Scientists share theories on why some people are 'alcohol resistant' and never get hangovers

Scientists have explored the question of why some people seem able to drink a lot of alcohol and then not get a hangover.

There's always that one friend. You meet for a quiet drink, which then become several quiet drinks, then before you know it it's 3am and you're either dancing the night away or setting the world to rights in a dive bar.

Then comes the next morning - you wake up with a thumping headache, your mouth feeling like it's been brushed out with a skunk's tail, a horrid, swaying nausea in the pit of your stomach, and tormented by intermittent memories of tequila, blue cocktails, and karaoke.

You fully expect your friend, who drank more than you, to be face down over the toilet having turned a fetching shade of greyish-green.

Instead they swan in looking ready to run a marathon, leaving you dumbfounded with amazement and green with jealousy, well, not just green with jealousy.

According to science there is an actual term for this - 'hangover resistant'.

You'll pay for it tomorrow, unless of course, you won't (Iuliia Bondar/Getty)

Jonathan Howland is a professor emeritus at Boston University School of Medicine, and was a co-author on a paper that touched on this very topic back in 2008.

The paper had been investigating how drinking the night before impacted people's performance at work the next day, which sounds a bit like an excuse to go to the pub after work, but for science.

But surprisingly, the researchers working on the paper found that almost 25 percent of all the people they surveyed didn't get any hangover whatsoever, even after a night of heavy drinking.

So, the team pushed further, keeping participants at a specific blood alcohol level in lab conditions according to Damaris Rohsenow, who is a professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University and was involved in the experiment.

Participants were then monitored closely by scientists, and asked how they felt the following morning, including levels of nausea, headache.

Some people just don't get hangover, according to science (Kathrin Ziegler/Getty)

According to the New York Times, Dr Howland reported that 'it was the same number over and over again,' - around a quarter of people didn't get hungover at all.

Matthew Slater, 34, is one such person, telling the NYT that even after drinking a bottle of vodka he wakes up the following day absolutely fine.

He said: “Unless they know me, people don’t really believe me."

But why is this?

One theory is that it's something genetic, with people genetically disposed to metabolize alcohol faster having less severe hangovers, according to Ann-Kathrin Stock, who works as a neuroscientist at the Technical University of Dresden.

There's also the theory that a weaker immune system can lead to worse hangovers, because a stronger immune system means less inflammation, Dr Stock suggested.

However, there is a lot that we don't know about this.

One big factor is whether being resistant to hangovers makes people resistant to other health effects of alcohol as well.

There's also the question of whether avoiding hangovers makes people more likely to drink heavily.

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