Hangovers get better with age – seriously!

Eat a banana, drink lots of water, take Aspirin before bed, drink coffee, eat at a greasy spoon, take an antacid, drink ginger tea – the list goes on for common hangover cures.

But now, new research suggests that despite all our desperate attempts to easy ourselves back to normalcy the morning after, one major factor may be playing a significant role in how we fair – our age.

A new study, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, shows that older binge drinkers report that their hangovers are less frequent and less severe.

Researchers from Denmark’s National Institute of Public Health analyzed the hangovers of close to 52,000 participants aged 18 to 94. Subjects were asked how often they drank five or more alcoholic beverages in one sitting (their definition of binge drinking). Then they were asked how often their binge drinking led to any of nine common hangover symptoms, such as exhaustion, vomiting, quickened heartbeat and headache, reports Time.

The researchers found that while older people drank less, the instances where they did binge drink resulted in fewer hangover symptoms. For example, 21 per cent of women between the ages of 18 and 29 always or almost always felt nausea, compared to just 3 per cent of women over 60.

“We found that the tendency to have hangovers decreased by age,” says lead researcher and biologist Janne Tolstrup of the University of Southern Denmark. “...While it is true that older individuals on average binge-drink less often than younger individuals, we did not find in our data that results were due to differences in drinking patterns.”

The researchers controlled for factors like smoking, eating while drinking, the frequency of binge drinking and the amount of alcohol consumed. Despite the fact that older individuals engaged in binge drinking less frequently, they still had an easier time the morning after.

Tolstrup and team offer a few possible explanations for the study's findings. It's conceivable that younger drinkers drank significantly more than five drinks in a binge drinking session, whereas older drinkers stayed close to five drinks.

"It seems likely that older adults who binge do so to a lesser intensity than younger adults and consequently experience fewer and less severe hangovers,” the researchers write.

Secondly, older drinkers may have built up a tolerance to alcohol over the years in a way that younger drinker have not.

And thirdly, older individuals may have greater knowledge and life experience regarding how to prevent hangovers in the first place, such as drinking water or popping Aspirin the night before.

Have you experienced less severe hangovers as you've gotten older? Tell us in the comments below.