People who never get a hangover

Only once Matthew Slater would like to experience a hangover. But even if the 34 -year -old Mr. Slater finishes a bottle of vodka, the next day he wakes up well.

“If they don’t know me, people don’t really believe me,” said Slater. “It just assumed that when you drink a few poisons, your body would react.”

23 -year -old Daniel Adams never felt nauseous or trembling in the morning after the night. One night earlier this month he drank a six pack of Budweiser, and then a six -pack Coors Airy, and then a few shots (he doesn’t remember how much).

The next morning, when his friends moaned, he woke up at 6:30 and drove four miles.

Scientists have a deadline for people like Mr. Slater and Mr. Adams: “Resistant to a hangover.” Over the past one and a half decades, scientists have tried to understand why some people feel tired and collapsed the day after drinking-others feel nothing at all.

It is a hard to determine how many people are really resistant to a hangover. Many studies are based on trial participants describing the agony of their own hangouts, a subjective measure. After all, a headache, which seems to be excruciating one person, may not seem worth mentioning another.

Jonathan Howland, a professor at Boston University University of Medicine, one of the first studies showing the dissemination of Hangover’s resistance was published in 2008. Scientists happened by accident. They tried to understand how ponderous drinking influenced the performance of people at work the next day, only to discover that almost a quarter of a hangover was not at all.

The researchers carried out Several varieties of studyLooking at hundreds of students around Boston and Swedish marine cadets.

Usually, the team kept the participants in the laboratory overnight and gave each person sufficient alcohol to raise the blood alcohol content to around. Throughout the night, doctors monitored participants. They checked each hour to make sure that no one was vomiting.

In the morning, researchers asked the participants a series of questions. On a scale of one to ten, how were they dizzy? How thirsty? How nausea?

Scientists also looked Previous research Among various groups, including high school students, adults in rural areas of Michigan and people undergoing treatment of alcohol consumption. Discoveries in all these studies have shown that about a quarter of people did not feel a hangover.

“It was the same number over and over again,” said Dr. Howland.

The only question was why. Dr. Howland said that nobody understands all the factors causing a hangover, which makes it hard to study the hangover resistance. But scientists presented several theories why a few few remain immune.

One of the suspects is genetics, which helps to determine the pace at which our bodies break down alcohol. People who metabolize alcohol faster Less serious hangoversaid Ann-Cathrin Stock, a neuronaut at the University of Technology in Dresden. She said that genetics plays a greater role for some populations than others. For example, people of Eastern Asian origin often report Experiencing terrible hangoverWhich may be due to the fact that many have a very low enzyme level that helps to process alcohol and its toxic metabolites.

Dr. Stock said that another theory is that people with a weaker immune system may be more susceptible to a hangover. Alcohol can cause universal inflammation – which is why a bad hangover may seem like a disease – and more inflammation usually means that people feel more diseased, she said.

People who are resistant to a hangover usually also report low level Anxiety in general, added Dr. Stock, while those who are already stressed or depressed are more likely to suffer a hangover – and bad on this.

So much hangover remains a mystery. Scientists still do not know if people who are worse are more susceptible to other negative effects of alcohol, or whether the resistance to the HANDs leads people to drink more. Dr. Rohsenow is hard to raise many funds for the research of this topic. And without further attempts of people such as Mr. Slater remains something like a medical miracle.

For his part, Mr. Slater knows that his friends are jealous of a hangover free life. But he also wonders if he can drink less, if, like other people, he felt terrible the next day.