You are drinking cans or bottles of beer, and, you’re planning on making a night of it. Why is it that you can usually consume 4 to 5 beers, before you finally need to get to a bathroom. Now, from that point on, you are up and peeing just about after EVERY beer. How come your bladder can hold 4 or 5 at the outset, and then put you on a steady (or not so steady) beeline to the toilet for the rest of the night?
I’ll take a crack at this. It has to do with supressed anti-diuretic hormone (ADH)secretion.
Start drinking and the blood alcohol content (BAC)slowly rises. As the BAC rises, ADH secretion decreases. The degree of supression is likely to be proportional to the BAC. The greater the degree of ADH supression, the more we pee. As you become more stuporous, you imbibe more slowly, resulting in a more or less steady state BAC.
Another factor is that beer contains a large amount of water. You might note a similar pattern if you began drinking 12 ounce glasses of water. It takes some time for the homeostatic mechanisms to get into full swing.
I believe the technical term here is “breaking the seal”.
Beer is a diuretic. During the onset of consuming beer your kidneys are drawing fluid from your body in addition to what you drink. It takes a few beers for the full effect to kick in and by that point your kidneys have caught up and you need to pee after every other beer or so.
Hence-forth, the dehydration and the following mornings hangover.
It is wise to drink water during or after beer/alcohol consumption to get your fluid levels back to somewhat normal.
A seal goes into a bar. “What’ll you have?” says the barkeep.
“Anything but a Canadian club,” barks the seal.
A bar adjacent to the college I used to live near had a promotion called “Bladder- Buster Thursdays”. This was in the early 1990s, before college-age drinking turned into a hue-and-cry-driven political and liability taboo it is today.
This was the deal …
Starting at 5pm, a table of patrons could get unlimited pitchers of the local swill for 50 cents each … until anyone got up from that table to use the facilities. At which time the promotion ended and pitchers reverted to the normal price of, IIRC, $6.00.
It was great to watch the kids try every trick you can imagine to keep the price down. The waitresses were very aggressive about policing up empties, lest they be mysteriously refilled. In the early stages of a bout, if a gal walked up to join the table she was chased off by the rowdies. Even at college age they just don’t have the bladder staying power of the guys, os so it was thought.
One time I decided to show them how it was done, so I got several of my other mid-30s types who’re good at this sort of thing, and we put the kids to shame.
Never send amateurs to do battle with pros. It isn’t pretty.
Then again, I’m older now and would suffer grievously the next day. I guess it all evens out in the end.
Still, it was a hell of a promotion. I miss that place.
…you don’t buy beer - you rent beer. Yep, it affects one’s water retention abilities.