While on vacation in Thailand, fourth-year psychology student Henry Schwimmer started out the night playing drinking games.
He went out to a bar and a club. By the end of the night, he had consumed around 3 1/2 liters ““ or 10 bottles ““ of beer.
He said the next day he didn’t feel too well.
“I didn’t want to talk too much. I was pretty lethargic,” Schwimmer said.
For some students, hangovers are just a part of the college experience.
Hangovers usually occur when a person has been drinking and the blood alcohol level begins to go down and the alcohol high fades, said Dr. Keith Heinzerling, a family medicine physician at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
Hangovers are considered a natural by-product of drinking too much, but the reasons why the hangover can cause such a vast array of symptoms all over the body is not well-represented in current studies.
According to a 1998 research article published in the scientific journal Alcohol Research and Health, symptoms of a hangover typically include drowsiness, difficulty concentrating, dry mouth, dizziness, sweating, nausea, irritability, rapid heartbeat and an increase in systolic blood pressure and anxiety.
There have also been new bodies of research asserting that alcohol disrupts the quality of sleep for some people, Heinzerling said.
“Your body isn’t stupid, you feel sick after you do something that’s too much. … What your body’s trying to tell you is to take it easy,” Heinzerling said.
However, there has been little consensus as to why hangover symptoms do occur, with researchers and physicians pointing to a combination of causes, including dehydration, sleep disturbances and endocrine and immune system disturbances.
The Alcohol Research and Health article concludes that alcohol causes hangover symptoms by affecting different physiological processes, such as “urine production, the gastrointestinal tract, blood, sugar concentrations, sleep patterns and biological rhythms.”
Hangovers are also related to withdrawal symptoms that may develop when one becomes addicted, Heinzerling said. Hangovers have also been shown to be specific to each individual’s metabolism of alcohol, as well as their family and drug use history.
The symptoms and their severity differ from person to person, Heinzerling added, making the hangover a complex phenomenon which can manifest differently depending upon multiple factors.
“Men and women respond (to alcohol) differently, and metabolize and experience it differently,” Heinzerling said.
Additionally, certain types of alcohol are more likely to trigger a bad hangover.
The higher the amount of congeners, a chemical formed in alcohol during fermentation, the more severe the hangover. When comparing a drink with the same volume, hard liquor has the most amount of congeners, followed by wine, and then beer.
“It’s not just about how much you drink, but what you drink,” Heinzerling said. Though there is no cure for hangovers, students like Schwimmer and Erika Roby, a fifth-year political science, Spanish and Portuguese student, recommend drinking water and eating fruit to help recover.
“Coconut water helps me. Also, some people like to use Emergen-C packets, and to eat fruit,” Roby said.
Alcohol Research and Health also reported that “bland foods containing complex carbohydrates, such as toast or crackers, can counter low blood sugar levels in people subject to hypoglycemia, and can possibly relieve nausea.”
Medication may also help to reduce some of the hangover symptoms, such as headache and muscle aches.
A home remedy often used is drinking a bit more alcohol to treat the hangover.
However, the article reports that drinking more alcohol would only “enhance the existing toxicity of the alcohol consumed … and may increase the likelihood of even further drinking.”
With the limited research in understanding the impact of the hangover, scientists are still unsure of home remedies and how much they actually alleviate hangover symptoms.
“The best way to prevent the hangover is to not drink too much in the first place. There’s no magic cure. Just rest, fluids … and learn from your mistakes,” Heinzerling said.