There are few things in life as harrowing as a hangover. Slumped over on the bathroom floor, head pounding and stomach gurgling, nobody is safe from the consequences of binge drinking. If you are like me, you probably wonder why we get hangovers? How can we prevent hangovers? And maybe most importantly, how can we cure hangovers? Well, strap in and get ready to have all your questions and more answered!
Although people often view hangovers as a form of acute withdrawal, the awful sensation is actually the culmination of many different things. First, alcohol suppresses our body’s antidiuretic hormone (a signaling molecule that tells the body to reduce the excretion of water), leading to increased urination and subsequent dehydration. Second, alcohol can irritate the lining of your stomach, causing increased production of stomach acid. This can give you an upset stomach and make you nauseous. Third, alcohol can lower your blood sugar. This often happens because your liver’s ability to produce and release sugar into the bloodstream is impaired while processing alcohol. Low blood sugar is responsible for feelings of fatigue, shakiness, and weakness. Fourth, alcohol can induce headaches and migraines due to its ability to dilate the blood vessels in your head. Fifth and finally, alcohol intoxication prevents your brain from entering deep sleep. This reduces your body’s ability to recover and leads to disorientation and grogginess the next morning (Lynch, 2018; Mayo Clinic, 2017; Scientific American, 2003; White, 2017).
Let’s face it, hangovers suck, and the best way to eliminate that nasty experience from our lives is through prevention. Here are some tips to help you prevent hangovers before they happen:
- Never drink on an empty stomach (drinking on an empty stomach can increase the absorption rate of the alcohol and further irritate your stomach lining)
- Try to avoid mixing alcohol with other substances, such as nicotine and certain pharmaceuticals (always check with your doctor on whether the drugs you take interact with alcohol)
- Make sure you get extra rest after a night of drinking (Although the quality of your sleep may be worse, you can mitigate the damage by getting more of it).
- Stick to lighter-colored alcohols such as vodka and gin (Congeners, a compound found in higher concentrations in dark alcohols, has been empirically shown to increase the severity of hangovers)
(Mayo Clinic, 2017; Verster et al., 2010).
Now let’s say you are already hungover; what can you do to reduce the severity of your experience? Well, your best bet will be to do things to counteract the sources of your hangover. This might include: drinking lots of water, eating some carbohydrates, and drinking coffee or tea (the caffeine can help with grogginess). In reality, the best cure for a hangover is time. It is in your best interest to give your body the time to heal. That means no bloody marys the next morning! By drinking more alcohol you only prolong the inevitable (Harvard Health Publishing, 2006).
I want to end this by leaving you with a last piece of advice. After doing a review of the literature, I want to warn you that the myriad of hangover cures espoused by the internet are not well tested. The experiments and studies that exist often rely on small sample sizes and cherry-picked samples to show any real improvement. While future evidence may bolster these results, as it currently stands, I am personally quite apprehensive as to their effectiveness.
