10 Amazing Life Hacks That Are Actually Backed By Science

1. Room Spinning? Put Your Foot Down

You've managed to get all the way home after a big night night out without incident - you didn't even vom in the taxi - and just as you flump gratefully into your waiting bed, the room begins to spin like a merry-go-round. Life's not fair.

The popular hack to fix this problem is to place your hand (or foot if you are lying down) onto a solid surface and, as if by magic, the room will come to a standstill.

The spinning room phenomenon, and the subsequent cure, all comes from the way alcohol affects your blood.

Drinking a lot of booze thins the blood and this has a disastrous effect on the tiny structures in your inner ear that you use to balance. These structures, known as the cupula, act as a kind of spirit level that allows your brain to orient itself. When the blood thins, it throws these out of whack and the only way your brain can make sense of it is to assume that your environment is on the move.

Closing your eyes makes the sensation worse, because you remove one of the stimuli that the brain uses to orient itself. Placing a hand on a steady surface has the opposite effect, providing the brain with more data to override the screwy readings from the cupula.

Either that or just don't drink as much. Never mind.

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