Science says: spitting to combat your hangover is dangerous

You've probably heard it from your friend when you were hovering over the toilet bowl: ‘Come on, if you throw it up now, you'll have less of a hangover tomorrow.’ Let me immediately debunk this phenomenon: there's absolutely nothing true about this. Throwing up doesn't just make the alcohol disappear from your body. It has already been absorbed into your blood, with twenty percent already in your esophagus. So whether you like it or not, you'll have a hangover the next day anyway. But besides the fact that it's just pure nonsense to ‘strategically’ throw up, it can also be life-threatening.

Here's the thing: if you regularly have to throw up, the flap that closes your throat has trouble functioning normally. This increases the chance that vomit will enter your lungs. And you guessed it: that's not an ideal situation to be in. Under normal circumstances, a.k.a. when sober, your body helps prevent this through coughing reflexes. But if you're incredibly drunk or — even worse — unconscious, your body can no longer do this and you could choke.

And it can get worse. All that vomiting naturally makes your body extremely tired. In the worst case, this fatigue can lead to a disruption of your heart rhythm because important substances like potassium, which are essential for the electrical activity in your muscle cells, also leave your body along with all the shots of tequila and your dinner from that day. An imbalance occurs, making it difficult for your heart rhythm to function properly. And what happens when your heart rhythm isn't right? Yep, a cardiac arrest.

Long story short: those ‘tactical vomits’ that everyone always talks about aren't so tactical after all. You'd better save throwing up for when you're really sick and not because you think it will magically make your headache disappear the next morning. Just take that hangover, you.

Source: mellowed.nl