Vasopressin also known in common language as hangover is a problem for people who go out and drink a lot. When you have a hangover you have a headache, tired, dehydrate, angry, and other symptoms based on the individual person.
The process of a hangover actually starts the moment you start to drink too much alcohol for your body to handle. There is thing called your pituitary gland that is located in your brain. Your pituitary gland produces a hormone that is called vasopressin. Vasopressin is the hormone that regulates the fluid intake and out take of your body. When you drink too much the hormone vasopressin shuts down, and that when dehydrates comes into play. Whenever you drink water you get hydrated, but when your drink alcohol you get dehydrated. Whenever your body goes into this dehydrated state from drinking alcohol it tries to get water from other parts of your body, and that includes the brain. When you lose water from your brain you start to get a headache that’s why that’s a major symptom of a hangover. The type of alcohol you drink also has a roll in the hangover process. Congeners a compounds found in the alcohol. Congeners range from high and low depending on how the alcohol was made. Alcohol like beer will not give you a hangover as bad as some hard liquors would. The higher the congeners, the worse your hangover will be.
At this point it’s fair to say that most of us have experienced a brutal day ruining hangover. The certain hangover effects like headaches almost seem avoidable by drinking more water. Are there any other drinks or foods perhaps that can help mitigate the level of the hangover you’ll have the next morning? Would be curious to find out. Cool and relative article!
I have never really experienced a full hangover, the worst I’ve had the morning after drinking is just dehydration. But i do agree with the hydration part of this post, i wake up almost dying of thirst when i drink. Here’s a link for those that suffer from bad hangovers to a drink that i grew up making for my family back in Nicaragua… it’s one of the best late hangover cures called Michelada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelada
Hi Jordan! I have always wondered why people get hangover because it always seems that some people get hungover and some don’t. After reading this I assume that the ones that are getting the hangovers drank more than the people who don’t. I know that alcohol dehydrates the body but I did not know that the reason we get a headache while hungover is because your body tries to get water from your brain. You mention how you lose water from your brain which causes a headache. I never had any idea this was the reason we develop a headache while hungover. I never knew what congeners were before reading this but I did know that alcoholic like hard liquor will give you a worse hangover than beer. Thanks for sharing!
Although I had heard most of this information before, I have never heard the reasoning behind the hangover headache! I found that very interesting and shows the importance of hydration, especially when alcohol is involved.