Is this scenario familiar? After a fun night out with your friends, imbibing too many alcoholic drinks at the bar or club, you wake up with a pounding headache, dry mouth, and an upset stomach, the typical symptoms of a hangover. All you want to do is stay in bed all day, but you know you can’t. The morning after can be a real bear, but luckily, there are a few things you can do to bounce back more quickly.
Before drinking
Before you go to a party, have a small steamed bun or sandwich and then drink some milk. Make sure you follow that sequence because that ensures the carbohydrates and the protein completely combine to form a membrane to protect the stomach lining.
While drinking
Sipping water alongside alcoholic drinks can help dilute the alcohol and balance the number of drinks you have. The water also helps you to flush the alcohol out of the body and support the detoxification of the liver, and that reduces the side effects of alcohol more quickly.
Drinking hot broth as part of a Chinese meal makes you sweat, which helps the skin to get the alcohol out of your body. Frequent trips to the bathroom from the diuretic effects of alcohol leeches minerals such as potassium and sodium from the body. Hot broth can replenish the minerals and help you recover your energy.
Drinking hot broth as part of a Chinese meal makes you sweat, which helps the skin to get the alcohol out of your body and relieve your hangover. (Image: via Flickr)
After drinking
Excessive alcohol can cause dizziness, nausea, headaches, and a sick feeling in one’s stomach — all symptoms of a hangover. These drinks can relieve some of the discomforts, but can’t dispel the symptoms of your hangover altogether.
Fresh orange juice contains fruit sugars and vitamin C to help the detoxing process, as well as water that the body needs to replenish what has been lost.
Eating a peeled radish or drinking green vegetable juice that includes radish can stop heartburn and quicken the discharge of acetaldehyde, an irritant chemical produced in the metabolism of alcohol.
Fresh tomato juice enhances the breakdown of alcohol by stimulating liver activity that promotes detoxification and reduces the negative effects of alcohol.
Thick rice soup contains polysaccharides and vitamin B complex, which are good for reducing the effects of a hangover. Adding a bit of sugar to the soup improves the results.
Honey contains polysaccharides and minerals that help detoxify the liver — it also tastes nice.
Excessive alcohol can cause dizziness, nausea, headaches, and a sick feeling in one’s stomach, what you would call a hangover. (Image: Marcos Calvo Mesa via Dreamstime)
But why drink?
Modern studies have shown that alcohol has a variety of adverse effects. A small amount of alcohol can calm the mind. Excessive use can cause memory loss, attention span, and coordination problems, as well as emotional response issues.
Alcohol is a vasodilating agent that can make blood vessels expand. It triggers the face to flush and the skin to dissipate heat, which causes energy loss. In the long run, it can result in nervous system injury and neuropathy.
Chronic heavy drinking causes great damage to the liver, resulting in complications like fibrosis and cirrhosis, and disabling the liver to properly filter, detoxify, and metabolize.
Excessive drinking can cause acute gastritis. Long-term drinking can lead to more serious chronic gastritis and gastric ulcers, which can be fatal.
The heart is vulnerable to the negative effects of alcohol consumption, from early symptoms like high blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat, to long-term consequences of cardiomyopathy, stroke, and sudden cardiac death.
Alcohol suppresses the activity of the central nervous system and can result in respiratory depression. It also leads to a rapid drop in blood sugar that can be dangerous to the brain or even fatal.
Translated by Cecilia and edited by Helen
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