all about anyway?
After 5 years of testing and promoting Intox-Detox -- our all-natural alcohol recovery and liver detox product -- I can answer this question about a dozen different ways.
Don't forget that my biochemist friend and I went back in forth discussing the problem and comparing research notes for 10 years before we started this company.
One answer involves a lot of chemistry and a basic understanding of how the liver works. It also helps to know a bit about ethanol and its effects on the human body. Yet, even the people who have a basic understanding of these things still disagree about hangovers.
So today, we are going to take the bird's eye view. Let's dispense with all the details and focus very simply on what the liver actually DOES.
A Filter for Your Blood
Simply put, the liver is really just a filter to clean your body. It removes toxins from your system and gets rid of them. Ever seen a dumpster that hasn't been serviced in a while? It stinks. The trash piles up and it stinks. It's disgusting.
Your liver is no different. When the liver backs up with toxins it stores them in fatty tissue as a defense mechanism. It literally eats up your garbage and stores it away for a later date, when the situation improves and it can do a full clean up. That's an early stage of liver damage called fatty liver.
If you continue to accumulate toxins faster than your little liver can clean up the mess, you eventually go into liver failure. This can also happen when your liver has to deal with a toxic load bigger than it can handle. Think of a drug binge or swallowing a whole bottle of pills in a suicide attempt.
Dark stuff, I know. However, it helps illustrate the point -- you can back up your liver through accumulated damage over time or through acute attack by toxic overload. Or both.
Which do you think alcohol is?
Enter Ethanol
When you drink alcohol -- wine, liquor, beer etc -- your liver encounters a mild toxin, which it can easily handle under normal circumstances. A healthy liver should have no problem coping with a responsible, social drinking session. (In the same way that even a child can take acetaminophen or other over-the-counter medicines in the proper dosage. An adult dosage of the same drugs could cause liver damage or injury)
It's acute poisoning that really leads to life threatening results. Of course, the topic of how much you "should" drink is personal, moral and even religious for some folks. So, we will steer well clear of that.
If you choose to drink, even in moderate amounts, you still might wake up feeling a bit under the weather. Tolerance for alcohol and susceptibility to hangovers depends on a dizzying number of factors, including age, weight, sex, body composition and genetics.
In fact, one study suggests that genetics is almost 50% responsible. (More on genetics and liver enzymes in a moment) That's why some lilliputian girls can drink guys twice their weight under the proverbial table.
Then What is the Hangover?
If the liver is a filter for the body, and alcohol is an acute toxin, then the hangover would be like a clogged filter. We know that liver function works because of specific enzymes that allow the body to break down alcohol and eliminate it.
The genetically blessed likely have a lot more of those liver enzymes, which are needed to quickly get rid of the junk building up in the "filter". You can't change your genetics, but you may be able to influence them slightly.
Essentially, the toxins back up in your liver filter and you cannot remove them until your body regenerates enough of the liver enzymes to break them down. And this is why the only true "HANGOVER CURE" is time, rest, food and copious amounts of water.
What Does Intox-Detox Do?
Clinical research shows that Intox-Detox's main ingredient - Japanese Raisin Extract - helps the body more quickly eliminate the toxins from alcohol. Setria provides increased amounts of the body's "Master Antioxidant" L-Glutathione to neutralize the main toxin from alcohol and help remove it faster.
Fun fact: intravenous L-Glutathione is an effective treatment for liver failure. It can save your life if your liver encounters a toxic load that it can't handle.
In essence, the all-natural ingredients in Intox-Detox are thought to positively impact the needed liver enzymes to speed up the process. In turn, the liver "filter" gets less clogged or backs up more slowly, allowing your body to more fully and more quickly recover from alcohol consumption.
And that's the simple way of putting it. When you dig deeper into the weeds, the four ingredients (including Green Tea Extract and Korean Red Panax Ginseng for further liver support) have a lot of other benefits.
We call it the "Condom for Your Liver" because the science suggests that this may even help protect your liver from damaging toxins like alcohol.
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Filter on and...
Stay #liverstrong!