Hangovers are easier as you get older, study claims

8 December 2021, 14:25 | Updated: 8 December 2021, 14:27

By Naomi Bartram

@naomibartram

Research claims hangovers don't actually get worse as you get older.

It might be hard to believe, but a study has found that hangovers actually get less severe with age.

The research, which was published in the medical journal Alcohol and Alcoholism, asked 761 Dutch drinkers, aged between 18 and 94, about their hangover experiences.

Rather surprisingly, the results found that older people were actually less likely to suffer from a foggy head in the morning.

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And even when they did wake up feeling rough after a night of drinking, their hangovers were less severe.

One explanation is that you literally just get used to them as you get older, and become better at dealing with the consequences of too much wine.

The researchers also suggested that reduced pain sensitivity in older people may mean they feel hangovers less than when they were younger.

But they did also note that how drunk a person feels is a key predictor of how bad they feel the next day, calling it ‘subjective intoxication'.

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The researchers said: "Hangover severity declines with age, even after controlling for the amount of alcohol consumed.

"Sex differences were greatest in the younger age groups but became significantly smaller or absent in the older age groups.

"The relationship between age and hangover severity is strongly mediated by subjective intoxication. Pain sensitivity, lower with ageing, might be a mediator."

The experts also pointed out that the way different age groups drink could determine how bad their headache is the next day.

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They claim younger people suffer worse hangovers because they drink more in a shorter space of time, while older people choose to drink little and often.

The study was conducted by Utrecht University and a Facebook quiz was used to gather data from 761 people.

Participants were asked about their alcohol consumption between January and March 2020, before the first coronavirus restrictions came into force.

Researchers also found that younger generations consumed more alcohol than older people, and that men typically drank more than women.