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Life

14th Jul 2018

Here’s why two and three-day-hangovers kick in as you get older

Kate Demolder

pubs reopen Ireland

It’s science.

It’s not uncommon for someone over the age of 24 to feel like they’ve been hit by a train after a night of drinking. Fondly we look back upon the days when we could mix drinks, avoid water, stay up until dawn and still feel like we could run a marathon the following day.

Turns out the feeling of crumbling sadness is not in our heads, it’s scientific fact that your hangovers get far worse as you get older – and it’s all down to how the chemicals break down in your aging body.

Alcohol is a tiny molecule which travels (and affects) every part of your body, following a night of drinking. Yep, alcohol affects everywhere from the stomach to the heart to the skin.

And we get older, both our heart and stomach shrink in size, meaning that the alcohol we’ve just consumed is retained by the body for a longer period. Hence, the two or three day hangover.

This added to the fact that we are more prone to dehydration as we age means that the alcohol is therefore more concentrated and takes longer to break down.

Quite straight-forward, really.

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