Are there preventions and cures?

Christmas is a time for celebration and no doubt a time when many of us will shamefully drink too much alcohol, leaving us with the dreaded hangover the next morning. What was fun the night before has now left a feeling of not being well and perhaps a bit of depression. Of course, if we were all sensible we would avoid hangovers by not drinking at all, but for those of us who like to drink, where would be the fun in that? Not that most of us need an excuse such as Christmas to drink too much.

One thing that is very important to remember is, if you have had a lot of alcohol the night before and you feel hung-over, you may still have high amounts in your blood and it may be dangerous to drive or operate heavy machinery. Hangovers are also known to have social as well as health costs and employers lose thousands of work hours every year to staff who take sick days, or whose work performance is affected, due to hangovers.

I now have some tips to keep you feeling bright and breezy the morning after the night before and they start with prevention rather than cure. The obvious one is not to drink too much. However, the others are to eat lots before you go out
and only on this occasion, a fatty meal can be beneficial, as fat is digested slowly, and will protect the stomach from the irritating effects of alcohol. Milk has also been recommended in the past to line the stomach and likewise to the fatty meal, a glass of fatty milk slows down the absorption of alcohol.

When you are out avoid certain drinks, usually drinks such as red wine, brandy, and port as they can cause more severe hangovers. Have some soft drinks too.
If you have a non-fizzy soft drink or water between each alcoholic tipple, you'll drink less booze and ultimately have a less severe hangover. Then there are Fizzy drinks, which do help to speed up the amount of alcohol going into the bloodstream. The main thing is alcohol is very dehydrating and as this is the main cause of a hangover headache, if you drink some water between alcoholic drinks, you'll be more hydrated and less likely to wake up with a splitting headache.

Then when you get home, drink a pint of water before you go to bed, or even some orange juice, because the vitamin C speeds up the metabolism of the alcohol by the liver and eat something to settle your stomach and increase your blood sugar level.

If you still wake up with a hangover, there are many so called remedies but one of the best is still the good old fry up; eggs and meat are rich in the amino acid, cysteine, which is thought to be good at clearing out toxins.

There are also products on the market that if you take them, they help you put back all of the minerals you have lost and some of them seem to work quite well, Resolve is a good one.

Some of the others such as the hair of the dog and caffeine do appear to work in the short time, but you have a hangover mainly because you have been dehydrated and as both of those will dehydrate you further, they are only short term cures.