Waking up with a throbbing headache, queasy stomach, and feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck? You, my friend, have a hangover. Hangovers are your body’s vengeful payback for overindulging in alcohol the night before.
While there’s no instant cure for a hangover, there are plenty of research-backed ways to ease your suffering and recover faster when you’ve had one too many. This article will arm you with a battle plan to minimize hangover misery. Read on to learn simple lifestyle tweaks, what to eat and drink, supplements to take, and more tips that can help you bounce back ASAP the morning after a night of drinking.
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What Exactly Is a Hangover?
Alcohol throws off the delicate balance of chemicals in your body. As the liver works overtime to break down alcohol (a toxin), you’re left depleted of water, electrolytes, and vitamins. Other effects like disrupted sleep and inflammation only make you feel worse. Common hangover symptoms include:
– Fatigue and weakness
– Headaches and muscle aches
– Nausea, vomiting, or stomach pain
– Dizziness
– Increased sensitivity to light and sound
– Rapid heartbeat
– Anxiety or irritability
– Brain fog, drowsiness
Alcohol can also trigger inflammatory molecules and histamines, causing more symptoms like flushing and drops in blood sugar. Talk about a perfect storm making you miserable!
Lifestyle Tweaks for Faster Hangover Recovery
While you can’t shortcuts your way out of a hangover entirely, making a few simple lifestyle adjustments can help minimize your suffering.
Rehydrate ASAP
Dehydration from alcohol is a huge contributor to wretched hangovers. As soon as you awaken, start replenishing lost fluids and electrolytes immediately. Water is a good place to start for rehydration. Some quick water rehab ideas:
– Drink a full glass of water at room temperature. Gulping it down too fast can upset your stomach.
– Add a pinch of sea salt and sugar to your water. This helps replenish sodium and glucose lost to all that peeing from alcohol diuresis.
– Sip on coconut water or an electrolyte sports drink. The potassium and magnesium in these beverages also aid rehydration.
– Eat hydrating fruits with a high water content like cucumber, watermelon, grapes, and oranges to boost fluid levels. Their antioxidants can lessen alcohol-related inflammation too.
Pop Some Pain Relievers
Over-the-counter meds like acetaminophen (Tylenol) or NSAIDs such as ibuprofen (Advil) and naproxen (Aleve) can relieve your headache, muscle aches, and pain. Avoid mixing NSAIDs with alcohol, which could further irritate the stomach. Note that meds treat hangover symptoms but don’t speed the removal of lingering alcohol from your system.Read more here https://iv-kirill-yurovskiy.co.uk/
Get Moving
We know – exercise is probably the last thing you want to think about with a raging hangover. But a little physical activity accelerates recovery in a few key ways:
– Increases circulation, helping tissues heal from inflammation
– Promotes sweating to flush out toxins
– Releases endorphin hormones to relieve pain
– Boosts feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine to improve mood
Even 10-15 minutes of gentle yoga, walking, or stretching can make a difference. Just go slowly and avoid strenuous workouts that may worsen nausea or dehydration.
Score Some Extra Zzzzzs
Alcohol sabotages precious sleep in two ways – by acting as a sedative initially while disrupting normal sleep architecture later at night. The end result? Fitful, poor-quality sleep that magnifies hangover misery. Going back to bed for a one- to two-hour snooze lets your brain “hit the reset button” so you awaken feeling less foggy and fatigued.
Set Yourself Up for Success
Once you’ve emerged from under the covers, make a few simple tweaks to set yourself up for optimal hangover recovery:
- Draw the blinds if light is aggravating symptoms
- Stick to cool, dimly lit rooms to minimize headaches
- Wear sunglasses indoors and out if your eyes are sensitive
- Listen to soothing music and meditate to dial down stress
- Unplug from digital devices and limit screen time
- Clear your calendar as much as possible – this is NOT the day to host brunch!
