Sunday mornings are a sad sight on college campuses. Nobody is awake before 10am, except for those still coming home from the night before. When students finally do decide to drag themselves out of bed, they trudge into the dining hall, holding their heads and shielding their eyes from the sun, in hopes that eating some food will get rid of their horrible hangover. Hangovers are possibly the number one ailment of young adults, and are sometimes referred to as an evil curse. But what actually causes one's body to become "hungover?"

Antidiuretic hormone, or ADH, is a hormone produced in the hypothalamus. This hormone is secreted into the kidneys and makes the collecting duct (a tube in the kidney that carries urine to the bladder) more water soluble, meaning that water can be transported out of the tube and back into the kidney before ever reaching the bladder.

ADH is normally regulated by the hydration of a person in an effort to conserve water, but alcohol kind of screws this up. Regardless of whether or not a person is fully hydrated or on the brink of dehydration, the consumption of alcohol slows down the release of this hormone -- causing the collecting duct to become insoluble to water, and therefore releases no water back into the kidneys causing the person drinking to need to pee a lot. All of the water that was supposed to be reabsorbed back into the kidneys is instead expelled from the body. When somebody drinks a beer, they actually end up losing more fluid from drinking it than they gain, draining their bodies of water. When they body wakes up in the morning, all the symptoms a person is feeling are no more complex than the person simply being dehydrated from all this water loss.

Water is essential to the human body, they are unable to carry out any functions without it. So next time to plan on going out, make sure you drink as much water as possible so you don't have to spend the entirety of the next morning searching for magical hangover "cures" on the internet.