Why vegans or vegetarian eaters get the worst symptoms of a hangover than meat-eaters?
Posted on: 03/Jan/2020 10:03:56 AM
Drinking has become so common these days and both vegans, as well as meat-eaters, love to drink. The hangover is one issue people suffer after drinking heavily and it is said that this issue barely spares anyone who drinks alcohol.
Eating vegetarian foods or being vegan has many advantages like improved health, good for the environment etc. There is however one disadvantage of being vegans or eating vegetarian foods.
It has been revealed by some studies that vegans suffer more severe symptoms of a hangover when compared to the non-vegetarians.
Some Dutch research scientists belonging to Utrecht University did experiments on 13 social drinkers. For 23 hangover symptoms, these 13 social drinkers were analysed first in control settings. Here the social drinkers abstained from drinking on a given night.
In the next set of experiments, the participants went out drinking on the night and they were monitored for hangover issues like headache, palpitations, nausea, sweating, dizziness, thirst and sensitivity to light/sound etc. During the study, the participants were asked to record whatever they ate.
It is important to mention here that people with low zinc and vitamin B3 fared the worst on the test parameters. Those who vomited had zinc deficiency and intensification of hangover symptoms was found in those with low vitamin B3. Animal products like meat, poultry, fish, shellfish etc mostly had zinc and vitamin B3 (nicotinic acid).
The researchers concluded that those vegans and vegetarian eaters who had low zinc and low vitamin B3 were more vulnerable to hangovers.
It was later mentioned by Rabia De LaTour, MD gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at NYU Langone Health, that to break ethanol to acetaldehyde zinc as well as nicotinic acid were needed. These 2 nutrients were needed to digest alcohol. It is clear that those without these two nutrients would experience the worst hangover.
