When our body needs to release these glucose reserves the acidic content in blood stream increases causing metabolic acidosis which is a cause of heart palpitations hangover.
What is a hangover itself?
The term hangover is widely used to express the condition of alcohol abuse after consuming large amounts of alcoholic drinks. A hangover includes lots of signs and symptoms: headache, thirst, vomiting, diarrhea, irritability, muscle ache, anxiety etc and usually lasts several hours or more than 24 hours.
Hangover is the experience you go through while your body is in the process of cleaning itself from the alcohol. During this time our organism is suffering from a smaller amount of alcohol and is trying to completely clean all of it. Hangover happens when blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is falling and it starts several hours after drinking and may last more than 24 hours.
To understand better what a hangover is let’s make clear some other words that express excessive alcohol use:
Binge drinker is a person that drinks large amounts of alcohol a couple of times per week and in higher doses than someone normally can take.
Someone that drinks too much alcohol or takes it too often but is not addicted to it is alcohol abusing.
Alcohol addiction or dependence (alcoholism) is the stage when one has physical addiction to alcohol and can’t stay without drinking. It is chronic and progressive which means a strong desire to drink more and more often.
Withdrawal happens when someone addicted stops drinking or reduces the intake of drink. When this happens withdrawal symptoms appear like nausea, hallucinations, tremors, sweating and irritability.
A hangover is what happens after everybody gets drunk and a withdrawal happens when the addicted person tries to stay sober. Hangover episodes are more common in light to moderate users than chronic to heavy drinkers.
Alcohol influences in all body and heart as well. Heart palpitations hangover are a side effect that alcohol gives in your heart. Heart is very sensitive to acetaldehyde produced by ethanol metabolism.
There are some other situations that are not related to alcohol but they are similar with a hangover for example: migraine, flush in ALDH deficiency, electrolyte imbalance, pneumonia, early stage of meningitis, folate and vitamin B1 deficiency. If you drink alcohol after taking disulfiram you may experience headache and nausea due to drug interaction.
Most of the hangovers are young people and is more related to stress or just as a lifestyle component.
How hangover causes heart palpitation?
Alcoholic drinks contain ethanol. In large amounts in blood it can be toxic for your body. Alcohol can be used as a source of energy by our body and it is metabolized faster than glucose.
This makes the glucose to be stored and alcohol is first used to produce energy. This is why the regular drinker are usually over-weighted because the reserved glucose turns to fat.
When our body needs to release these glucose stores the acidic content in blood stream increases causing metabolic acidosis which is a cause of heart palpitations hangover.
You experience a rapid heartbeat because of alcohol and is the most common cause of all palpitations that happen during night. Alcohol is one leading cause of death from heart disease. It makes your heart muscle weaker and leads to some diseases like high blood pressure, heart failure and stroke. It increases the blood triglycerides and as it makes gaining extra weight the obesity itself is a risk factor for heart disease.
One other mechanism of causing heart palpitation hangover is due to the dilated peripheral blood system like skin vessels which causes a drop in blood pressure that influences the heart to beat faster and thus causing palpitations. It is a kind of reflex from the heart to keep the blood pressure normal. Huge alcohol intake increases the risk of developing hypertension. When chronic it may be permanently increased but in severe poisoning it may fall in a life-threatening way.
Arrhythmia and palpitations are often presented to drinkers. They are called holiday heart syndrome when they happen in inexperienced and healthy drinkers 24 hours after occasionally drinking in weekend or holiday.
Alcohol may worsen arrhythmia and increase the risk of atrial fibrillation. Chronic users may develop alcoholic cardiomyopathy and palpitations are one of the symptoms.
Due to irregular heart rhythm one can have sudden death. It may happen when combing alcohol with cocaine or because alcohol cardiomyopathy. After withdrawal it happens because of reduced magnesium levels.
Alcohol triggers heart palpitations because it is a risk of developing arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation and supra-ventricular tachycardia.
Heart Palpitations Hangover Treatment
Treatment of heart palpitations hangover is mostly preventive which means you must avoid drinking alcohol. It makes your body sick and helps other diseases progress faster.
You can take actions to improve the hangover symptoms but you must know that you can’t go ever it with a pill or something else you just need to give your body enough time to get cleaned from ethanol.
Some may believe that alcohol helps your heart stay healthy. It is wrong. This is not the alcohol merit. This positive effect is given just by an antioxidant found in red wine called resveratrol and yes antioxidants are good for your heart and generally health.
Avoid acetaminophen (paracetamol) because it is toxic for the liver when taken with alcohol or after drinking.
Managing heart palpitations hangover depends on what kind of drinker are you, if you have or not previous heart diseases or other related health problems, if you have taken or not drugs before, during or after drinking. If the situation can’t be self-managed especially if you have previous heart diseases please go to the doctor. The situation will be managed according the symptoms and other circumstances.
Alcohol is a danger for all your body so it must be carefully used. Moderate drinking which means drinking small amount and rarely is not a problem for your body but if your doctor has advised not to drink at all don’t do it.
Heart palpitations during a hangover must be well valued because the person may have palpitations from a different cause from alcohol. Maybe that person had a drink but is not drunk so alcohol blood levels must be seen and proved that there are no cardiac or other causes of palpitations.