About Last Night

Congeners, by-products of the distillation and fermentation process, may also play a role in making holiday partiers miserable. Darker-colored liquors such as brandies, bourbon and red wine contain more congeners than lighter colored alcoholic beverages like gin or vodka. The big-bad of the various congeners is methanol, which is broken down by the body into formaldehyde. In the vernacular, formaldehyde is embalming fluid. When living people have this in their circulation, the clinical term for how they feel is "rotten," Swift says.

Since alcohol is a diuretic, you'll wake up dehydrated. That dehydration explains some of the symptoms such as headaches and a dry mouth. Alcohol also plays havoc with the body's biorhythms, disturbing sleep patterns, despite it being a sedative. That lack of sleep contributes to the overall misery.

Oddly, "some people can get a hangover from one or two drinks," Swift says. "And it's usually the moderate or light social drinker who suffers the most." At particular risk, though, are women. Researchers at the University of Missouri, Columbia, found that women experience worse hangovers than men, despite the amount of alcohol consumed.
Though a drink-a-thon may make you feel merry, at least for a while, there are other health issues to think about. Binging, defined as four drinks per session for women and five for men, is a "serious public-health problem," according to Dr. Robert D. Brewer, alcohol team leader for the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Not only will your body most likely pay the price with a mother of a hangover, binging sets you up for a host of problems: car accidents, domestic and gun violence and sexual assault. There are also potential health issues that can be precipitated by a binge--acute pancreatitis, a painful and potentially life-threatening inflammation of the pancreas, or even "holiday heart syndrome," an irregular heart rhythm found in heart-healthy folks who have overindulged. "There's nothing funny, nothing good, about binging," Brewer says.

Binging isn't relegated to the problem drinker. Rather, studies at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that binges are reported more often in moderate imbibers. And it's not the sole province of college kids either. According to the CDC, more than half of the alcohol consumed by adults in the United States is in the form of binge drinks, and 70 percent of binge drinking episodes involve adults over age 25.

The safest bet is of course to follow the rules. Current recommendations call for one drink a day for women and two a day for men. But if you can't resist the extra glass, there are ways to make your morning a little bit merrier. First, if you are drinking, don't drive--of course. A glass of water between drinks will both slow down your alcohol consumption and help with dehydration. Eat before drinking, and while you're at the party, keep grazing to slow alcohol absorption, suggests alcohol metabolism expert James Schaefer, a research professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. Also avoid mixing drinks.

Don't waste your money on the many so-called hangover prevention remedies available in drugstores or online. Most don't have much, if any, science behind them. One study conducted by Tulane University researchers and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine did find that prickly pear extract prevented nausea and dry mouth and boosted appetite but didn't do much for other hangover symptoms.