Hangovers are not fun and never were fun, regardless of your age. If you drank too much at a party or at the bar in your 20s and paid the price in the morning, then you would be better over the course of the day depending on how badly you drank. Common hangover symptoms are headache, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, fast heartbeat, muscle aches, dizziness, irritability, and sensitivity to light. You are also quite fatigued and you need plenty of rest.
That is because alcohol can cause your blood sugar levels to drop below a healthy level, and can also cause blood vessels to expand which is why you end up with these symptoms. The headache is the result of the expansion of blood vessels. It also increases your urine production which is why you are incredibly thirsty. Stomach acid is also increased by alcohol but it also causes your stomach to slow the emptying which is why you get nauseous and vomit. However, once you take in a cup of coffee, it can help alleviate the hangover symptoms and you can begin to feel somewhat more human for the rest of the day. Well, that was the case when you were young. That is why you could get away with hangovers in college. However, even once you hit your 30s, you would find that your hangovers would worsen. They do worsen with age.
If You Blame Your Worse Hangovers On Aging, There Is A Reason Behind That
It is true that hangovers do worsen as you age. However, the reason for that is more complex than you aging alone. If you have had a habit of drinking a lot when you were younger, perhaps your liver is not nearly as good at handling the excess booze as you age. That may be a reason. But if you don’t drink much and you generally eat healthy food, you still could suffer a lot from a hangover from being older. That is because of several reasons.
When you age, your body contains less water than it did when you were younger. Therefore, that alone can lead up to a higher blood alcohol concentration if you are drinking. That is why even if you drink one glass of wine when you are older, you find it affects you more than it did when you were even ten years younger. However, there is another theory as well which sounds counterintuitive.
As you age, you tend to know when to put your drink down which is why you generally don’t get hangovers too much. That is why when you have one glass of wine, you feel that is more than enough for you to handle which is why you will not want to have another glass. One glass of wine will not cause a hangover regardless of your age. However, if you were to ignore the signs that you are not holding your liquor and you keep drinking anyway, you are surely going to get hungover the next day.
The hangover will be terrible for all of the reasons that were mentioned. However, since you seldom get hungover, you will remember it as one of the worst things imaginable when you do experience it. Therefore, that is also why you would perceive having a hangover worse at an older age than when you had them when you were in college.
The best thing to do is to limit yourself to having one drink and chances are you will be fine – and you will also feel it is time to not drink any more than that glass if you want to be functional the next day.
