Wine Headaches
Written By: Brian Freedman on Tue, May 26th 2009
Rule number one: Don't drink too much. And rule number two: If you do, take a few aspirin with a glass of water before you go to bed. Aside from that, there's little you can do to avoid wine-related (or other-alcohol-related) headaches.
And contrary to popular belief, most headaches are not from sulfites in wine: Very few people actually have an allergy to the sulfur dioxide that winemakers have been adding to their wine for hundreds of years. (They add it, incidentally, because it helps preserve the unfermented grape juice and stave off certain bacteria in the bottle that could otherwise damage the finished product; it's not some insidious plot by the sulfur and food-preservative industry to kill us all.)
Rather, your headache is likely from the aforementioned dehydration (or, you know, hangover), or from the histamine that's naturally present in grape skins (which is where red wines get their color). In fact, many people get a bit of a stuffy nose when drinking too much red; there's a good chance that this is the result of a similar mechanism as seasonal allergies.
Whatever you do, don't take allergy medication when drinking wine: That's a recipe for disaster. Just drink in moderation, pair it with plenty of water, and for heaven's sake, never have wine on an empty stomach: That's just begging for a rough morning-after.
