Hangover
Hangover
18 Ways to Deal with the Day After
It's a beautiful morning, and you just can't take it anymore.
The sparrows singing outside the window sound like nuclear-powered vultures cawing through loudspeakers, and all that golden sunlight streaming through the skylight feels like acid on your eyes—you're sure they're melting.
You are—regrettably, maybe immorally, definitely avoidably, but absolutely certainly—hung over. And the big question is: What can you do about it?
Unfortunately, not a whole lot. There is no one thing that cures a hangover except time. But there are a few things you can do to relieve the symptoms—the headache, nausea, and fatigue—so you can get through the day after as painlessly as possible.
Drink fruit juice. "Fruit juice contains a form of sugar called fructose, which helps the body burn alcohol faster," explains Seymour Diamond, M.D., director of the Diamond Headache Clinic in Chicago, Illinois. A large glass of orange juice or tomato juice, in other words, will help accelerate removal of the alcohol still in your system the morning after.
Eat crackers and honey. Honey is a very concentrated source of fructose, and eating a little the morning after is another way to help your body flush out whatever alcohol remains, says Dr. Diamond.
Get some pain relief. A headache is invariably a part of the package that goes with a hangover. "You can take aspirin, acetaminophen, or ibuprofen but you don't want anything stronger," Dr. Diamond says. "With more potent pain relievers, you run the risk of habituation, and you don't want the first problem to start another problem."
Drinking Affects Next-Day Performance You're a hearty party person, but it's no problem—it doesn't matter how much you drink, you always wake up feeling just fine. If you agree with this self-assessment, beware. Feeling fine doesn't mean you're really fine, according to a study performed at Stanford University in cooperation with the U.S. Navy. The Stanford team took a close look at Navy pilots who fly P-3 subchasers. Using P-3 simulators, they evaluated the pilots' flying skills when stone-cold sober and 14 hours after drinking enough to get legally drunk. The result: "Pilots who said they felt absolutely fine and in whom we couldn't find even a trace of alcohol still couldn't fly as well as they did during times they were off alcohol completely," says Von Lierer, Ph.D., director of research and owner of Decision Systems, a research and development firm in Stanford, California. The meaning for your life? Sand in the system is still sand in the system, even when you don't know it's there. "If you've got an important business meeting the next day, a key presentation you've got to give—any situation where you need peak performance—I wouldn't drink the night before," Dr. Lierer says. But pilots aren't the only ones in peril from hangover aftereffects. Ground-bound drivers suffer the same deterioration of performance, according to a Swedish study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Swedish researchers tested 22 volunteers on a pylon-marked test course using—what else?—a Volvo station wagon. At unpredictable intervals, they received a signal that meant they were to swerve the car right and left around the pylons. Braking time and number of pylons hit were used as measures of driving ability. Nineteen of the 22 volunteers scored significantly worse as a result of being hung over. |
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Bark back. Willow bark is a natural alternative if you'd like an organic pain reliever, according to Kenneth Blum, Ph.D., chief of the Addictive Diseases Division at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio. "It contains a natural form of salicylate, the active ingredient in aspirin, which is released as you chew it," Dr. Blum says.
Drink bouillon. Broth made from bouillon cubes or any homemade soup broth will help replace the salt and potassium your body loses when you drink, Dr. Diamond says.
Replenish your water supply. "Alcohol causes dehydration of your body cells," says John Brick, Ph.D., chief of research at the Center of Alcohol Studies of Rutgers State University of New Jersey. "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."
Take B-complex vitamins. Drinking drains the body of these valuable vitamins. Research shows 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 Dr. Blum. Replenishing your body with a B-complex vitamin capsule can help shorten the duration of your hangover.
How to Avoid a Hangover A hangover once is a hangover never wanted again. But it doesn't mean that you have to give up alcohol altogether to have a fun night out turn into a feel-good day after. "There's good evidence emerging that the chief cause of hangover is acute withdrawal from alcohol," says Mack Mitchell, M.D., vice president of the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland, and assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. "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 more slowly you drink, the less alcohol actually reaches the brain—even though you may actually drink more over the long haul. The reason, according to Dr. Mitchell, is simple math: Your body burns alcohol at a fixed pace—about an 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," Dr. 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. Drink the right drinks. What you drink can play a major role in what your head feels like the next morning, according to Kenneth Blum, Ph.D. The chief villains are congeners. "Congeners are other kinds of alcohols (ethanol is what gets you drunk) found in essentially all alcoholic beverages," Dr. 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, whiskies, 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. Avoid the bubbly. And that doesn't mean just champagne. Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Blum agree. Anything with bubbles in it (and a rum and Coke is just as bad as champagne) is a special hazard. The bubbles put 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. You'll know exactly how much the morning after. 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 John Brick, Ph.D. Others claim that two aspirin tablets (which is really Alka-Seltzer without the fizz) can also help. |
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Eat amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. Like vitamins and minerals, they can also be depleted by use of alcohol. Dr. Blum says that replenishing amino acids plays a role in repairing the ravages of a hangover. Eating a small amount of carbohydrates will help get amino acids back in the bloodstream. Amino acids are also available in capsule form at most health food stores.
Have two cups of coffee. "The coffee acts as a vasoconstrictor—something that reduces the swelling of blood vessels that causes headache," Dr. Diamond says. "A couple of cups can do a great deal to relieve the headaches associated with hangovers." But don't drink too much. You don't need coffee jitters on top of the alcohol jitters.
Eat a good meal. If you can tolerate it, that is. A balanced meal will replace the loss of essential nutrients, explains Dr. Blum. But keep the meal light; no fats or fried foods.
Let time heal. The best and only foolproof cure for a hangover, of course, is 24 hours. Treat your symptoms as best you can. Get a good night's sleep and the next day—hopefully—all will be forgotten.
PANEL OF ADVISORS
Kenneth Blum, Ph.D., is chief of the Addictive Diseases Division of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio.
John Brick, Ph.D., is chief of research in the Division of Education and Training at Rutgers State University of New Jersey's Center of Alcohol Studies in Piscataway, New Jersey.
Seymour Diamond, M.D., is director of the Diamond Headache Clinic and the inpatient headache unit at Louis A. Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. He also is executive director of the National Headache Foundation. He has co-written several books on headaches.
Van Lierer, Ph.D., is director of research and owner of Decision Systems, a research and development firm in Stanford, California. He is a former cognitive psychologist at Stanford University.
Mack Mitchell, M.D., is a vice president of the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland, and assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University there.
