How To Deal With A Hangover
We’ve all been there. Had one to many and wake up with a horrible headache and queasy stomach. Hangovers are no fun. Hopefully you won’t have one come Monday, but if you do, there are ways to cope. Here at RBS, our first though is Bradley Cooper’s sunglasses in The Hangover. But there are other ways to deal with a hangover. And this Caveman has helpfully rounded them up for you!
Prevention
Of course, the best way to deal with a hangover is not to have one in the first place. There are ways to ward-off a hangover or at least lessen it.
1. Eat first. Food in your stomach helps to dilute the concentration of alcohol in your stomach. Feeling full will also help you to slow down drinking.
2. Drink LOTS of water. Alcohol dehydrates the body, so begin and end your night with plenty of water. For every alcoholic drink you have, match it with two glasses of water. This is and easy trick to use to keep you from feeling like crap the next morning.
3. Be choosy with your drink. Try to stay away from sugary or carbonated drinks; they speed up the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream. Drink clear liquors over colored one. Darker alcohol like bourbon or red wine contains more congeners, a substance that can contribute to hangovers.
4. Take your meds. Before drinking, take multivitamins which will prepare the body for the depletion of vitamins caused by frequent urination(aka alcohol makes you pee a lot). Before bed, take two aspirin with a full glass of water. The prostaglandin inhibitors in the aspirin can decrease the severity of the hangover.
5. Moderation! Limit yourself to one drink per hour because that’s about how long the body take to process a single drink.
Treatment
OK, it’s 7am, and you officially hate life right now. Don’t worry! While there’s no magic hangover potion, there are steps you can take to feel human again.
1. Take your meds part 2. Take two aspirin with a full glass of water. This has been shown to minimize headaches as well as decrease inflammation from leftover prostaglandin.
2. Take another multivitamin. You need to get rid of the toxins in the body and especially taking vitamins C and B will help.
3. EAT! You need to eat a breakfast to replenish everything you’ve lost drinking. You’ll want to eat a meal that includes eggs (for the cysteine), a banana (for the potassium) and fruit juice (for the fructose) or a sports drink (for the electrolytes, sugars and salts. The cysteine in the eggs breaks down the hangover-causing toxin acetaldehyde. You want the banana since you lost potassium due to alcohol’s diuretic effect. You need potassium for proper cell function. Fructose helps to increase the body’s energy and the rate it gets rid of toxins. The sports drink will help rehydrate you. The reason you have that headache? Dehydration! Alcohol causes the body to expel about four times the amount of liquid it has gain. For example if you drink 200 milliliters of alcohol, you’ll pee out about 800. Thus you’re dehydrated. Dehydration causes the body’s organs try to make up for their own water loss by stealing water from the brain, causing the brain to decrease in size and pull on the membranes that connect the brain to the skull, resulting in pain. And thus the headache! So sip that sports drink!
4. No coffee! Coffee is a diuretic as well and will dehydrate you more. The caffeine in coffee is also a vasoconstrictor; it constricts your blood vessels and elevates blood pressure which will make you feel even worse.
5. Grab your favorite hangover glasses! We all love Bradley Cooper’s shades in The Hangover, but they really didn’t conceal anything. So put on your darkest sunglasses to hide the bags under your eyes. If anyone asks tell them that those are you hangover glasses. What are hangover glasses? Well, they’re for after a night like that you will need to wear a pair of sunglasses to deal with the reality that it is so bright outside that it feels like your face is melting off. That’s what hangover glasses are.
Ultimately, it’s only time that will cure you of a hangover. So if you really can’t move without wanting to puke, don’t feel bad about pulling up the covers and going back to bed. Be safe this weekend Rockheads and have fun!