There’s a lot of benefits to going vegan.
It helps with weight loss, has the capacity to provide extra nutrients and is thought to improve kidney function and protect against certain types of cancers.
Heck, you can even chow down at Dominoes on their awesome vegan menu.
One thing you apparently can’t avoid, however, is a savage hangover, something that a recent study suggests is likely to be worse if you’ve gone completely meat and dairy-free.
According to a report in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, researchers in The Netherlands studied the effect of alcohol on 13 social drinkers and concluded that an animal-free diet is absent of some key anti-hangover ingredients.
Vegan participants generally lacked nicotinic acid, otherwise known as Vitamin B3 (prevalent in meats and fish), and zinc in their diets, and as a result, had more severe hangover effects.
“Nicotinic acid and Zinc are required to break ethanol, which is alcohol, down into acetaldehyde”, Rabia De LaTour, MD, gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at NYU Langone Health said to The New York Post when questioned about the study.
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You need these two nutrients to digest alcohol. It makes sense that if you’re lacking in it, you would experience a worse hangover.”
Despite these comments, De LaTour noted the small sample tested in the study, adding that “whether or not you can … package up a pill and tell people that if they take the pill before they drink they won’t get hangovers, I don’t think we’re there yet.”
Symptoms examined included headaches, nausea, heart palpitations, vomiting, dizziness, sweating, sensitivity to light, sound and thirst – thing’s we’ve all no doubt experienced in our time.