Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 2, 1995 TAG: 9502020017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL ACHENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A: We like to do questions that are appropriate to the season, and what makes this one so great is that, with a little inversion, we can use it again in summer.
The classic snowshoe design is called a ``bear-paw.'' A typical bear-paw snowshoe (of course it must be made of wood - none of this plastic stuff) will be about 12 inches or maybe 14 inches across at the widest part, tapering toward the rear. The design allows you to walk without clacking your shoes together. The tapered end of one shoe can ride up next to the wide part of the other shoe; they fit around one another, like a yin-yang symbol.
If the shoes weren't shaped like tennis racquets, they'd have to be wider, maybe 20 inches across, in order to bear your weight on top of the snow, says Jesse Hull, president of Sportsmen Products, in Boulder, Colo. And if they were that wide, they'd overlap.
With two big round things on your feet you'd have to walk with your legs far apart, like a duck. You'd be a mockery, even more so than usual.
|n n| Q: Why does overdrinking cause a hangover?
A: The serious drinker will point out that technically it is stopping overdrinking that causes a hangover.
A hangover, for those of you who haven't experienced it, involves headaches, lethargy, nausea, shakiness, body pains, a bad taste in the mouth, sensitivity to light, regret, guilt, shame and a desperate struggle to remember what you might have said or done the night before. There are two explanations for why this happens - and both could be right.
The first is that a hangover is a mild case of alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Basically, while tanked up, your body gets used to operating with alcohol in the blood. The brain factors in the depressant effects of alcohol when it synthesizes neurotransmitters. Then suddenly the alcohol starts disappearing from the blood, because the person has gone to sleep or passed out and the kidneys are working overtime to get rid of the toxin. The brain chemistry can't adjust fast enough, and you get all jittery and headachey.
``The body doesn't like change. It likes to keep things as they are,'' says Walter Hunt, a neuropharmacologist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. ``The body gets used to the alcohol as though it is normal.''
The second explanation is: congeners. This is the culprit Hunt favors. Congeners are chemical substances that are created by the same fermenting process that creates alcohol. They add to the taste. For example, when juniper berries ferment they create substances that add flavor to gin and make it taste different from vodka. But these exotic congeners are toxic - they ride the alcohol to all parts of your body where they don't belong.
The nasty thing about alcohol is that it's a terrific solvent. Most things in the world will dissolve either in oil or in water, but almost everything dissolves in alcohol. Something that normally is soluble in oil, but not water, will become more readily soluble in water when combined with alcohol. The alcohol (and the congeners) can thus go anywhere in your body where there's water - meaning, everywhere, practically. That's why a hangover is an all-body experience. The alcohol's euphoric effects are gone and you're left with this toxic gunk in your body.
Vodka and white wine have fewer of these congeners than, say, gin or rum or red wine, and so they are less likely to cause a bad hangover. But the safest thing to do is just stick with the sodey pop or the lemonade or the water. The word ``intoxication,'' Hunt points out, literally means that you have come under the influence of toxic substances.
So next time you sidle up to a bar, just say, ``Bring me a Perrier-and-water - hold the congeners.''
The Mailbag: Sarah F. of Denver, Colo., asks, ``Why is it that fish are able to move about in cold water? Salmon swim upstream in glacial rivers in Alaska. People catch fish in lakes that are covered with ice. A fish called the cisco actually spawns in Bear Lake in northern Utah in January.''
Dear Sarah: We certainly hope the Utah authorities will take proper action to stop it.
The thing about fish is, being coldblooded, they're the same temperature as the water around them. They can't lose heat to the water. There's no thermodynamic disequilibrium (wow, we enjoyed typing that). So fish don't get cold the way we humans do when we feel a draft or have the heat sucked out of our buns by a marble bench. And of course they don't feel cold just because they are 33 degrees Fahrenheit - they're fish, for crying out loud. They don't know better.
The other thing about fish is, they don't move around much in those cold lakes and rivers. They slow waaaaaaaaay down. And if you are a fish in a lake, spawning is not exactly a high-energy disco-dancing mating frenzy. Not that we have firsthand experience.
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by CNB