How to Cure a Hangover

After drinking too much alcohol the body is dehydrated. There are the aches and pains and the shaking from the physical hangover and then there is the mental hangover and nervousness.

In order to cure the hangover, you have to replenish your body and also get the alcohol out of your body. The liver is trying hard to cleanse you but it also needs help.

Tips to cure a hangover and feel better quicker

• Drink plenty of water. Most likely you will at first feel very thirsty, but after a while you won’t, so keep forcing yourself to drink water. To help prevent a bad hangover the next morning, drink 2 to 3 glassed of water before going to bed.
• Eat lightly, do not eat a big or heavy meal, the digesting of that will just make you feel worse.
• Take a good multiple-vitamin and or a B-complex vitamin. The B vitamin will help you with the shaking and the nervous feeling.
• Sweat out the alcohol. If you can handle it do some exercise like riding a stationary bike until you sweat or a steam bath or just make yourself a hot bath, or just sit in the sun if it’s a hot day. Sweat out the toxins that are making you feel bad in the first place.
• Potassium can make me feel much better. Make a smoothie that has a lot of potassium in it, with bananas and strawberries and yogurt.
• Aspirin for the headache, it is not advisable to take Tylenol for hangovers, prolonged use of Tylenol (or any acetaminophen) and alcohol can cause liver damage. I would go easy on any type of aspirin since it can make your stomach hurt worse.
• Another drink, this isn’t the best thing since most likely you have to go somewhere with a hangover, like work. But the old saying some of the dog that bit you does work since the reason your body feels so bad is because it needs more alcohol, but drinking to get rid of a hangover is just prolonging the inevitable hangover.
• A sport drink with electrolytes in it, this will replenish your kidneys. A drink I found to work very well is called Pedialyte, which has a good amount of electrolytes in it. Sometimes a drink with some sugar can also help.
• Yogurt has the good bacteria in it that will heal your stomach, since the alcohol will kill the good bacteria. You can put some high-quality yogurt in the potassium smoothie.
• Rest and time is sometimes the only cure for a hangover.

Different types of alcohol can make a hangover worse than other types of alcohol. Mixing sweet drinks with alcohol, like coke and rum, can make a hangover much worse. Having a drink of water in between drinks can help you keep your body hydrated while drinking. Eat some food before and or during drinking alcohol, as this will help the alcohol be absorbed more instead of directly into your liver. Try not to eat foods high in saturated fat though, try to eat leaner foods.

Potassium smoothie to cure a hangover

In a blender, mix:

• A banana
• Some strawberries and they can be the frozen kind.
• Some good quality yogurt.
• About 8 ounces of orange juice
• Sometimes I mix in some protein powder, usually the soy kind as well.

This drink is very refreshing, has a lot of vitamins and plenty of potassium to help your body recover from the alcohol and cure your hangover so you can feel better quicker. If you did not drink much alcohol and still feel terrible, you could be allergic to alcohol.

Sam Montana © 10 December 2008

Alcohol - medicine interaction chart