Yes, alcohol can dehydrate you.
Alcohol is a diuretic. It causes your body to remove fluids from your blood through your renal system, which includes the kidneys, ureters, and bladder, at a much quicker rate than other liquids.
If you don't drink enough water with alcohol, you can become dehydrated quickly.
So what can you do to make sure you don't get that infamous hangover headache caused by dehydration? Let's find out and get a little background on why alcohol dehydrates you in the first place.
Here are some ways that alcohol affects your body, and some reasons you may become dehydrated more quickly:
After you take a drink, both the liquid and alcohol contents of the beverage pass through your stomach lining and small intestine into the bloodstream.
If you drink on an empty stomach, alcohol can be absorbed into the bloodstream within minutes. But if you drink water or eat while you consume alcohol, it may take much longer.
After it enters your bloodstream, alcohol can travel anywhere in your body. This includes your brain, which is why you feel loopy and your judgement is impaired when you're buzzed or drunk.
Alcohol can even get into the lungs and be released when you exhale. This is why breathalyzers are often used to check if someone's driving while intoxicated. This test measures blood alcohol concentration (BAC), or the amount of alcohol in your blood.
Your body's metabolism can turn some components of alcohol into nutrients and energy. This happens at a rate of about one beer, a small glass of wine, or one shot of liquor per hour.
When its processed by enzymes in the liver, alcohol is converted into a large amount of acetaldehyde. This common substance can become toxic in high doses. In order to break this substance down and remove it from the body, your liver does most of the work of turning it into acetate.
Alcohol also reduces how much vasopressin your body makes. Vasopressin is an antidiuretic hormone. It causes the body to hold onto water, which typically limits how much urine your kidneys make.
The action of suppressing this hormone exacerbates the diuretic effect and leads to dehydration.
Acetate and other waste products are then removed from the body as carbon dioxide and water, primarily through lungs. Although the kidneys remove waste products, most of the water loss is due to the effect of vasopressin.
Water is flushed out much faster than alcohol is processed. This can increase your BAC significantly if you don't replenish your body's supply with a few sips of water as you drink.
If you consume more alcohol while your body is still processing your previous drinks, your BAC can rise quickly.
Curious what's going on in your body when you're dehydrated by alcohol? Here's a brief overview of what's happening:
Here are some science-backed tips for what to do if you're already dehydrated or hungover from consuming too much alcohol:
Before you go out for a night of drinking, here are some best practices for preventing the effects of dehydration while you're consuming alcohol:
The key to avoiding dehydration is to pay attention to how your body responds to alcohol.
Some people can tolerate a drink or two, or possibly more after consuming food or water. But others may start feeling the effects of alcohol after one drink or less. Many factors play a role in how your body processes alcohol, including:
Follow drinking behaviors that are best for you, not what everyone else is doing. And above all, limiting your alcohol consumption in general is the best way to avoid dehydration.
Having a few drinks can be fun, but feeling dehydrated or hungover is not. It's up to you to decide if the pleasures of alcohol are worth the potential next-day effects.