What a hangover can teach you about the mind-body connection
By Paul Bolger. Chartered Physiotherapist at Nano Physiotherapy, Kilkenny (www.nanophysio.ie).
Nobody is quite themselves when they are hungover. If you’re anything like me, your thoughts and behaviours change. This is a great example of the mind-body connection at work – showing us that mind and body operate together in an inseparable way.
Thoughts & Emotions
If I’m badly hungover my thoughts can get drawn into worry and insecurity. Things that aren’t a problem on normal days become imminent and terrifying. Insecurities flood to the surface and I’m convinced that I may well be a pretty awful person after all. Regrets from the past rise to the surface, and memory of personal achievements wither away out of sight.
Thankfully these thoughts and emotions, like all things in life, are temporary and they pass. Why are they so powerful during a hangover?
The Body’s Response
Excessive consumption of alcohol affects your body in so many ways.
Dehydration affects the function of all organs. Inflammatory chemicals and immune system activity rise. Acetaldehyde, a toxic byproduct of alcohol breakdown, accumulates. Sleep quality has been badly interfered with. The balance of the gut microbiome (the trillions of living bacteria and other microscopic organisms living in your intestines) is thrown off. Chemicals in the brain, like serotonin and dopamine which affect mood and motivation, are depleted.
Essentially, your body is working overtime to deal with toxin removal, dehydration, inflammation, poor sleep, and metabolic stress.
The Mind’s Reaction
While the body is under such strain, mood, emotions and thoughts change in response.
Brain function is hindered. Brain chemistry alterations may push a person into a more anxious and depressed state. Body-wide inflammation can do this too – with increased immune system activity making us want to rest and isolate ourselves.
All of this can impact on behaviour – our actions are influenced by the emotions we feel and the thoughts running through our minds.
Taking It Up a Gear
So, the changes that we see within the body as it tries to cope with excessive levels of alcohol lead to changes in how we feel, think and, subsequently, how we behave. Often, we then take this a step further.
If we get drawn into a negative thought spiral, this can further affect the biology within us. A negative thought or memory takes hold, and you run over it again and again in your mind’s eye. This process affects your body – causing increased activity in regions of your brain associated with pain, rejection and fear. Signals from your brain cause the release of chemical messengers into your bloodstream (hormones) that tell your adrenal glands to release stress hormones. This stress response causes changes to your body’s functions – like raising heart rate, increasing blood sugar levels and impairing healing.
The hangover example is a pretty negative example of this mind-body relationship. There are so many more positive examples – such as how laughter, community and spending time with good friends affect these same systems in the body. We will explore this next week.
Thankfully, even the worst hangovers pass. We promise never to drink again (or at least we will do things differently next time!). One good thing to take from a hangover is the lesson that the processes of body and mind are inseparable and involved in an ongoing, multi-directional relationship.
