Tips for that hangover

Article By: Bryony Whitehead

Are you going large over the New Year’s weekend? Here are some awesome hangover cures, remedies and preventative methods that will have you back in the game and remembering New Year’s Eve with fondness rather than with mild nausea.

The day after the night before…

Liquid and loads of it — drink water for rehydration and sugary drinks to up the electrolytes you would have lost through dehydration.

Avoid caffeine! You better believe it. Coffee and tea are a no-go zone as they, just like alcohol, are diuretic. This means they dehydrate you. Not exactly the best way to recover from a hangover.

Raw cabbage. Seriously. Apparently cabbage is really great for soothing headaches. Try chomping on some raw. Or if you can’t stomach that idea, give sauerkraut juice a try. Add a bit of the vinegary juice from the bottle to some tomato juice and drink.

If the thought of putting anything cabbage-like in your stomach intensifies your nausea, then make a cabbage leaf compress to treat your headache instead. Just crush a couple of leaves, lay them out nicely on your forehead and let it do the rest.

Apparently ginger soothes nausea, so if you can manage it, grate some fresh ginger and infuse it with some hot water. Failing that, make sure you have some ginger tea bags in your cupboard ready to work its magic.

That slap up eggs and bacon breakfast. Any good meal forced down on a hangover is a good idea. It helps your body to work out all those toxins you’ve gone and poisoned it with and hydrates you too. (We won’t mention that actually getting up and moving to make the breakfast can speed up your recovery…).

Here’s a scenario for you: you wake up after only a few hours of sleep feeling really horrible. You’re possibly even still a little drunk. Haul yourself up and throw yourself in the nearest swimming pool or get those running shoes on and go for a slow run-walk. Exercise is a great way to work out the last remnants of alcohol left n your system and will have you feeling bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and guilt-free for the rest of the day.

Prevention is better than cure, or so ‘they’ say…

Anyway, if it were up to ‘them’, I suppose they’d suggest abstinence from alcohol as the best preventative method. But who are we kidding? Not drinking on New Year’s Eve is like taking a deep breath and burying your head in beach sand for half an hour. Not possible. Not much fun.

So. What about minimising your alcohol intake? We all know how that goes. The old ‘I’ll just have two drinks’ story never actually turns out that way on New Year’s Eve. With that in mind, here are some old wives (amongst others) tales that will make sure you are right and ready for a night on the town.

Rule number one: Don’t drink on an empty stomach! And while we’re at it, try to stick to one type of alcohol. White wine is better than red when it comes to the impact it has on you the day after, while carbonated alcohol is believed to get you drunk faster and sweetened alcohol can be the fatal ingredient that gets you indulging in more alcohol than you realise.

To stop you craving an alcoholic beverage, drink a Virgin Bloody Mary with tons of lemon juice. The tang is worth savouring, it’s got loads of Vitamin C which will give your liver the kickstart it needs to process alcohol and it’s a great stomach liner too.

Take a probiotic supplement a few hours before to help restore the flora balance in your stomach. This will help your system to manage the alcohol and rich foods you indulge in.

American Indians eat raw almonds before drinking, believing that it helps prevent intoxication. This is probably because almonds contain all the good stuff that helps counter the effects of alcohol: potassium and traces of B Vitamins.

Before you go out drinking, reach over to your Vitamin stock and gulp down Vitamin B6 and B12 along with a large glass of water. Apparently, these can help you bounce back quicker, But be careful not to take too much of it too often as over- use has been related to nerve damage. Just follow the instructions on the bottle.

And there you have it! Enjoy your New Year celebrations.