Eating sugar when drunk makes me sober

[itsALLgood]

I've avoided eating refined sugar for many years when a naturopath found I was sensitive to it and associated it with my chronic migraines. I'm now quite sensitive to it, to the extent that I can instantly feel its effects when I eat it. This extends to fruits and juice to a lesser extent. A curious thing I found was that when I eat ice cream or something very sweet when I'm drunk it seems to almost instantly sober me up. Does any one have any theory as to why this is and could it possibly be a clue to the cause of my migraines and (more recently) hair loss?

Migraines seem very much related to food and almost always begin at night or if I go too long without food throughout the day. I'm quite lean, but not clinically underweight (140lbs at 5'10). Migraines are very severe, unresponsive to drugs, last around 24hrs. I've been getting them on average twice a week for about 8 years. I've also been unable to sleep more than 6-7 hours a night for the past 6 months or so. Unable to nap during the day. Racing mind.

Thanks for your advice.

 

[InterrogaOmnia]

My understanding is that fructose speeds up alcohol detoxification. As for the migraines and hairloss, I'm not sure.

 

[jyb]

Migraines seem very much related to food and almost always begin at night or if I go too long without food throughout the day. I'm quite lean, but not clinically underweight (140lbs at 5'10). Migraines are very severe, unresponsive to drugs, last around 24hrs. I've been getting them on average twice a week for about 8 years. I've also been unable to sleep more than 6-7 hours a night for the past 6 months or so. Unable to nap during the day. Racing mind.

It seems like you are undernourished, not eating what you really need means you don't have the energy to relax. My background: ex-underweight years of chronic insomniac (including naps) with lightheadedness, plenty of pharma sleeping pills and eating various "healthy" diets. None of those items apply to me anymore.

 

[jimmyquick]

Migraines seem very much related to food and almost always begin at night or if I go too long without food throughout the day. I'm quite lean, but not clinically underweight (140lbs at 5'10). Migraines are very severe, unresponsive to drugs, last around 24hrs. I've been getting them on average twice a week for about 8 years. I've also been unable to sleep more than 6-7 hours a night for the past 6 months or so. Unable to nap during the day. Racing mind.

It seems like you are undernourished, not eating what you really need means you don't have the energy to relax. My background: ex-underweight years of chronic insomniac (including naps) with lightheadedness, plenty of pharma sleeping pills and eating various "healthy" diets. None of those items apply to me anymore.

Agreed,

I'm 5'10" and weigh 150lbs. When I was around 140lbs I would get them really bad along with a racing mind and a constant "on edge" anxiety feeling. I also had crazy hair shedding as well. Consuming more calories fixed it all.

I eat about 3k a day now for reference. Trying eating more and see how you fair.

 

[EIRE24]

Migraines seem very much related to food and almost always begin at night or if I go too long without food throughout the day. I'm quite lean, but not clinically underweight (140lbs at 5'10). Migraines are very severe, unresponsive to drugs, last around 24hrs. I've been getting them on average twice a week for about 8 years. I've also been unable to sleep more than 6-7 hours a night for the past 6 months or so. Unable to nap during the day. Racing mind.

It seems like you are undernourished, not eating what you really need means you don't have the energy to relax. My background: ex-underweight years of chronic insomniac (including naps) with lightheadedness, plenty of pharma sleeping pills and eating various "healthy" diets. None of those items apply to me anymore.

I would love to know how you fixed being under nourished besides the obvious eating more calories, did you eat peat sources of food and apply his reccomendations?

 

[schultz]

Ray has talked about this before. I've never had much interest in it because I don't drink but here is what I found checking pubmed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3950864
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/539433
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6687129

From the first link...

"Further, the time estimated to eliminate the ethanol completely was reduced by 90 min with fructose. Under these conditions, the stimulation of ethanol elimination by fructose was 20 to 30%. This increase in the rate of ethanol elimination was observed in every subject studied."

Though, you said that you feel instantly better. Obviously eating ice cream isn't immediately purging you of alcohol, so the alcohol is still there but you just feel better. My guess is simply that the alcohol is lowering your blood sugar and the ice cream is correcting it.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Haidut said thiamine also does this and I can confirm.

 

[jyb]

I would love to know how you fixed being under nourished besides the obvious eating more calories, did you eat peat sources of food and apply his reccomendations?

