What Causes a Hangover and How Can You Help Prevent One?

While we all know that having a few drinks can cause a hangover, not everyone knows HOW drinking alcohol results in a hangover. Sure, there’s the dehydration element that many of us are familiar with, but that’s only one factor among several. In this short blog, we’ll highlight some of the main causes of a hangover and tell you how you can help lessen the effects of a hangover so that you feel a bit better the next morning (spoiler alert: restirr can help!)

The causes:

• Dehydration: It may seem counterintuitive to some that drinking something can result in dehydration. But alcohol is a diuretic which causes you to urinate more frequently, which in turn can lead to dehydration. Water is the stuff of life after all, and your body requires a lot of it to function optimally. When your body becomes dehydrated, you may experience symptoms including headache, dizziness and feelings of fatigue.
• Acetaldehyde: Ethanol (the alcohol we drink) is a mild toxin which can cause cell damage over time. Your body wants to break this down into more harmless substances quickly. But when it comes to harmful effects on the body, the “big bad” is an even more highly toxic substance called acetaldehyde (a known carcinogen). Acetaldehyde is formed for a short time as one of several steps in breaking down Ethanol into harmless water and carbon dioxide for elimination. Acetaldehyde is what can damage your liver in particular over time as this vital organ works to convert and eliminate it from your body.
• Inflammation: Alcohol can cause an inflammatory response, particularly in your gastrointestinal tract (stomach and intestines) as well as the organs that process it including your liver.
• Congeners: compounds besides ethanol that occur naturally in alcoholic beverages as a result of the distillation and fermenting process, congeners are additional toxins that can result in hangover symptoms. Although present in many alcoholic beverages, they tend to be present in larger amounts in darker drinks like red wine, bourbon & whisky.
• Sleep disruption: alcohol inhibits the production of glutamine which acts as a stimulant but once you stop drinking your glutamine production can rebound, which can disrupt sleep.
• Sickness: As if hangovers by themselves weren’t bad enough, alcohol and the toxin elimination process can weaken your body’s ability to fight off infections, making you more susceptible to colds or flu. It can also worsen symptoms that already exist.

Wow, that’s quite a few things all working together to help ensure your morning is unpleasant. So now that we’ve discussed them, how can you be proactive in helping to reduce the symptoms of a hangover the next morning?

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. It’s far better to give your body what it needs to rest, recover, and remove alcohol and its related toxins from your system than it is to try to “cure” a hangover the following morning. This is where restirr can help!

• Rehydrate: It’s good practice to drink water as you drink alcohol throughout the night. You might even try alternating between alcoholic beverages and water or another non-alcoholic beverage of your choice. Electrolytes can help by enabling your body to maintain the balance between fluids inside and outside your cells (i.e. help water get where it’s needed most). And restirr specifically can help with 4x the electrolyte levels of other after-alcohol aids.
• Metabolism-Boosters: As discussed, your body needs to break down toxins into more neutral substances. The faster it’s able to do this, the less time those toxins reside in your body and organs, especially your liver which does much of the work in ridding your body of these harmful substances. restirr includes a healthy dose of B-complex vitamins that boost metabolism.
• Flavonoids / Antioxidants: Flavonoids are naturally occurring substances with powerful antioxidant properties. They’re often found in fruits, vegetables and other plants with vibrant colors. In addition to helping to boost the metabolism, antioxidants help combat oxidative stress that can damage organs over time. restirr includes the particularly powerful flavonoids DHM (dihydromyricetin), prickly pear, and milk thistle, each of which individually has been studied for their impact in helping to mitigate the effects of drinking alcohol specifically.
• Immunity-Boosters: Helping boost your body’s immunity can help ensure it’s functioning a bit more optimally in the weakened state induced by alcohol consumption. restirr contains several immunity-boosters including Vitamin C, Zinc and Ginseng.
• Sleep: Sleep is the great restorative, enabling your body to concentrate on vital functions including metabolizing toxins, fighting off viruses, and generally recovering from the wear and tear of a normal day. Taking restirr after drinking and before bed can to aid your body in this natural process so that it has what it needs to help ensure your next day is a bit happier and healthier!