The New Year is rapidly approaching and with it comes holiday parties and merriment. If you’re looking to celebrate with a bottle of champagne, you probably already have a hangover treatment plan in place. But do you know why we experience hangovers? Without knowing the exact cause of a hangover, your prevention or treatment plans might fall short of the mark.

The Science Behind Hangovers

After a night of drinking, our body has various reactions to the alcohol in our system, culminating in side effects that we call a hangover.

Alcohol and Dehydration

Many people have made the connection between alcohol consumption and dehydration. In fact, a common drinking practice to reduce the intensity of a hangover is to try and maintain a one to one ratio of water to alcohol over the course of an evening. Drinking water is always a must whenever you plan on having alcohol, but just matching your water to alcohol intake isn’t enough.

Alcohol interferes with our kidneys’ ability to absorb water and electrolytes. As a result, even when we make drinking water a priority, we tend to lose water and electrolytes at a faster pace than they can be replenished. If you’re drinking alcohol and physically exerting yourself like by dancing, this loss of fluids can be even more pronounced.

Alcohol and Stomach Upset

Everyone experiences hangover’s differently, but another common hangover symptom is some form of stomach upset. Some individuals may experience stomach pain and gastrointestinal distress, while others may experience nausea and vomiting. This is because alcohol consumption irritates our stomach.

Just like in the case of our kidneys, alcohol interferes with the effectiveness of our stomach lining. Normally, our body is continually working on renewing the layer of mucous membrane that protects our stomach lining from the acid that digests our food. When we drink our body isn’t able to maintain the process at it’s usual rate, so we can experience pain or other forms of upset.

Alcohol and Headaches

The human body is primarily composed of water, but did you know the same is true of the brain? Exact percentage varies, but the human brain is roughly composed of 75% water. This means our brain is especially sensitive to the changes in hydration we experience after drinking alcohol. We then experience this dehydration in the form of pounding headaches, brain fog, and other cognitive symptoms like poor mood regulation.

Alcohol and Poor Sleep

As a depressant, alcohol as a substance is a popular choice for winding down and relaxing after a stressful work week. Additionally, alcohol’s sedative effects can also help us to fall asleep despite anxiety and other stressors. Unfortunately, this is where the sleep benefits of alcohol end. You may be falling asleep faster after a few glasses of wine, but you won’t be experiencing the deep and refreshing sleep your body needs to function.

When you have a hangover, you may notice that despite sleeping for a good 8 or more hours the night before, that you’re still groggy and exhausted. This is because alcohol interferes with our REM cycle, the parts of the night where we get the necessary deep sleep for recovery and other brain and body maintenance.

Reduce Your Symptoms with Hangover IV Therapy 

Hangover IV therapy is a fast and efficient way to reduce your hangover symptoms and boost recovery time. By combining electrolytes, anti-nausea elements, and pain relief in one single hydration session, hangover IV therapy is able to tackle the various sources of your symptoms all at once.

Replenish Lost Fluids and Electrolytes

Hangover IV therapy is able to replenish your body’s lost fluids and electrolytes at a faster rate than simply drinking water. Because IV therapy administers electrolytes directly to the bloodstream, your body can immediately distribute them to where they are needed most.

Orally intaking fluids and electrolytes forces you to rely on the digestion process which can still be delayed or slowed from the night’s previous drinking. For individuals with nausea, it can be difficult to keep these fluids down long enough to see their benefits. Hangover IV therapy bypasses both of these issues so you can recover faster.

Stop Stomach Upset

A key part of hangover recovery involves being able to expel the alcohol from your system. Eating and drinking both provide your body with routes for lowering the accumulation of alcohol in your system, but nausea may make it hard to eat and drink without vomiting.

Hangover IV therapy includes anti-nausea ingredients in its formula to suppress these symptoms and allow you to eat and drink again.

Relieve Your Headache

Hangover IV therapy tackles your headache at the source and provides immediate relief. While it may still take some time for you to feel the effects of rehydrating through an IV, for immediate relief and symptom management, the hangover IV treatment features a non-narcotic pain relief to take care of the pounding in your head. Additionally, because the pain relief is administered through IV, the medication won’t irritate your already sensitive stomach lining.

Catch Up on Your Rest

While hangover IV therapy doesn’t include any ingredients that target your quality of sleep, with all of your symptoms taken care of and the rehydration process underway, you can rest easy knowing you’re giving your body all the tools it needs for recovery.

Don’t Wait for a Hangover

Start the New Year off with a bang and then hit the ground running with hangover IV therapy. Schedule a session of hangover IV therapy at your local Hydration Room today.