Hangovers are Mother Nature’s way of telling the body it drank too much the night before.
The headache during an 8 a.m. class, the nausea while riding the Wolfline and the dry mouth no amount of water ever seems to quench, are common side affects of a nasty hangover.
More than 75 percent of alcohol consumers have experienced a hangover at least once, and 25 percent of college students feel the symptoms of a hangover weekly.
For students, hangovers have been known to take over the body like a malicious flu virus or stomach bug traveling around campus.
The good news is the severity and number of symptoms people experience during a hangover varies from person to person, and it is generally true that the more alcohol consumed, the worse the hangover will be.
To reduce the severity of a hangover, simply reduce the amount of alcohol consumed.
It usually takes five to seven cocktails over the course of four to six hours to cause a hangover for a light-to-moderate drinker.
Studies show drinking approximately 250 milliliters of an alcoholic beverage causes the body to expel 800 to 1,000 milliliters of water.
Ultimately there is about four times as much liquid leaving the body than entering the body.
This is why symptoms such as dehydration, dry mouth and fatigue often occur.
Although all alcohol causes dehydration and water loss, some alcoholic beverages can intensify hangover symptoms.
Drinks with a higher concentration of congeners, a byproduct of fermentation in some alcohol, can lead to a nasty hangover.
The greatest amounts of these toxins are found in red wine and dark liquors such as bourbon, brandy and the all too famous tequila.
White wine and clear liquors have fewer congeners and cause fewer hangovers.
The general rule is not to mix the dark drinks with the light drinks. Doing so will create chaos in the body and result in a severe hangover.
Many symptoms of a hangover are caused because the body does not want alcohol floating around in the blood stream or in the stomach.
Because alcohol is absorbed directly through the stomach, the lining of the stomach will become irritated with the presence of alcohol.
Secretion of hydrochloric acid will occur in the stomach and cause nerves in the body to send a message to the brain that the stomach’s contents are hurting the body.
The body’s initial reaction is to vomit, which extracts the unwanted alcohol.
Vomiting reduces the severity of hangover symptoms because it reduces the number of toxins in the body.
Eggs have also been known to decrease the amount of toxins left in the body after drinking.
Whether they are scrambled or sunny-side-up, eggs contain large amounts of cysteine, the substance that breaks down the hangover-causing toxin acetaldehyde.
Source: www.howstuffworks.com – How Stuff Works onlinewww.soyouwanna.com – So You Wanna online