How Long Does a Hangover Last?

While there is no hangover cure, there are things you can do to feel better (and hair of the dog isn’t one of them). Face your hangover head-on – but not alone – with the support of The I.V. Doc. Several different factors can play a role in how long your hangover lasts.

Other things you do — or don’t do — when you drink alcohol can affect whether you get a hangover and how bad it is. If you don’t eat anything and drink on an empty stomach, for example, you may feel worse because your bloodstream will take in the booze more quickly. And if alcohol use disorder runs in your family, you may have certain genes that affect the way you process liquor. Typically, hangovers only last the morning (like, until you finally get around to eating breakfast)—at most 24 hours. But sometimes, those after-effects of a night of drinking stick around way past their welcome—like the dreaded two-day hangover which makes you realize, oh yeah, you’re not in college anymore. The amount of alcohol you consume is a primary factor in determining what kind of hangover you will experience and how severe the symptoms will be.

Other Substances That Contribute to Hangover Symptoms

While alcohol may make you feel tired, it prevents your body from reaching the deeper stages of sleep. It can also cause you to wake up frequently during the night. This may leave you groggy and tired the following day and can make your symptoms worse. The good news is that even someone with a severe drinking problem can benefit from treatment. Treatment for AUD consists of medications, behavioral therapies, or both.

• Your brain naturally produces these feel-good chemicals, and then your nervous system carries them throughout your body.
• You may get a severe hangover after a heavy drinking session in a short period, just as you might get a hangover if you drink alcohol over a long time.
• Dehydration plays a significant role, as does acetaldehyde.
• Several different factors can play a role in how long your hangover lasts.
• Fortunately, acetaldehyde does eventually break down in the body, but this might take some time.

Antibiotics can also affect how your body processes alcohol, says Dr. Cox. Booze can also affect your blood sugar, says Chaun Cox, MD, family medicine physician at Mayo Clinic Health Systems. For one, it gets you intoxicated faster and makes day-after misery a lot more likely. Plus, hangovers tend to be more severe after drinking on an empty stomach. Hangover symptoms peak when the blood alcohol concentration in the body returns to about zero.

When to see a doctor

Some medications interfere with your body’s ability to properly metabolize alcohol. As a result, you’re more likely to throw up and have your hangover linger for a longer period. If you’re prone to migraine attacks, you’re also more likely to have problems with hangovers, particularly hangover headaches, because alcohol is a common migraine attack trigger. Alcohol has a diuretic effect that makes you pee more, leading to dehydration if you’re not also drinking water. If you drink enough alcohol to vomit, then that’s even more fluid lost.

Hangover symptoms are at their worst when that level returns to zero and usually last about 24 hours. The fact that we feel worse after the alcohol has left our bodies has long been a mystery to researchers. While you pretty much have to wait it out, that doesn’t mean you need to sit back and do nothing. You can take steps to ease your hangover symptom as you recover. Rehydrate your body by drinking plenty of water, take ibuprofen for your headache, get some rest, and eat the best hangover foods to ease your symptoms. Once you stop drinking alcohol, your body tries to get back in balance.

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Liquids tend to empty from the stomach quicker than solid foods, which is a good thing if your stomach is irritated. Gummies shareable so you can easily carry them in your bag or pocket and then be the talk of the group for bringing party favors! You’ll soon start receiving the latest Mayo Clinic https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/how-long-does-a-hangover-last-how-to-ease-a-hangover-tips/ health information you requested in your inbox. Keep reading for everything you need to know about making that hungover feeling go away. That said, if you are suffering from AUD, you may be unable to do so on your own. If this is the case, the best option is to get treatment by professionals.

• Bartenders also don’t always exactly measure shots or pours of wine.
• Still, 24 hours can feel like an eternity when you’re dealing with a mishmash of physical and mental symptoms.
• During residential rehab, we offer many different treatment methods, including group therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and EMDR therapy.

“If you’re not too nauseous, try pairing your carbs with a protein source, such as Greek yogurt or a hard-boiled egg,” says Beaver. “I’d also recommend avoiding strong smells that may trigger nausea, eating slowly and opting for room temperature or colder foods.” Hangovers happen, but that doesn’t mean you won’t try to do anything in your power to avoid one. Stopping after that second glass of wine would’ve been your best bet, really.

How much you had to drink

(Woohoo!) During this time, your body slowly eliminates alcohol’s toxic byproducts, rehydrates, heals tissue, and rebalances your brain and body back to its normal state. For some people, though, hangovers can stick around for up to 72 hours. (Yikes!) As mentioned earlier, whether or not you get a hangover—and how severe it might be—really depends on a variety of factors. Research has not found a correlation between the extent of electrolyte disruptions and the severity of hangovers, or the impact of added electrolytes on hangover severity. In most people, the body will quickly restore electrolyte balance once the effects of alcohol subside. A hangover refers to a set of symptoms that occur as a consequence of drinking too much.

Factors at play include the quantity of alcohol consumed, gender, ethnicity, medications, level of dehydration, and nutritional status. For most people, hangover symptoms usually start to ease up between eight to 24 hours, although they can last a bit longer. Long-term effects of consuming too much alcohol can negatively impact your health. According to Cleveland Clinic, hangover symptoms usually start to ease up between eight to 24 hours.

Drinking on an empty stomach

If you’ve consumed too much alcohol and have to work the next day, what do you do? Estimates of lost revenues due to reduced job productivity and absenteeism from alcohol run as high as $148 billion a year in the U.S. alone. Much of this expense is related to hangovers in light to moderate drinkers. Some of these effects are caused by ethanol itself, and others are from an even more toxic byproduct of its metabolism called acetaldehyde. This chemical builds up in the blood as the liver breaks down the alcohol into a form that can be eliminated from the body.

But you might not realize that while a few glasses of wine could put you to sleep, vino certainly won’t help you get your deepest snooze on. “People tend to have interrupted sleep following a drinking episode,” says Dr. Goggans. “Alcohol has a diuretic effect—heavy drinking may maximize that,” says Vincent Pedre, MD, author of Happy Gut. Drinking can dehydrate you—even more so if you’re vomiting or suffering from diarrhea. And this, on top of mineral imbalances (from the influx of booze and loss of fluids and electrolytes), can slow how fast your body detoxifies itself, he explains.

But if you choose to drink, here are some ways to help prevent hangovers. Scientists have found that a few supplements — red ginseng, Siberian ginseng, and Korean pear juice — can ease some symptoms. Extract of the fruit from Hovenia dulcis, a tree native to East Asia, also showed promise in a small study. And other research suggested that people who took extract of prickly pear cactus before drinking had less severe hangovers.