Raise your hand if you’ve searched online for any of the following: what causes a hangover, how to avoid a hangover, or how to get rid of a hangover.
You’re not alone.
Roughly 14,000 people want the answers to these questions every month.
We all know the obvious answer… but drinking less isn’t what anyone wants to hear so let’s look at a different option.
What if you could still enjoy a party on Friday night without ruining your Saturday?
Sounds like an impossible dream right? Well, it’s not.
But first, let’s get clear on what actually causes a hangover because you might be surprised.
How Your Body Processes Alcohol
When you drink, the alcohol goes to your stomach and is absorbed into your bloodstream through the walls of your stomach lining or small intestine.
The speed of absorption depends on whether you’ve eaten recently. More food in your stomach means slower absorption.
Once the alcohol is in your blood, it travels throughout your body pretty quickly. A stronger concentration of alcohol in your drink will have a faster impact, which is why you feel the effects of a shot sooner than a beer.
Eventually, the alcohol travels to your liver to be metabolized. A specific enzyme turns the ethanol in alcohol into acetaldehyde, which is ten to thirty times more toxic than alcohol itself.
Then a second enzyme works with an antioxidant called glutathione to turn the acetaldehyde into a harmless substance called acetate that leaves your body through sweat, carbon dioxide, and urine.
Seems pretty basic so why do you end up with a pounding headache and nausea that causes two out of five people to call in sick to work?
What Most People Think Causes a Hangover
A quick search is going to tell you that dehydration is the main cause of hangovers. But it turns out that isn’t really the case.
Dehydration actually plays a pretty minor role when it comes to hangovers, which makes sense if you think about it. If dehydration was the issue, you could just drink a bunch of water and avoid a hangover completely.
So if it’s not dehydration what’s the real problem?
Your liver can process alcohol at a rate of about one drink per hour. A standard drink is usually defined as containing 14 grams of alcohol: 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 fluid ounces of wine, or 1.5 fluid ounces of distilled spirits.
But when you’re in party mode, you’re often drinking more than one cocktail per hour. Also, if the drinks are made at home, they may be stronger than what you’d get at a bar or restaurant.
As you drink more, your liver’s stores of glutathione are depleted and your body can’t process the alcohol as effectively, leading to a buildup of alcohol and toxic acetaldehyde.
The combination of alcohol and acetaldehyde in your body leads to all the miserable symptoms that we recognize as a hangover.
Effects of Alcohol in Your Body
Alcohol has plenty of impact on your body from the minute it enters your bloodstream.
It affects your brain giving you that loopy feeling we associate with being drunk. Your entire central nervous system slows, leading to lousy coordination and poor choices from impaired judgment.
Alcohol also stimulates the release of dopamine and serotonin, making you feel happy and relaxed.
But in spite of the pleasant effects during drinking, alcohol is wreaking havoc on multiple systems.
- Gastrointestinal Irritation. Alcohol causes your stomach to produce more acid which irritates the stomach lining. It can also slow the rate that the stomach empties, leading to both nausea and vomiting.
- Poor sleep quality. Even though drinking may help you fall asleep more quickly, it often results in poor sleep overall leading to fatigue, brain fog, and trouble concentrating the next day.
- Mild dehydration. Alcohol is considered a diuretic, meaning that it causes you to pee more often, but studies show that this isn’t a major contributor to hangovers.
- Dilated blood vessels. Intoxication causes widening of blood vessels, which is known to cause headaches.
- Immune system impairment. Current research shows that the immune system may respond to alcohol similarly to infection, leading to an inflammatory response that could produce many of the symptoms common for a hangover.
Negative Effects of Acetaldehyde Build-up
While alcohol itself is toxic, the byproducts are far worse. Your liver first breaks down the ethanol in alcohol into a substance called acetaldehyde, which as we said earlier is ten to thirty times more toxic than alcohol.
As you drink more and your liver’s stores of glutathione are depleted, the acetaldehyde builds up. Excessive exposure to acetaldehyde is a current scientific theory to explain hangovers.
Known side effects of exposure to acetaldehyde include:
- nausea & vomiting
- headaches
- sweating
- flushing of the skin
At this point, between the effects of the alcohol and the results of acetaldehyde, you’ve got the makings of a pretty intense hangover.
So is it possible to enjoy a night of social drinking without the following day becoming an epic struggle?
Say No to Hangovers
Now that we’ve nailed down the basics of what causes a hangover, let’s talk about how to avoid all the symptoms that we all hate.
In order for your liver to process alcohol properly, you need a key antioxidant called glutathione.
As you drink more and your stores of glutathione are depleted, your chances of suffering through a hangover increase.
This is where FEELGOOD™ Natural Recovery comes in!
The main ingredient in FEELGOOD™ is called Nacystelyn (NAL) which is derived from synthesizing the amino acid N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) with lysine salt.
Nacystelyn causes your body to produce more glutathione.
N-acetyl cysteine has been used by hospitals for decades to avoid liver damage in patients who overdose on acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol).
Although NAC is extremely effective, it is acidic and has a not-so-great taste. Nacystelyn has a neutral PH and is tasteless, which means that it won’t irritate your stomach and it can be flavored to taste great.
By drinking FEELGOOD™ before and after drinking, your liver gets a necessary boost of glutathione so it can process the alcohol more effectively.
You can enjoy drinking without the usual build-up of alcohol and acetaldehyde that causes all those nasty hangover symptoms.
The Takeaway
If you like to drink socially but don’t want the next day ruined by a hangover, your body needs to be able to process the alcohol.
By increasing your levels of glutathione with FEELGOOD™, you’re giving your liver the assistance it needs to keep you out of the hangover zone.