What causes harder or softer hangovers?

[prrriiide]

Don't forget that when you drink and go to the can a lot, you are losing substantial amounts of sodium, potassium, and other minerals and electrolytes in the urine. Part of getting past a hangover is replacing those substances. In addition to water both before sleep and after waking (sometimes in between depending on the size of the bender) and asprin/ibuprofen, I drink a 12 oz. can of V8 with a multivitamin. If there's one in the house, I'll also choke down a banana. That helps, but the only REAL cure for a hangover is time.

As I have gotten older, I realize that Hank Williams Jr. was right:
hangovers hurt more than they used to.

 

[JefeTheVol]

One of the biggest problems for the 'hangover experiment' is blinding of the participants. Its very difficult to have two populations of potential subjects experience a hangover under both experimental and controlled conditions. Because, as many of us know, we have all had many different classes of hangovers. Obviously there is a metabolite(s) of alcoholic beverages that's the culprit but to limit that to just one parameter is too nearsighted to be plausible. So in conclusion, two of the biggest challenges to finding the biochemical origin to hangovers is objectivity and double blinding.
-Jefe-