Hangovers Get Worse With Age

Hangovers get worse with age if you don’t change your habits. Even a 20-something who drinks like he’s 19 suffers more than in the past. Here's what you can do. 

Maybe you went through your 20s drinking hard on Saturday nights, rising on Sunday mornings for a run or eating pancakes with another cocktail at noon.

Until one Sunday, you appreciated the word hangover in a new way as you stood poised over the toilet barfing.

Hangovers get worse with age if you don’t change your habits. Even a 29-year-old who drinks like he’s 19 suffers more.

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The biology of drinking  

Your body turns alcohol into a poison called acetaldehyde. Enzymes in your body turn it into acetate, which is similar to vinegar, and you feel okay. If you drink too much, your enzymes take longer to work.

Acetaldehyde causes the symptoms you may know as a hangover — headache, nausea, and dry mouth, among other unpleasant events. The drug disulfiram (Antabuse) blocks the production of acetate enzymes, leading to longer hangovers that are meant to cause alcohol sensitivity and discourage alcoholics from drinking.

How aging slows your recovery from a drinking bout

People get fatter as they get older. If you have more body fat, you suffer worse hangovers from the same amount of alcohol you consumed when you were younger. That’s one reason women, who carry fat in their curves, shouldn’t try to keep up with the men at a bar. You may not even notice the slow waistline expansion; American adults on average gain a pound or two a year.

You also retain less water. You’ve heard the advice to drink water between your shots and water before you go to bed to flood the alcohol, minimizing hangovers. You’ll need to drink more water in your 30s and 40s than you did in your 20s.

How alcohol affects your health

You have more health problems with age, and you may take more medications. Before you drink, consider what medication you’ve taken that day or will take soon. Many don’t mix well with alcohol, including sleeping pills and antidepressants. (Don’t take acetaminophen for your hangover; it’s bad for your already taxed liver, which is busy metabolizing the alcohol.)

Other health issues include:

• Alcohol is caloric, a good place to focus as part of any weight loss or maintenance plan. The list of obesity-related risks includes type 2 diabetes, erectile dysfunction, and cancer.
  
• If you have diabetes, or heart or liver issues, drinking too much could make your problem worse.
• Alcohol can also aggravate high triglycerides.
• Alcohol will wrinkle you. It reduces vitamin A, which contributes to the production of collagen, the secret of elastic, young-looking skin.
• Older people heal slower. If you fall, get into a fight, or have even a minor car accident, your injuries will be a bigger deal the older you are. Surgery is a bigger risk, too.
• Alcohol lowers your immunity, making you more vulnerable to infections and viruses, from which older people recover more slowly.

The consequences of bad judgment may be greater

The brain-addling effects of alcohol pile on top of the normal brain fuzz that creeps in during mid-life. You may be more mature, but you’ll also be thinking less clearly earlier in your drinking session.

Let’s say you’re married and tempted to cheat. Psychologists are proving what bar-frequenters know well: A face that might seem unattractive to you sober becomes prettier under the influence. You’ll also rate your own appeal more highly. In midlife, those effects may begin after the first stiff cocktail, not the third.

How much should you drink?

By the age of 70, here’s one rule of thumb: Drink half of the amount you used to consider your tolerance zone. Two beers may have about the impact that four had at age 50.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health, recommends that people over age 65 stick to no more than seven drinks a week and no more than one or two drinks on any given day.

If you have a health problem or are taking certain medicines, you may need to drink less or even not at all.

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