The Science behind Hangovers

The Science behind Hangovers 

As Umass students we all religiously celebrate Blarney. This means we all set timers for 7am and start drinking and usually don’t stop until we are falling asleep on some random persons couch somewhere around 9pm. And most people pay the price the day after with debilitating hangovers. Blarney hit me especially hard and after I thankfully recovered I thought it would be interesting to know how the body handles alcohol and if it was possible to beat a nasty hangover while still having a good night out before.

So why do hangovers happen? It’s our body’s way of telling us it’s done processing toxic properties of alcohol and we need a punishment for making it work so hard. We all know that drinking alcohol causes dehydration and that acts as a diuretic which increases urine production and dehydration may be the cause of a few hangover symptoms such as dizziness, lightheadedness, and thirst. But some scientists believe that the common hangover is driven by more complex process that has to do with alcohol interfering with our body’s natural balance of chemicals. To account for this disruption and in order to process the alcohol the body must convert enzyme, NAD+ into its alternate form called NADH. The excess buildup of NADH that takes place thereafter and the insufficient quantities of NAD+ cause cells to underperform and make them incapable of efficiently carrying out metabolic activities, such as absorbing glucose from blood or regulating electrolyte levels). Which is why it is recommended to drink things that contain high concentrations of electrolytes such as Gatorade the day after drinking. However, one of the most compelling theories so far is that hangovers happen because of a buildup of acetaldehyde, which for those who haven’t take organic chemistry is a toxic compound to the body. As the body takes on the daunting task of processing alcohol, acetaldehyde is the first byproduct of this reaction and it is actually ten to thirty times as toxic as the alcohol itself. It causes more severe symptoms as sweating, flushed skin, nausea, and vomiting, most of these being the body’s natural reaction to foreign substances in the body that it is trying to expel to gain neutrality again. Another theory points to hangovers affecting our immune systems; some studies have found a strong correlation between high levels of cytokines (which the immune system uses for signaling) and hangover symptoms. The body normally uses cytokines to trigger fever or inflammatory response to battle infection or illness; however, with excessive alcohol consumption, it can cause a release of cytokines which can lead to muscle aches, fatigue, headache, as well as cognitive effects like memory loss or irritation. This could be an explanation for why some people experience a phenomenon known as “blacking out” where you forget huge chunks of time and events throughout a night where you have been drinking in excess.

            For the people who are more prone to getting hangovers there is a way to cheat the system a bit. We know that some drinks cause hangovers more easily than others. Drinks that contain more alcohol with smaller volumes are more likely to give hangovers compared to mixed drinks or beer for example. To go more into depth on this though, some drinks have higher levels of congeners, traces of chemicals produced during fermentation, that contribute to hangovers. Multiple studies have shown that high congener drinks (aka darker colored liquors like whisky) are more likely to produce more severe hangovers compared with lighter colored or clear liquors like vodka (which have none). One specific congener, called methanol, was found to have the highest levels and is present in both whisky and red wine, and has been proven to linger in the body even after alcohol has been gone from our systems, which could be a possible explanation for why we feel such enduring effects of a hangover long after we have stopped drinking.

            And one little fun fact that I thought was interesting and I hadn’t known before is to not take acetaminophen (aka Tylenol) when the liver is processing alcohol because it could leave your body more vulnerable to the toxic effects of acetaminophen. It’s much better to stick with tums or ibuprofen (aka Advil) the day after drinking.

Zoe Israel

Blog Group 1 

Blog #2 

March 6th, 2018 

Biol 312