Why Alcohol Causes Headaches Exactly why does drinking alcohol result in a pounding headache later?
The majority of the blame for hangovers lies in ethanol, a liquid that results from the process of fermenting the sugar and starch found in grains. While ethanol is mostly used to make alcohol, is it also used to produce gasoline? There are several ways that ethanol can cause a post alcohol headache. First, ethanol is the direct cause of vasodilatation, a condition in which the blood vessels expand, resulting in a pounding head. Also, ethanol is a natural diuretic, which makes your body lose water, vitamins, minerals and salt. When your body realizes it is becoming dehydrated and losing needed nutrients, it diverts the blood supply that would normally feed your limbs and skin to the major organs like your heart and brain. This is actually a survival mechanism on the part of your body in an attempt to prevent death. However, the resulting unusually large supply of blood in the vessels in your brain causes these vessels to enlarge and dilate. The end result of this survival mechanism is
