Objectively defined, a hangover is a group of negative symptoms such as headache, nausea, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating, which follow the excessive consumption of alcohol or drugs. At some point, many university students have experienced these (and probably other) symptoms associated with a hangover. Many people have personal cures, but understanding the physiology of what a hangover is doing to our bodies may help us to come up with methods for counteracting the effects.
Any number of factors can contribute to severity of hangover symptoms: how much alcohol was consumed, how strong it was, how diluted it was, what it was diluted with, dehydration, and sleep deprivation, to name a few. Food consumption also plays a big role in your body’s ability to process alcohol.
A 2012 research study compared an existing Hangover Symptoms Scale, the Acute Hangover Scale, and a one-time hangover score in an attempt to come up with a new scale to rate alcohol hangover symptom severity. The experiment was conducted with 1000 students, making it directly applicable for our purposes.
According to this study, a hangover develops when an individual’s blood alcohol concentration returns to zero. Blood alcohol concentration is expressed as the weight of ethanol, measured in grams, in 100 milliliters of blood. Since individual alcohol tolerance varies, as do physiological factors to alcohol processing such as height and weight, blood alcohol concentration is a more useful measure of comparing intoxication than drinks consumed.
Another study found that thirst, fatigue, and headache were the only three hangover symptoms experienced by more than half of college drinkers. However, one possibility was that these represent especially low-threshold responses to alcohol overindulgence, meaning that the amount of alcohol that would cause these symptoms is relatively low, and the researchers speculated that other symptoms would require higher quantities of alcohol.
Sleep deprivation and insufficient eating can also contribute to these negative symptoms, along with the dehydration often caused by alcohol consumption. The best “cures” for a hangover are lots of water to return your body’s hydration levels to normal, as well as sleep and bland carbohydrates. These carbs will help to soak up the increased acid in your stomach, as well as decrease nausea and get your digestive system working to help rid your body of last night’s leftover toxins. Electrolyte replacement drinks such as Gatorade or Powerade can also be beneficial as they restore the lost salts, sugars, and minerals that result from dehydration.
Some people find that coffee helps them feel better after a heavy night of drinking, however, since alcohol and caffeine are both diuretics, the combination will make you more dehydrated and you may feel symptoms such as a headache and extreme thirst more acutely.
The best way to avoid a hangover is to drink responsibly and know your limits, but if that fails, some of these tips may help you to recover the next day.