We all love to party, but when you do overdo it, you’ll pay for last night’s sins the next morning via a raging hangover. Avoid it with these 9 tips.
Whether you’re drinking it up with your buddies at your favorite watering hole or chatting with your date over a bottle of wine, there’s always going to the that lingering thought: if you have one drink too many, you’ll wake up with a throbbing headache that will register on any Richter Scale.
Hangovers are the bane of a drinkers’ existence. They jolt you awake with a dry mouth, a near-migraine, and the temptation to never have an alcoholic beverage ever again. But you sure weren’t considering this when you were downing your fifth tequila shot the night before. Is there really a surefire way to avoid hangovers?
How to prevent a hangover
It’s not the number of drinks you have, but what you do while drinking that determines if you’ll wake up with the hangover of the century. Here are some tried-and-tested tips to put the hangover blues at bay.
#1 Don’t drink. The end.
… Just kidding. Kind of.
#2 Drink water between each alcoholic drink. Hangovers are, largely, caused by dehydration. Your body sucks water out of the cells to help eliminate the toxins *alcohol* from your system. That is why you pee so much when you drink.
If you can avoid dehydration, you are halfway to avoiding a hangover altogether. The easiest way to do this is to simply alternate every alcoholic drink with a glass of water. The other option is to have a few drinks to get a buzz, and then switch to water… but that depends on how much self-control you have and how addictive you find alcohol.
On top of this, chug a couple of glasses of pure water before going to bed, and have some ready for the morning, as you will wake up a little dehydrated, even if you were drinking water the night before.
#3 Drink quality alcohol and clear drinks; avoid crappy mixers and stick to the same drink. Cheap alcohol will always give you terrible hangovers. It is less pure and is generally full of crap that your body doesn’t like. This goes for mixers, too. If you are adding a load of cola on top of alcohol, you are just putting more chemicals in your body that it has to get rid of.
Drink quality alcohol, with minimal mixers or with soda water. Clear alcohol is generally cleaner *and lower in calories* than dark alcohol–but a high-quality whiskey will be better than cheap gin, so choose quality if you can afford it.
Another commonly-given tip is to stick to one type of drink all night. Honestly, I’m not sure there is any scientific reason as to why this is better. But, from personal experience, things do start to get a whole lot worse when you start mixing all sorts of different drinks together.
#4 Drink vegetable juice. Your poor kidneys and liver have to process the alcohol, which is a poison, and whatever chemicals and sugar are in the mixers you may be drinking. You want to support them in every way possible.
One way is to give them the raw nutrients that they need to work efficiently. This is most easily done with vegetable juice before you start drinking and the following day after your first glass of water. Greens, along with beets, are the best for packing a nutritional punch full of the specific nutrients your liver uses to detoxify the body.
#5 Eat a protein-filled or fatty meal before drinking. Call it “lining your stomach” if you’d like, but having a good meal before you start drinking will definitely help avoid a hangover. It slows the absorption of alcohol, which will keep you from getting blackout drunk and making a show of yourself, but will also help with the subsequent hangover.
Protein and fats are best, because they are digested and released into the bloodstream slowly. The temptation after you have had a drink will be to eat greasy, carbohydrate-laden junk food–and it is probably better than not eating anything, hangover-wise. Being prepared and having a proper meal in advance is always a better idea.
#6 Sweat it out at the gym/sauna/steam room. When alcohol is in your blood stream, your body needs to get rid of it. It will detoxify through the liver, which has many channels of excretion. You will go to the toilet a lot naturally, anyway, but two things that you can take control of are sweating and breathing. Both of these are strong detoxifiers.
Hit the gym to get your breathing rate up for half an hour and sweat it out. Follow that up with the sauna or steam room to increase sweating even further, and, for a double whammy, practice deep breathing while you are in there. If you’re really feeling fragile, you might want to just hit the sauna or steam room, especially if you can’t face working out. No problem–it still works! [Read: 25 inspirational tips to get motivated and work out]
DISCLAIMER: Make sure you hydrate well. You will already be dehydrated from the alcohol, and working out or sitting in the sauna or steam room for a long time is only going to make it worse. Drink plenty of water before, during, and after, and consider using a rehydration powder in your water to recover lost salts and minerals. Be sensible and stay safe.
#7 Take a nap or go back to sleep the next day. You don’t sleep very well after drinking. Even if you pass out and are dead to the world for a number of hours, you are never really in a deep sleep.
Sleep cycles go through different phases: light sleep, deep sleep, and REM *rapid eye movement* sleep. When you consume alcohol, you tend to stay in the light sleep phase and do not make it into the REM cycles, which is where most recovery and regeneration happens. This is why you can wake up still feeling exhausted, even after 6-8 hours of sleep.
Getting up, drinking some water, maybe doing some exercise or heading to the steam room to detoxify some of the alcohol, and then going back to bed for a power nap will result in better-quality sleep. The extra 45 minutes of naptime will leave you feeling much more refreshed than the previous 8 hours of sleep did!
#8 Support the liver with supplements. Specifically, milk thistle helps the liver detoxify, and if you cannot get a vegetable juice, a greens powder in water will do the job almost as well. Without the raw materials, the organs cannot do their job properly, so make sure you are giving them what they need.
#9 Take an aspirin and chow down some fiber before drinking. Excessive alcohol causes the blood vessels to dilate, and this is why you get a headache when you’re hungover. Taking an aspirin before you start drinking will help ward this off, as it has the opposite effect and opens the blood vessels, allowing better blood flow and avoiding high blood pressure. Of course, be sensible and do not make a habit of this–you shouldn’t be drinking to excess often enough for it to become a problem, anyway.
If you have a headache the next day, you might want to take an aspirin in your water first thing in the morning. This should relieve the headache, which will make you feel better, and you will be more likely to get up and shake the hangover off completely.
The final recommendation is to take a fiber supplement before you start drinking. Fiber binds to waste products and takes them through the body for excretion–essentially, it “keeps you regular.” You will need to eliminate the alcohol from your system, and by taking a fiber supplement before drinking, it ensures you have all of the materials in place, ready to help your body excrete the toxins.
[Read: 14 surefire ways to keep it classy at a party]
These are 9 of the best ways to avoid a raging hangover and bounce back after a night of heavy drinking. Enjoy!