The Best Hangover-Busting Foods and Drinks
What you eat and drink plays a starring role in easing hangover misery faster. Follow these diet dos and don’ts:
Skip Greasy Food
It may be tempting to grab a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich to settle your stomach. But fatty foods are harder to digest, meaning they linger in your already upset GI tract. This can worsen nausea and diarrhea from alcohol-related stomach inflammation. Choose gentler options instead.
Hydrate with Broths, Juices, and Smoothies
Sip on broth-based soups, fresh juices, electrolyte drinks, smoothies, and coconut water to replenish fluids, vitamins, antioxidants and electrolyte losses. Bananas, berries, pineapple, honeydew, spinach, kale and yogurt provide potassium, vitamin C, fiber and protein. Blend them into smoothies or snack on them whole.
Opt for Bananas and Rice
The BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) contains bland, binding foods ideal for calming diarrhea and reducing nausea. Complex carbs also help boost low blood sugar. Oats, crackers, and potatoes can help settle your stomach too.
Load Up On Eggs and Avocado
Eggs are rich in cysteine, an amino acid that helps your liver break down acetaldehyde, the yucky toxin behind hangovers. Eggs also pack protein, zinc and vitamin A to aid recovery. Pair them with avocado’s healthy fats, vitamin E, folate and potassium for extra replenishment.
Brew Some Ginger or Chamomile Tea
Ginger acts as a potent anti-inflammatory and anti nausea agent by soothing your GI tract. Chamomile boasts antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory benefits ideal for easing stomach woes too. Sip on ginger lemon honey tea or chamomile lavender tea to calm your cranky stomach.
Reach for Tart Cherry Juice
Tart cherry juice contains antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds shown to minimize post-workout muscle pain and damage. Early evidence suggests it may also reduce hangover symptoms. Enjoy an eight-ounce glass daily or try tart cherry juice capsules.
Supplement Your Way to Relief
Certain supplements show promise in shortening the duration of hangovers and relieving symptoms like nausea, headaches and fatigue. Try the following next time you overdo it:
Digestive Enzymes
Alcohol metabolism byproducts irritate your GI tract, causing nausea and stomach pain characteristic of hangovers. Proteolytic enzymes like bromelain, papain, trypsin and chymotrypsin help break down these GI irritants while reducing inflammation. Look for combination enzyme supplements to amplify relief.
Milk Thistle
Milk thistle boosts production of glutathione, a potent antioxidant that supports liver function and helps flush alcohol toxins from your system sooner. Standardized milk thistle extracts may be especially useful for minimizing liver damage and hangover length.
Vitamins
B Vitamins – thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pyridoxine (B6) and cobalamin (B12) – get depleted with heavy drinking. Replenishing B vitamins can help restore cell function and energy levels post-hangover. Multivitamins and B Complex help fill any gaps.
Medicinal Herbs
Several medicinal herbs like ginger, artichoke, dandelion, turmeric and milk thistle relieve inflammation and support detoxification pathways to speed recovery:
– Ginger: Powerful anti-inflammatory and stomach soother
– Artichoke: Protects liver cells and aids toxin clearance
– Dandelion: Diuretic that may relieve fluid retention
– Turmeric: Anti-inflammatory that likely eases headaches/nausea
– Milk thistle: Antioxidant that enhances liver detoxification
Probiotics
Heavy alcohol consumption disrupts healthy gut flora balance, compromising your gut barrier and immune function. This allows nasty endotoxins to leak into your system, provoking more inflammation. Probiotic supplements enhance good bacteria levels to restore GI equilibrium and shield against alcohol’s wrath. Choose multi-strain formulas with 5-10 billion CFU for optimal support.
The Takeaway
While no magical cure erases hangovers, tweaking your lifestyle habits, diet, hydration, and supplements can help minimize suffering the morning after overindulging. Pay attention to what works best for your body – you may find certain home remedies or supplements more effective than others at relieving your go-to symptoms.
And remember, the #1 way to prevent hangovers is avoiding heavy alcohol consumption in the first place. But if you do decide to imbibe heavily, arm yourself with these quick-recovery tips so you can get on with your day despite a rough morning. Here’s to feeling your best!
