If you’re hoping to avoid the dreaded ‘hangxiety’ over the festive period, you might have to avoid drinking a popular Christmas tipple.
Being consumed by a feeling of uneasiness while intermittently running to the bathroom to throw up just isn’t very merry at all, is it?
So even though it might pain you, it might be best to swerve certain alcoholic beverages over the next few weeks so that you don’t miss out on any holiday fun.
First things first, for those who have never been struck down by a crippling bout of hangxiety, let us fill you in on what it is.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that it’s a combination of the words ‘hangover‘ and ‘anxiety‘, which when put together, make quite the formidable duo.
People often spend the day after a big night out feeling worried, on edge, irritable and unable to relax – while also dealing with the physical side effects of boozing.
You might have a banging headache, feel nauseous, or find yourself sweating and shaking as your body tries to expel all of the loopy juice you drank the night before.
Now just imagine going through this hellish ordeal while your nearest and dearest are calling round to drop off presents – or god forbid, if it happened on the Big Day itself.
According to this expert, drinking certain types of alcohol puts you at a higher risk of being plagued by hangxiety the following day.
Although all booze is going to do its fair share of damage, Lisa Gunn says that drinking one specific beverage is simply asking for trouble over the festive season.
To start off, the Mental Health Prevention Lead, who works for Nuffield Health, explained how hangxiety works.
“Alcohol is a depressant that can initially produce a calming effect,” she told HuffPost UK.
“When this wears off, we typically see a rebound effect where anxiety levels spike.
“This is partly because alcohol disrupts the balance of neurotransmitters and chemical messengers in the brain.”
This disruption affects the GABA chemical in your brain – which relaxes you – and decreases it, so you will feel more excited and anxious.
So, now all the science stuff is out of the way, what drinks put you in danger of being doomed to a day of hangxiety?
Gunn explained that although ‘different drinks react differently in different people’, there are a few tipples which are known troublemakers.
But it seems that for the most part, the higher the alcohol percentage of the booze you are supping, the worse you will feel the next day.
Drinking spirits can spike your blood alcohol level, Gunn said, which ‘can lead to more pronounced rebound anxiety’ the next morning.
But it’s the red wine you really need to watch out for over Christmas.
It’s an alcoholic beverage which we often gift to our family and friends over the holidays, while also being very hard to resist when a bottle of it is popped open at a soirée.
Some people reckon a full-bodied bottle of plonk is the perfect thing to wash down a turkey dinner with too, so it’s always flying about in December.
But because red wine contains tyramine and histamines – which are biogenic amines that are commonly found in foods – it can often leave boozers feeling very rough.
Gunn said that these components ‘make red wine more likely to trigger anxiety in susceptible people’.
She also warned people to be wary of how many cocktails they sip, as the sugary drinks often cause your blood alcohol and blood sugar to rise and fall throughout the night.
However, you will be glad to hear there are some drinks which don’t come with a hangxiety disclaimer, though.
Brits can happily chug down beer and lager, as their low alcohol content means you can guzzle them over a longer period of time.
Gunn says this can ‘help with rebound anxiety’, as you aren’t experiencing as many highs and lows, like you do with other tipples.
But at the end of the day, the mental health expert says it all still comes down to ‘how much we consume’.
So eat, drink and be merry – just dodge spirits and red wine like the plague if you want to have an hangxiety-free holiday.
