eli5: Why do hangovers get worse with age?
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Long story short, alchohol is a toxic substance. The older we get, the less able our bodies are to cleanse the system.
When you abstain from alcohol for a long period I don’t you can ever recover from hangover issues. My head….every single time!!🤪
I’m surprised nobody is mentioning [Kindling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindling_(sedative%E2%80%93hypnotic_withdrawal)). Alcohol hangovers can be seen partly as manifestations of acute alcohol withdrawal. Over time, the CNS becomes more and more sensitive to these withdrawal states and consequently your hangovers get worse and longer.
Is it just me who has easier hangovers the older I get?
I can highly recommend Science in Sport electrolyte tablets, one in a glass of water before drinking and one before bed if you can. Honestly knocks out 90% of symptoms unless completely smashing it.
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Mine don’t. Mine have gotten much easier. Mainly because I drink a lot. Still. Which I need to stop doing.
Alcoholic here. What hangovers?
To make you quit drinking. Once my hangovers started lasting 2 days, I quit. (8 years ago.)
Funny thing is…I don’t miss it at all.
As you age your liver becomes less effective at producing the enzymes necessary to metabolize alcohol and remove those metabolites from your body. As others have posted, alcohol creates a lot of oxidative stress on the body; particularly in the brain and cardiovascular system. This means while your liver is taking longer to remove the alcohol, the alcohol and it’s metabolites (some which are even more destructive than ethyl alcohol itself) have more time to hang out in the body and do harm on a cellular level.
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