Yes but that's not obvious at all. Depending on the individual, some diets or supplements discussed can be a huge failure. It's pretty clear for some supplements where many react strangely or don't find them useful for everyday use. But it is the same for diet. I do well on high fat and I'm careful about which sugars I eat. I started very differently, so it took me years to find out what were the priorities and what was really useful in controlling all these energy deficiency related symptoms.

 

[EIRE24]

I would love to know how you fixed being under nourished besides the obvious eating more calories, did you eat peat sources of food and apply his reccomendations?

Yes but that's not obvious at all. Depending on the individual, some diets or supplements discussed can be a huge failure. It's pretty clear for some supplements where many react strangely or don't find them useful for everyday use. But it is the same for diet. I do well on high fat and I'm careful about which sugars I eat. I started very differently, so it took me years to find out what were the priorities and what was really useful in controlling all these energy deficiency related symptoms.

Strange that you would follow a high fat diet, must be consuming a significant amount if pufa if the fat is high? I myself try and pursue a high carb diet with adequate protein and moderate to low fat. I think a high fat diet can interfere with glucose metabolism and stop the body from oxidising sugar properly. After all the best thing to do is to try and burn sugar properly and maximise Co2 in the body. That's just my opinion though

 

[pboy]

yea ive realized 'drunk' is just a combo or hyponatremia and hypoglycemia, basically...too much water, too little sugar. If you get a lil hungry and drink water in that state above needs you'll stumble like...lose coordination like when drunk, want to pass out, yet wont have the buzz. I think the reason people drink is actually an energetic thing, peoples brains are generally even eating a SAD diet never actually generating that much energy, and because alcohol is so easy to metabolize for the brain it kind of wakes their brain on and then they get outgoing and all. If you are very nourished and nutrified its like living a clean drunk all the time, in terms of confidence and outgoingness. I used to party years back, then...a while into my health journey I exxpirimented with alcohol's, mostly sake so I could ...isolate variables and ...tone it with water just how I wanted, and basically yea...alcohol pretty much just makes you hypoglycemic and often times the way people go about it, water diluted. That's what being drunk is, the negative aspects, and the positive aspects are simply lot of energy actually surging to the brain

 

[jyb]

Strange that you would follow a high fat diet, must be consuming a significant amount if pufa if the fat is high? I myself try and pursue a high carb diet with adequate protein and moderate to low fat. I think a high fat diet can interfere with glucose metabolism and stop the body from oxidising sugar properly. After all the best thing to do is to try and burn sugar properly and maximise Co2 in the body. That's just my opinion though

The ratio of pufa to sat fat is low in what I eat (dairy mostly, sometimes meat). The ratio is key. The context of this thread too. Maybe if I was overweight or gaining weight I would worry whether my body fat had pufa in it? But I'm lean and with a better metabolism (the number one priority) than on previous diets, so I don't ask myself that. And I don't think using saturated fats leads to less CO2 or thyroid use than sugar, neither in theory nor in my experience monitoring mood, temperature and pulse. This is not the same as pufa. My use of glucose was way more inefficient when I was on high carb low fat, when I kept getting energy deficiency or hypoglycaemia like symptoms (lightheadedness, insomnia, racing mind etc).

 

[EIRE24]

Strange that you would follow a high fat diet, must be consuming a significant amount if pufa if the fat is high? I myself try and pursue a high carb diet with adequate protein and moderate to low fat. I think a high fat diet can interfere with glucose metabolism and stop the body from oxidising sugar properly. After all the best thing to do is to try and burn sugar properly and maximise Co2 in the body. That's just my opinion though

The ratio of pufa to sat fat is low in what I eat (dairy mostly, sometimes meat). The ratio is key. The context of this thread too. Maybe if I was overweight or gaining weight I would worry whether my body fat had pufa in it? But I'm lean and with a better metabolism (the number one priority) than on previous diets, so I don't ask myself that. And I don't think using saturated fats leads to less CO2 or thyroid use than sugar, neither in theory nor in my experience monitoring mood, temperature and pulse. This is not the same as pufa. My use of glucose was way more inefficient when I was on high carb low fat, when I kept getting energy deficiency or hypoglycaemia like symptoms (lightheadedness, insomnia, racing mind etc).

From reading what you've said above it just sounds like you were not eating enough on a high carb diet if you were getting energy deficiency along with being lightheaded? The high fat diet is probably just more calorie dense. At the end of the day it is good that you have found what works for you and thats what this is all about.

