Many people think that becoming unwell after two drinks while their friend can polish off the bottle is down to tolerance. It’s not. The real reason is that you and your friend are processing different substances, at different paces, because you have distinctly different bodies. Knowing this makes going out a whole lot more enjoyable.
The enzyme factor most people don’t know about
Alcohol is processed in the body through the work of two enzymes: alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which metabolizes ethanol to toxic acetaldehyde, and aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2), which helps break down the toxic acetaldehyde into a harmless substance.
The problem is, ALDH2 doesn’t function properly in many people, due to a genetic variant. This causes acetaldehyde to build up in the blood more rapidly than the body can clear it, resulting in flushing, nausea and a racing heart after a single drink. This isn’t a sign of low tolerance; it’s a metabolic bottleneck.
Your gut is also accountable here. Microbiome diversity impacts how alcohol is absorbed and metabolized. A disturbed gut environment slows down these processes, essentially causing the same amount of alcohol to hit you much harder.
Why wine causes more problems than other drinks
Alcohol is not the same in every drink. Red wine contains a much higher amount of reactive compounds such as histamines, sulfites, and tannins in excess of what other drinks like clear spirits and lagers contain.
Histamines are produced during the fermentation process and are known to cause symptoms that are very similar to hay fever like blood congestion and headaches as well as flushed skin. Sulfites are synthetic preservatives and can cause irritation in the respiratory system as well as trigger headaches in people who are sensitive. Tannins are chemicals from the grape that can lead to the overproduction of serotonin and that has been connected with migraines.
Additionally, there are also congeners, a category that includes all the chemical byproducts produced during the fermentation. The more intricate and darker the wine, the higher the concentration of congeners. Some people also suffer from cross-reactivity, wherein their immune system confuses the proteins present in the wine with environmental allergens leading to a reaction that is not exactly alcohol-related.
About 10% of the population is clinically sensitive to sulfites and histamines in wine and hence develop symptoms such as redness, nasal congestion, and migraines. For these people, the reaction is not imagined; it is absolutely real.
If you always feel bad after enjoying a glass of wine or other alcoholic drinks, this toxic compound issue might be exactly what’s going on. Fortunately, you can use a wine filter for troublesome compounds to block histamines and sulfites so they do not enter your system but without removing your desired flavor of the wine.
A pacing strategy that actually works
Here is more precise advice than just “drink water, eat food”.
Eat some protein-rich food before your first drink, not at the same time. Protein slows gastric emptying, so not as much alcohol enters your bloodstream as quickly. Carbs pair nicely with this strategy, but the combo of fat and protein together serves as a longer-lasting buffer.
Take the one-for-one water rule at its word: one glass of water for every alcoholic drink. This keeps you on top of hydration, obviously, but it also automatically regulates your pace and allows your liver time to play catch-up. Your body can metabolize approximately one standard drink per hour. The faster you overtake that, the more acetaldehyde you rack up waiting for ALDH2 to come get it.
How you spread your drinks across the evening, rather than front-loading the first hour, will even impact how you feel the following morning.
Identifying your actual triggers
The best way to approach this problem is through gradual removal. Simply keep track: record what you consumed, how much of it, what you ate prior to drinking, and how you felt during and after as well as the next morning. After attending four or five occasions, you will start to notice trends.
For example, you might realize that you feel okay after drinking white wine, but not after drinking red wine, which could be related to either tannins or histamines. Or you may notice that cheap wine makes you feel bad, while you don’t have a reaction to more expensive bottles, as those tend to contain fewer sulfites. Wine might not be a problem at all, but you feel terrible after drinking whiskey, as congeners are more prevalent in darker spirits.
Then there is the hydration-alcohol ratio factor. If you are dehydrated upon your arrival because you had a very dehydrating day at work, or a strenuous session at the gym, or drank too much coffee, you will be starting from a deficit. The same quantity of alcohol at that event will have a different effect than it would if you were adequately hydrated all day.
Once you have identified what causes your physiological response, you are not really missing out on the fun – you are just cutting out the chemicals. The goal is to fix a hangover before it happens. That isn’t too hard to do once you stop thinking about your hangover as a character flaw and start thinking of it as chemistry.