Why Do Hangovers Happen?

Why Do Hangovers Happen?

There are a number of reasons but the main one is that we never learn our lesson. No matter how many times we get drunk and suffer for it the follwoing morning we just go on do it all over gain the enxt time.

Assorted Poisons

Pure ethanol is metabolically fairly clean. If you consider an alcoholic beverage to be water, ethanol, and a bunch of flavourings, then the identity of some of those flavourings is quite frightening. Red wines contain all sorts of interesting chemicals, leading to the complex flavourings typical of the breed, and although many of these impurities - such as arsenic - are poisonous, they are usually present in such minute quantities as to be relatively harmless. However, if the wine is concentrated by distillation, then as well as increasing the alcohol content, you are also concentrating the poisons. This is the reason that brandy, port and cheap red wine can give you the most monstrous hangovers, as well as gout in later life.

It is also for this reason that people are often advised not to 'mix their drinks'. Different styles of drink have different impurities, and some of them can react with one another in interesting ways. Some common aides memoire from English folklore are:-

• Don't mix the grape and the grain. Keep wine/port/brandy separate from beer/whisky.

• Beer then wine, I feel fine. Wine then beer, I feel queer.

Dehydration

This is the most well-documented consequence of drinking. In addition to its intoxicating qualities, ethanol also has diuretic³qualities, so you end up expelling more liquid than you drink. It acts on the brain's pituitary gland and blocks production of a hormone called vasopressin, which usually directs the kidneys to reabsorb water that would otherwise end up in the bladder. Once this hormonal signal has been switched off, there is nothing to stop the bladder from filling up with all the water from the fluid that you drink. A supply of water is essential to the continuing functioning of the body, and when various organs find that their normal supply of water has been cut off, they steal it from anywhere they can, including the cells of the brain. Although the brain itself cannot feel pain, when it starts to shrink due to water loss, pain-sensitive filaments connecting the outside membranes to the inside of the skull become stretched, giving the symptoms of a headache.

Free Radical Build-up

In simple terms, the liver's job is to destroy poisons which are present in the body, and when you start drinking it sets to work on destroying the ethanol. However, this process generates destructively reactive chemicals called free radicals. These are usually mopped up by an enzyme called glutathione, but during a binge, reserves can run low, leaving the free radicals to run riot through the liver.

Loss of Salts

Frequent visits to the toilet not only result in the loss of water, but also of the important salts dissolved in it. Potassium and sodium ions in particular are essential for the optimal functioning of nerves and muscles. An imbalance outside a limited range can result in nausea, fatigue, and headaches.

Loss of Sugar

Alcohol attacks the body's store of glycogen, an important energy source kept in the liver, breaking it down to glucose which is then flushed out in the urine. Without this store of energy on call next morning, you are left feeling weak and wobbly.

Methanol

Methanol is a simpler cousin of ethanol, and is found as a contaminant in cheap red wines, whisky and fruit brandy. This is 'meths', the fuel alcohol that makes you blind if you drink too much of it. The liver attacks it as the poison it is, but one of the break-down products is formic acid, a particularly nasty chemical which ants use to spray at their attackers.

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