“Hangover symptoms usually begin about 8 to 16 hours after drinking and can last many hours,” says John Brick, PhD. Depending on your biology, you may get one or many of the physical symptoms that come with a hangover—fatigue, headache, thirst, dizziness, stomach upset, nausea, vomiting, insomnia, high or low blood pressure, sensitivity to light, and shaky hands. Some people also experience psychological symptoms in the form of anxiety, depression, remorse, or difficulty concentrating. Try these hangover cures to restore the balance and feel better after drinking.
Get Some Pain Relief
A headache is almost always a part of the package that goes with a hangover, and good old-fashioned aspirin may be your best bet at relief, says Brick. Avoid nonaspirin pain relievers that contain acetaminophen. Combining acetaminophen with the alcohol that’s still in your system can wreak havoc on your liver. And if you regularly have more than 3 drinks a day, talk with your doctor to see which pain reliever is best for you. Aspirin may cause stomach bleeding in some people.
Replenish Those Lost Fluids
Alcohol increases urination by inhibiting a hormone that regulates the kidneys. “Alcohol causes dehydration of your body cells,” says Brick. “Drinking plenty of water before you go to bed and again when you get up the morning after may help relieve discomfort caused by dehydration.” The Institute of Medicine advises that men should consume roughly 3.0 liters (about 13 cups) of total beverages a day and women should consume 2.2 liters (about 9 cups) of total beverages a day.
Eat
Alcohol metabolism depletes blood sugar, leaving you weak and shaky. Plus, many people forget to eat when they drink, further lowering blood sugar. A balanced meal will gently boost levels back to normal, says Kenneth Blum, PhD. Try these healing foods:
Eggs provide protein to help stabilize blood sugar, while the cystine in protein may help break down toxins.Toast furnishes fast fuel from carbohydrates to ease fatigue and soothe the tummy.Bananas replenish potassium for muscle function.
Here are 11 more hangover foods.
Sip A Sports Drink
Sometimes water just isn’t enough. Sports drinks such as Gatorade replenish the electrolyte—sodium, potassium, and chloride—levels in your body and help relieve that weak, shaky feeling. Want quicker relief? Drink it at room temperature; cold liquids are more difficult for your body to absorb.
Take B-Complex Vitamins
Drinking drains the body of these valuable vitamins. Research shows that your system turns to B vitamins when it is under stress—and overtaxing the body with too much booze, beer, or wine definitely qualifies as stress, says Blum. Replenishing your body with a B-complex vitamin can help shorten the duration of your hangover.
Eat Amino Acids
Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. Like vitamins and minerals, they can be depleted by alcohol. Replenishing amino acids plays a role in repairing the ravages of a hangover, says Blum. Eating some carbohydrates will help get amino acids back into the bloodstream. Amino acids are also available in capsule or liquid form at most health food stores. MORE: Your Body On A Hangover (Infographic)
Drink Fruit Juice
“Fruit juice contains a form of sugar called fructose, which helps the body burn alcohol faster,” explains Seymour Diamond, MD. A large glass of orange juice or tomato juice will help accelerate removal of the alcohol still in your system the morning after.
Try Crackers And Honey
Honey is a very concentrated source of fructose, and eating a little the next morning will help your body flush out whatever alcohol remains, says Diamond. The crackers are just the delivery system for the honey.
Bark Back
Willow bark is a natural alternative if you’d prefer an organic pain reliever, according to Blum. “It contains a natural form of salicylate, the active ingredient in aspirin,” he says and suggests taking it in capsule form.
Drink Some Broth
Eating a clear broth made from bouillon cubes or a homemade soup broth will help replace the salt and potassium that your body loses when you drink, Diamond says.
Cut Your Coffee In Half
Since alcohol generally causes the blood vessels in the brain to swell, and caffeine constricts blood vessels, having a cup of java may help. “On the other hand, too much caffeine may sensitize an already-frazzled nervous system,” says Brick. Also, coffee is a diuretic, so it may make you more dehydrated. Limit your coffee (or tea) to half of your normal intake.
Let Time Heal
The best and only foolproof hangover cure is 24 hours. Treat your symptoms as best you can. Get a good night’s sleep, and the next day, hopefully, your hangover is history.
