While we tend to associate hangovers with drinking, the symptoms can affect you without having consumed any alcohol.
Hangovers are terrible. Hundreds of wellness companies have looked for ways of curing their symptoms, developing home remedies and medications claiming to limit the potency of hangovers or prevent them from happening. So far, Â none have truly succeeded.
Hangovers are also hard to explain. While we know that they occur when we consume too much alcohol, sometimes this isn’t the case. It isn’t uncommon for people who’ve only had a drink or two to experience powerful symptoms of hangovers the following day, even though they never got drunk. Sometimes, you don’t even need to have consumed alcohol to experience what feels like a hangover.  Rather, it is what you haven’t drank and are now dehydrated.
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The symptoms of a hangover vary from person to person, but the most pressing ones tend to be headaches, tiredness, an upset stomach and nausea. While there’s a lot of stuff to account for when consuming alcohol, like the level of sugar in these drinks and sleep quality, this cluster of symptoms is associated with dehydration.
Since alcohol is a diuretic, it makes you pee more often, thus, facilitating this process. “Mild dehydration can lead to brain confusion, fatigue, dizziness and irritability,” professor Christen Cupples Cooper tells Bustle.
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Waking up with a hangover after a night of no drinking is uncommon but completely possible. There’s not much you can do to make yourself feel better after this has already happened, except to hydrate and wait it out, but there are a few things you can do in order to prevent this.
Whether you’re drinking alcohol or not, be sure to drink plenty of water throughout your day. This habit will get easier the more you do it and will provide you with other health benefits, such as a more functioning digestive system, higher levels of energy and motivation, and even clearer skin.
