Look, we’ll be straight up. Here at The Latch, we’re prone to believe scientists on pretty much everything. We like our evidence, our facts, our statistics, our studies. We’re not one for conspiracy theories.
But the latest news coming out of the science arena? We’re calling fake news.
What provoked such a strong reaction from our team? The fact that one recent study, published in the Journal of Alcohol and Alcoholism, came to the conclusion that “Hangover severity declines with age.”
Tell that to the me last month (in my late twenties) who had three glasses of wine, got pushed partway home in a trolley before falling out, and had a headache that lasted the entire following day. The me in my early twenties? Could put a bottle and a half away with no problem.
Or as another Latch writer put it: “I have a glass of wine and I’m in bed for a month.”
The study also says, that apparently, hangover frequency decreases with age, even though older people drink more often.
Part of that is explained to ‘declining pain sensitivity’ that comes with age. Essentially, those young larrikins tend to “overestimate the magnitude of subjective intoxication and hangover symptom severity.” Us older folks? We’re more experienced with drunkenness, and with hangovers, so we’ve got a more modest judgement of the magnitude of these effects — or so says the study.
The other explanation? Something called ‘subjective intoxication’. Essentially, this is based on how drunk you feel you are. If you feel pretty pissed, get out the ibuprofen, the water, and put Maccas on speed dial because you’re likely to struggle the following morning.
If you’re feeling it less, well, then, you’ll struggle less. And, apparently, older people feel it less — both the drunkenness and the hangover.
To conclude? Fake news and we look forward to proving this study wrong — kinda. Maybe we should just stick to all those alcohol-free beverages available.
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