Hair of the Dog

Everyone has that friend who goes out every night of the weekend (starting on Thursday) and seemingly spends at least half of their paycheck attempting to get as drunk as possible. This is not necessarily a bad thing; socially, clubbing is a great way to bond with friends: if not out of enjoyment, then out of collective fear of that one guy in the corner who keeps giving you those looks. You know the one.

Yet when I see someone partying hard, I don’t think about how they feel then, but fast-forward to the next morning when the hangover sets in. Do they even know what their bodies have been through? The struggles their motor skills went through to get them back to their apartment? How they’ve just given themselves the equivalent of a drawn-out concussion? My guess is, probably not.

A hangover is the result of sever dehydration to your cells. That’s no surprise to anyone, since drinking water between drinks always seems to help. Yet alcohol not only dehydrates your body by reducing water consumed, but also by tricking your body into thinking its not dehydrated at all.

It has to do with a small organic molecule called vasopressin. Normal, sober brains release vasopressin whenever they sense that the body is dehydrated; this signals the kidneys to start conserving water. Vasopressin also has a number of interesting neurological influences, including improved memory formation, increased feeling of monogamy between a man and a woman, and heightened senses of aggression between males. 

Vasopressin: It's just a good time.

Alcohol, when consumed in large quantities, starts acting like a vasopressin inhibitor. No more vasopressin is introduced to the kidneys, bloodstream, or brain, and so all of the effects it usually has are null and void. This means that brain cells that would usually send out signals of dehydration are powerless and begin to shrivel up. That’s right: your brain physically shrinks from water loss, and you can’t even feel it. 

That is, until the morning after. By the time the alcohol has mostly passed through your system, vasopressin production is back in full force. Because of the shrinkage of the brain, there is a bigger gap between the lining of your skull and the organ itself, and so every movement taken becomes another headache. And vasopressin repression is just the half of it. The more known effect alcohol has on the liver increases the toxicity of the substance twenty times higher than it was when it entered your body. Glucose production is inhibited as well, blocking off an important energy source for the brain. A study in 2009 demonstrated that these effects could actually be exaggerated by the by-products, or cogeners, the alcohol produces during fermentation. Clear, distilled drinks like vodka have a very low number of cogeners and thus do not produce as severe a hangover; darker liquors like bourbon have a higher cogener concentration, making the  consequences of drinking a bit more pronounced. 

Aside from the immediate pounding of one’s head, the long-term effects of hangovers can be serious as well. Drinking destroys the the liver and kidneys over time by introducing so many toxins into the system. In addition, researchers in Finland showed that men who experienced hangovers often had a significantly higher risk of cardiovascular death than other men, regardless of how much they actually drank. And don’t listen to those old remedies that claim to prevent the hurt: in a double-blind study of eight ‘treatments’ for hangover published by the British Medical Journal, none of the foods (the likes of which included sugar, asparagus, and even more beer) had a significant effect. The study concluded that, to prevent a hangover, one should just practice abstinence or moderation when drinking.

Like this fine young man.

So, there you have it. More than you ever need to know about a hangover. If nothing else, this will serve to be great cocktail chatter. Just make sure the cocktails are vodka-based; I hear those bourbon ones leave a mark. 

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