Why 'the morning after' hurts The chemicals that give booze its flavour also make the room spin

By Sandra MacPherson, the National Post

It's the morning after. A furry grey mouse has taken up residence on your tongue. You only dare open one eye at a time in case it hurts. The ceiling is spinning in the opposite direction of your churning stomach. With every beat of your heart, you have the distinct impression someone is bashing your head with a frying pan.

While you wait for the fog to lift, you might wonder why your otherwise fit and healthy body has been so debilitated by a single night of festivity.

Well, ethanol, the key constituent in the beverages that oiled the cogs of last night's bash, is also used as an industrial solvent and a disinfectant. To create your favourite drink, it's mixed with a variety of other toxic chemicals, including formaldehyde (used for embalming corpses) and acetone (a nail polish remover). These impurities, known as congeners, are what give different drinks their distinctive flavour. They're also the prime culprits in creating your hangover.

One helpful rule of thumb: The darker the drink, the more congeners it has -- and the more potent the hangover it produces. Bourbon has eight times as many congeners as gin and 30 times more than vodka, which is the purest of spirits. Darker drinks also tend to contain more methanol, which Swedish researchers say is another key hangover contributor. When metabolized, methanol becomes highly toxic formic acid.

Congeners are the reason mixing your drinks produces a more devastating hangover. The body can remove a single type of toxins fairly rapidly (even more rapidly if they are toxins the body is used to). When faced with numerous toxins accumulated from sampling everything at the bar, the body's chemistry gets all confused. It takes a lot longer to rally all the necessary enzymes to metabolize the congeners if they are numerous, various, or unrecognized. Thus hardened drinkers who stick to their usual beverage suffer fewer hangovers than those who only drink socially or mix their drinks.

So just what exactly is going on in your body as you pull your pillow over your head? The effects of alcohol are diverse, which explains why you hurt in so many ways the morning after.

Raging thirst: The liver uses eight molecules of water for each molecule of alcohol it has to break down. Unless you intersperse alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic ones, the alcohol literally sucks water out of your cells. Alcohol also suppresses production of the hormone that makes kidneys recycle water; instead of the water being absorbed into your body, it is released -- along with important electrolytes such as sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium -- as urine. The human body needs water to work properly, and the lack of it is a key factor in many hangover symptoms.

Pounding headache: This classic affliction may result from dehydration. When there is not enough water in the brain, it shrinks. Although the brain itself has no pain sensation, it has a covering called the dura, connected to the skull by pain-sensitive filaments. Brain shrinkage deforms the dura, triggering messages in the pain receptors that you experience as a headache.

Also, when alcohol, congeners, and their metabolites reach the brain, they irritate the blood vessels and other tissues, triggering a kind of inflammation. Blood vessels in the scalp and around the brain stretch and dilate, exciting pain receptors. Initially the pain is masked by the sedative and anaesthetic effects of the alcohol, but as that wears off, a blinding headache takes over.

Stomach-churning nausea: Alcohol irritates the stomach, causing a condition known as gastritis. It can also upset the body's metabolism and cause a rise in acidity levels in the stomach. Smoking and eating spicy or fatty foods make it worse. Having something in your stomach before you start drinking -- even just a glass of milk -- will protect the stomach lining and minimize this hangover effect.

Immobilizing fatigue: This could be the direct result of alcohol lowering your blood sugar levels. As our immediate energy supply -- blood sugar -- is depleted, the body's metabolism has to work overtime to replace it, which can take up to 36 hours.

Fatigue could also be the result of whatever wacky activities you participated in while your inhibitions were elsewhere. Alcohol anaesthetizes any muscle aches and pains that might alert you that your John Travolta routine resulted in a groin strain.

The spinning-room effect: One theory suggests the problem stems from the semi-circular canals in the ears. Little lumps of jelly suspended in fluid fit tightly into the canals and monitor angular movements of the head. When the head rotates, the jelly bumps into the surrounding tissue, setting off a series of nerve impulses to let the brain know which way the head is moving.

Alcohol effects the jelly and its surrounding fluid, letting the jelly bump into the tissue and send messages to the brain at inappropriate moments. The brain thinks the head is rotating even when it is not, and tells the eyes to make compensatory flicking movements. As the head is actually still in the same place, this makes the owner of said head particularly dizzy.

Painfully loud noises and ultra-bright lights:

Alcohol alters the properties of the membranes that surround nerve cells, disrupting vital cell-to-cell communications. The nervous system tries to compensate by enhancing its reception, which leaves everything hypersensitive and twitchy the next morning.

So is there anything you can do about it? Everyone has a favourite hangover cure, from raw eggs to pre-packaged herbal remedies. The most important thing is to keep your brain cells sufficiently active to remember to drink several pints of water -- or even better, fruit juice -- before you go to bed. Fruit juice helps by providing fluid to counteract the dehydration, sugars to boost energy, and vitamin C to help speed the detoxification process. Sports drinks, which replace fluids, sugars, and lost electrolytes, are another option.

Drink more water or juice in the morning, along with good strong coffee. Caffeine can help overcome the depressive effects of alcohol and make you feel a bit livelier. The caffeine also constricts those dilated and pulsing blood vessels in your head. But it can make dehydration worse, so drink a large amount of water, too.

Despite centuries of valiant attempts to find a cure -- and many, many guinea pigs-- ultimately only time will remove the alcohol, its metabolites, and congeners from your system. But take heart: In a study of 21 American men the morning after a bender, their work was none the worse for a night on the town. They felt sick and tired, but their decision-making was apparently not affected.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2000

Answers

Nice one Kegsy, I enjoyed reading that....although it's not gonna stop me mixing my drinks or forgetting to drink water before I go to bed :))

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2000

And I thought I got mugged on the way home from the pub every time. Honestly some bloke would smack me on the back of the head, take all my money and cards then go to the cash machine and take out another #30. Then to top it all he would take my memory away and spray some nasty liquid tumble dryer fur on my tongue.

I can't believe it can get more scientific than this.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2000

I always thought it was the camel. Why else would your mouth taste like $h!t the morning after when you've been drinking copious amounts of delicious beer.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2000

It's sleep that does it.!!!

I always feel fine before I go to bed

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2000

What exactly do you do to your camel, Kegsy, to make you think that she's the reason your mouth tastes like shit? I shudder to think..;-))

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2000

yup..that's a pretty accurate description of the way I felt the morning of the semi. I'M NOT DRINKING THAT MUCH NEXT YEAR.

Stop laughing... ;-)

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2000

Well that just confirms why when i woke up next the half eaten kebab , still in the tray but in the bed with the sun shining in me eye that i felt like hoying up .. knowing all that will definitely make me think twice about getting on it this weekend ,. No really it will , and that large port at the end of the night .. nae sweat thats a definite no no after all the other bevvies %-))

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2000

Yup that's it....

Nothing but pints of Vodka for me from now on......I'll top it off with a couple of pints of orange juice before the club shuts and I'll be right as rain the next morning eh :))

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2000