 

[jyb]

From reading what you've said above it just sounds like you were not eating enough on a high carb diet if you were getting energy deficiency along with being lightheaded? The high fat diet is probably just more calorie dense. At the end of the day it is good that you have found what works for you and thats what this is all about.

I ate continually throughout the day including things like freshly squeezed OJ and low fat cheese or skimmed milk. Plus sucrose or at times potato... The number of calories I consume now is not so different than on that diet.

 

[EIRE24]

From reading what you've said above it just sounds like you were not eating enough on a high carb diet if you were getting energy deficiency along with being lightheaded? The high fat diet is probably just more calorie dense. At the end of the day it is good that you have found what works for you and thats what this is all about.

I ate continually throughout the day including things like freshly squeezed OJ and low fat cheese or skimmed milk. I considered 300g of simple sugar from such foods to be low and wouldn't go there. The number of calories I consume now is not so different than on that diet.

freshly squeezed oj and low fat cheese are not calorically dense at all? If you were adding sugar to the OJ then it would make it more dense but still on a high carb diet along with low fat you need to eat a lot more calories than you would on a high fat diet. Carbs and sugar are very hard to turn into fat by the body unlike fat which go's through a different process. You would need to be eating over 3'000 calories on a low fat and high carb diet to feel any bit normal and not walking around like a zombie and also things like dates and other low water content fruit would be a better choice than OJ. Thats just my experience with the whole thing and if you feel light headed and energy deficient that is under eating.

 

[jyb]

You would need to be eating over 3'000 calories on a low fat and high carb diet to feel any bit normal and not walking around like a zombie and also things like dates

I could go well over 3000 calories. On some other unsuccessful diets with higher fat, I remember doing >5000kcal. I don't see anything particular in dates compared to OJ or sucrose when I look at nutrition data. To replace a few L of OJ daily entirely with dates, you'd have to eat quite a lot of them. I preferred OJ with much less fibre. If what only matters was the number of calories, energy problems would be easy to fix.

 

[Spondive]

Yea I like drinking scotch..I agree with above about hyponatremia and hypoglycemia. I usually take a couple tablespoons of honey and and have some salted pretzel and dizziness goes away

 

[EIRE24]

I don't think you understand what I am saying. The OJ is liquid unlike the dates. Without the added sugar to OJ it is still not very dense in calories and could end up diluting the cells. I think it is as easy as that in most situations to be honest.

 

[EIRE24]

Yea I like drinking scotch..I agree with above about hyponatremia and hypoglycemia. I usually take a couple tablespoons of honey and and have some salted pretzel and dizziness goes away

Yes that makes a lot of sense, salt and sugar together are great. I find the same thing helpful in situations!

 

[itsALLgood]

Ray has talked about this before. I've never had much interest in it because I don't drink but here is what I found checking pubmed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3950864
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/539433
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6687129

From the first link...

"Further, the time estimated to eliminate the ethanol completely was reduced by 90 min with fructose. Under these conditions, the stimulation of ethanol elimination by fructose was 20 to 30%. This increase in the rate of ethanol elimination was observed in every subject studied."

Though, you said that you feel instantly better. Obviously eating ice cream isn't immediately purging you of alcohol, so the alcohol is still there but you just feel better. My guess is simply that the alcohol is lowering your blood sugar and the ice cream is correcting it.

That's what is peculiar - that I feel INSTANTLY better, not only better but sober and completely lucid when the second before I was drunk. If you're correct about the ice cream correcting my blood sugar - what does that indicate about my physiology? Seeing as I don't know of anyone else who experiences this, there must be something else going on in my body for it to react this way. I'd really like to figure out what it is as I'm sure it's a clue for the migraines.

 

[jyb]

That's what is peculiar - that I feel INSTANTLY better, not only better but sober and completely lucid when the second before I was drunk. If you're correct about the ice cream correcting my blood sugar - what does that indicate about my physiology? Seeing as I don't know of anyone else who experiences this, there must be something else going on in my body for it to react this way. I'd really like to figure out what it is as I'm sure it's a clue for the migraines.

Ice cream is a lot of saturated fat (if its good ice cream). Where else in your diet would you get that much fat? Not much else. Whole milk? That's nothing in comparison. Butter? That's more for seasoning or cooking, so not much either. So, for many people I would guess it is the only time they seriously eat sat fat. And sat fat has many effects, the ones on the liver are documented, but it would also be easy to imagine ways in which it changes the way your body uses glucose. I used ice cream therapeutically for sleep. Then I realised I had even better result by just drinking pure cream instead of normal ice cream.