How A Doctor Handles A Hangover
There is no single magic hangover cure, but here are Brick’s recomendations for a potentially better morning after your night out:
Drink less—preventing a hangover is 99.9% of the cure. Consume a glass of water between drinks. Drink as much water as you comfortably can before you go to sleep. Take a multivitamin with Gatorade before you hit the shower in the morning to replenish lost vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Eat a bowl of fruit with honey poured over it for breakfast. Bananas are great, but avoid citrus. Continue drinking a 50-50 mixture of water and Gatorade to hydrate your cells.
MORE: 6 Natural Fixes For A Hangover
How To Avoid A Hangover
A 2008 study in the journal Addiction found that 25 to 30% of people don’t seem to get hangovers regardless of what they drink—but the fact remains that most of us do suffer when we overindulge. “There’s good evidence emerging that the chief cause of hangover is acute withdrawal from alcohol,” says Mack Mitchell, MD. “The cells in your brain physically change in response to the alcohol’s presence, and when the alcohol’s gone—when your body’s burned it up—you go through withdrawal until those cells get used to doing without the alcohol.” Couple that with the effects alcohol has on the blood vessels in your head (they can swell significantly, depending on the amount you drink), and you end up living through a day after that you’d rather forget. So how do you avoid it all? Drink slowly. The slower you drink, the less alcohol reaches the brain—even though you may actually drink more over the long haul. The reason, according to Mitchell, is simple math: Your body burns alcohol at a fixed pace—about 1 ounce an hour. Give it more time to burn that alcohol, and less reaches your blood and brain. Drink on a full stomach. “This is probably the single best thing you can do besides drinking less to reduce the severity of a hangover,” Mitchell says. “Food slows the absorption of alcohol, and the slower you absorb it, the less alcohol actually reaches the brain.” The kind of food you eat doesn’t matter much. Avoid the bubbly. That doesn’t mean just champagne. Anything with bubbles in it—and a rum-and-Coke is just as bad as champagne—is a special hazard, say Blum and Mitchell. The bubbles move the booze into your bloodstream much more quickly. Your liver tries to keep up but can’t, and the overflow of alcohol pours into your bloodstream. Drink the right drinks. What you drink can play a major role in what your head feels like the next morning, according to Blum. The chief villains are congeners. “Congeners are other kinds of alcohols (ethanol is what gets you drunk) found in essentially all alcoholic beverages,” Blum says. “How they work isn’t known, but they’re closely related to the amount of pain you experience after drinking.” The least perilous concoction is vodka. The most perilous are cognacs, brandies, whiskeys, and champagnes of all kinds. Red wine is also bad, but for a different reason. It contains tyramine, a histamine-like substance that produces a killer headache. Anyone who’s spent an evening entertained by a bottle of red wine knows what we’re talking about. Prickly pear cactus preemptive. Researchers at Tulane University found drinkers who took two capsules of an extract of prickly pear cactus 5 hours before imbibing had 50% fewer hangover symptoms than those who popped a placebo. One theory is that compounds in prickly pear cactus boost the body’s production of heat-shock proteins, which limit inflammation caused by overimbibing. Be size sensitive. With few exceptions, there’s no way a 110-pounder can go one-on-one with a 250-pound drinker and wake up the winner. So scale down your drinks. To come out even, the 110-pounder can handle about half the alcohol of the 250-pounder. Have an alka-seltzer cocktail at bedtime. “There’s no hard scientific data on this, but my own clinical experience and that of a lot of others says that water and Alka-Seltzer before going to bed can make your hangover much less of a problem,” says Brick. Others claim that 2 aspirin tablets (which is really Alka-Seltzer without the fizz) can also help.
Panel Of Advisors
Kenneth Blum, PhD, is a retired professor of pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio and former director of the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse. He is also the president of Synaptamine, Inc. in San Diego. John Brick, PhD, is a fellow in the American Psychological Association and former chief of research in the division of education and training at the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in Piscataway. He is now the executive director of Intoxikon International in Yardley, Pennsylvania. Seymour Diamond, MD, is director and founder of the Diamond Headache Clinic and the Inpatient Headache Unit at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago. He is executive chair and founder of the National Headache Foundation and has written several books on headaches. Mack Mitchell, MD, is president of the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation in Baltimore, director of gastroenterology at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, and an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
