ELi5: Why does drinking alcohol give you a worse hangover as you get older?
In: 54
Not a scientific answer, but I’m not sure that’s really a hard rule. For example, I think real alcoholics might not even get bad hangovers and some people don’t naturally, but it probably more generally has to do with your body not being as easily able to recover and handle extreme exertions as well as you get older, just for normal aging reasons.
But hangovers are the type of thing that hits everyone differently, and other factors can really cause bad hangovers for some, but not for others. Could be that you don’t drink as often and don’t have as much of a tolerance as you might when you were younger. Or it may be not eating enough, for others not drinking enough water, for others when they drink hard alcohol, for some when the beverages have too much sugar, etc.
Or those theories may all be wrong, or they may all contribute to a hangover or lack thereof, but I think that it’s too random to really nail down a scientific reason why you get hungover or not, just that if you drink a lot and don’t follow the pro tips, it’s simply more likely to be tougher to recover as you get older.
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