Ever woken up with a pounding head after a night out and wondered if hangovers really do get worse as you get older – or whether it’s just that you are worse at handling them now? Science suggests that the former is the case.
“Our body changes how it handles alcohol as we age,” says Adam Taylor, professor of anatomy at Lancaster medical school. The main reason is declining liver function.
“Alcohol is metabolised in the liver,” says Taylor. “The liver’s primary function is to detoxify things – break them down and make them into usable units of currency for the body, or get rid of them if they’re harmful.”
The liver breaks down alcohol with the help of enzymes, but as we get older it produces fewer of them, meaning toxic byproducts such as acetaldehyde – the compound responsible for many hangover symptoms – linger in the body.
It’s not just the liver. The body’s water content drops by about 5% after the age of 55, partly because levels of muscle, where a lot of it is stored, decrease. Less water means alcohol is more concentrated in the bloodstream, and dehydration caused by its diuretic qualities – a key culprit behind hangover headaches and grogginess – hits harder.
Kidney function also declines with age, slowing the removal of waste products. “You get this buildup of waste products in the body that have a longer circulating time to exert their effects,” says Taylor.
Can you prevent hangovers getting worse? No. But, if you do drink alcohol, alternating alcoholic drinks with water and sticking to recommended weekly limits can help.
Once a hangover strikes, there’s no magic cure. “Time is the only thing that will fix it,” says Taylor. “Time, water and paracetamol.”
