Undoubtedly, some people can handle their alcohol better than others; we’re not sure why that is. Asking a few friends, some of them tell us that as they grew older, they find that their capacity to handle increasing amount of alcohol at any given time increases. One of them tells us that as they drink more their body capacity to tolerate alcohol increases and they rarely if ever, suffer a hangover. For some, however, the case is the opposite. The present writer has no idea why that might be and like most things out there, there is really no generalisation even where there seems to be an observable trend. Think case-specific but I’m no expert.
So, this anonymous person thinks that their ability to handle alcohol seems to have decreased with age. They wanted an explanation to understand what could have caused this and subsequently wrote to the New York Times, health services, AskWell for advice. They also wanted to know whether alternating alcohol with water will help them.
In answer to the question, Dr Lara Ray, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of California and an expert on alcoholism suggests that the ability to handle alcohol may have something to do with frequency of drinking as well as muscle mass. Ray thinks that as we grow older, fats tend to replace muscles, meaning that a person with a higher percentage of body fat will likely get intoxicated by less amount of alcohol compared to a leaner person. Ray also suggests drinking slowly to reduce the amount of alcohol. Furthermore, drinking water or other liquid to dilute alcohol concentration in the bloodstream might help one avoid having a hangover
See the full question and answer below:
Question
It seems like my hangovers are much worse now that I am older, 42, to the point I can’t even have one drink without feeling listless the next day. What can I do, besides drinking water while drinking alcohol, to improve the situation?
Answer
The real “problem” might be that you’re drinking less as you age, which reduces your tolerance for alcohol, says Dr Lara Ray, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who researches alcoholism. Someone with the self-image of a partying twentysomething but the lifestyle of a responsible 42-year-old may simply have lost the tolerance for a lot of alcohol, she said.
“Age may be a proxy for regularity of drinking,” Ray says. “If you haven’t gone to a party for two to three weeks, it might be less about being 40 and more about your drinking history.”
Also, as we age, we lose muscle mass, replacing it with fat. The same drink will cause more intoxication in a body with a higher fat content compared to a leaner one, she said. But this tends to be true more for people over 65 than over 40, she adds.
Dr Ray suggests drinking more slowly to compensate for this change in body composition, and to drink more water or other liquids to dilute the alcohol. A quick spike in blood alcohol levels followed by a quick drop make hangovers more likely, she said, so avoiding those sudden changes should help.
The biological basis of hangovers is still unclear, says Dr Marc Schuckit, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. Some people think being hung over is a mild form of alcohol withdrawal; others think hangovers are caused by dehydration or an imbalance of electrolytes like sodium, potassium or magnesium, he says.
The question and answers parts of this article first appeared on the New York Times website.
It is not good at all