SYMPTOMS – But I had Such a Good Time
Your head pounds, you’re desperately thirsty, you ache like you’ve been tackled by Roosevelt Grier. Bright lights and loud noises hit you like harpoons. You’re sweaty, shaky, sick, crabby, and so tired you can’t keep your eyes open. Six regiments of the Armenian Army have trampled through your mouth in their sweat socks and your stomach churns like a wheelbarrow-load of hammers in a clothes dryer. Collapsed in bed within quick crawling distance of the bathroom, you extend a hand or foot to the floor. Your heart thumps wildly. Is the floor really there? The room is whirling; will it suck you into its spinning vortex and toss you out in a ditch near the Jersey Turnpike? You fear you’re not going to die. Your weary brain says “Kill me now.”
CAUSES – Body Chemistry at Work
Unless you’re one of the 25% of people who don’t get hangovers (and somehow that’s just wrong), you may have experienced such distress after a night of heavy drinking. Here’s why:
Alcohol enters your bloodstream and immediately tells your pituitary gland to stop producing vasopressin, the hormone that enables your organs to absorb moisture. Without vasopressin, liquids go straight to your bladder. Frequent trips to the bathroom that ensue result in loss of about four times as much liquid as you take in. The resulting dehydration gives you cottonmouth. Your body’s salt, potassium, magnesium, and glycogen get flushed away as well which hinders normal nerve, muscle, cell, and liver functions. Deprived of water, your organs steal it from your brain. Your brain shrinks and stretches its moorings, giving you a headache.
Your liver creates acetaldehyde as it metabolizes alcohol. Your body has enzymes to break this extremely toxic substance down but if you’re drinking heavily they can’t keep pace. Toxins build up, giving you nausea, blurred vision, mental confusion, breathing difficulty, and the sweats. All of this makes your headache worse.
Alcohol suppresses production of glutamine, a natural stimulant. Once you stop drinking your body concentrates on replenishing glutamine levels, thus causing restless sleep, tremors, anxiety, and increased blood pressure.
REMEDIES – You Should Be So Lucky
A hangover begins as your body’s blood alcohol content is falling. Symptoms peak about the time it reaches zero and continue up to 24 hours thereafter. While there are remedies for many of the dozen-or-so symptoms mentioned, there is no magic to make them all go away at once. Forget black coffee, greasy foods, burnt toast, hair of the dog, and other folk remedies. The only real cure is time: suffering through the pain till your body has repaired damage done to it. Or, you could drink less.
PREVENTIONS – Slowing Down the Truck That Hits You
Eat Something. A full stomach absorbs alcohol and protects your stomach lining.
Drink slowly. Your body metabolizes one beer or one shot of liquor per hour. Some individuals metabolize faster than others, men more than women, for example. Slamming shots one after another is a bad idea. Give your body a chance to keep up.
Drink beverages with low alcohol content. Common sense tells you why.
Don’t mix. Congeners are impurities that give liquor its color and flavor. Light-colored spirits have few; dark-colored spirits have more. More impurities in your body, especially from many different spirits, make the hangover worse. Drinking bourbon, red wine, and a martini together is just asking for it.
Drink water or sports beverages to hydrate and replace lost electrolytes.
Eat eggs and fruit the morning after. Eggs contain cysteine which breaks down acetaldehyde; fruit replaces vitamins and nutrients that help get rid of toxins.