Think you know your hangover? Think again…

Well – that’s that then. Presents have been opened, songs sung, and booze drunk. All of it. Every last, cruel drop. 

Inevitable then, that we are still carrying the burden of this merriment even now. Yet, as we sheepishly snuck to our desks this morning we thought, naively of course, we had gotten away with it. Just sit down, stare at the computer screen and let time, copious cups of sweet tea and some weapons grade sweating see us through. No one need know. Over ambitious this, as it turns out.

The Editor has just emailed a link to alcoholhangover.com. Point taken sir, well played. As such we find ourselves on the site for AHRG… that’s the Alcohol Hangover Research Group to the likes of us. After exploration as thorough as our embalmed minds would allow, and some deep frowning, we managed to pick up something surprising. It turns out that the symptoms of a hangover are something of an enigma. Whilst there have been many, many studies on the effects of alcohol, only a relative smattering have concerned themselves with the hangover. As such, the mechanisms underlying these rather horrendous symptoms remain aloof.

The main reason being the difficulty in designing a robust experiment. Masking from study participants whether they are on a placebo or alcohol regimen is, rather obviously, a challenge – as such it is tricky to perform a blind trial. And, if we weren’t so incapacitated ourselves, we’d include here a devastatingly funny gag about bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘being blind drunk’. But, as it is, you’ll have to put that together yourselves.

Yet, surely there is reason to find a way around this? For one thing hangovers cost the economy money. Professor Janne Schurmann Tolstrup, of the University of Southern Denmark’s Institute of Public Health an expert on alcohol consumption goes so far as to say: “Millions of Euros are wasted each year due to absence from work caused by hangovers.” Not only that, she also points out there is some evidence that hangovers, rather than being a natural curb on excessive drinking, may actually be a gateway into alcoholism.

The received wisdom is that hangover symptoms are all down to dehydration. But no, several studies have shown that this simply isn’t the case – or at least it is not all of it. A hangover is described as the syndrome of physical and mental symptoms that occur 8 to 16 hours after alcohol consumption – the interesting thing here is that the alcohol has left the body, as have its metabolites. You can drive legally – even perform open heart surgery if that is your particular bag – so what the ruddy hell is happening here?

Well, owner operator of the AHRG, Joris C Verster – also an Associate Professor at the University of Utrecht’s department of pharmaceutical sciences – thinks one of the main causes of the ‘cognitive issues’ faced by a hangover sufferer may be related to the immune system. Following on from previous work showing that the immune system and central nervous system are actually in closer cahoots than once thought, he went on to show that the level of cytokines – those marvellous all-rounders of the immune response – is significantly increased in the hangover state. When you combine this with the fact that other studies have shown that cytokines can themselves cause ‘sickness symptoms’ – which turn out to be very, very similar to those of a hangover – this begins to look like a smoking gun situation.

But, of course, it is more complex than this. Several other factors will play a part in the ‘morning after disaster’ – lack of quality sleep, amount of alcohol consumed etc etc. So here we have a good, old-fashioned puzzle ripe to be gobbled by the hungry hive-mind of the science community. So come on people, if you can’t make us feel better, at least afford us the dignity of knowing exactly why our heads feel like the dusty innards of a kangaroo’s anus.