ne of the biggest myths about drinking is the phrase ‘hair of the dog.’ In essence it means that drinking more alcohol after a night out will cure hangover symptoms. What’s actually going on here is the alcohol gets you drunk again, making the symptoms of your hangover appear to dissipate. But this method doesn’t do anything to address the lack of nutrients in the body causing unpleasant symptoms like dizziness, fuzziness, headaches and nausea.
Hangovers can be nursed using much better and healthier methods than hair of the dog. In reality, there is no one hangover cure or magic elixir that will make all the symptoms go away. Like anything strenuous, you need to treat your body like it’s recovering and feed it healthy solutions that will replenish the energy and nutrients you’ve lost. Skip hair of the dog, check out these much better and much healthier solutions to help with your hangover symptoms:
- Hangover drinks
- Sleep it off
- Breakfast
- Hydrate with electrolytes
- Ratio while drinking
1. Hangover Drinks
If you’re a fan of a night out, you’ve probably heard of a hangover drink. A hangover drink is a shot-sized drink packed with vitamins, nutrients and electrolytes designed to replenish fluids and help your body recover. These drinks are meant to be taken before and/or after a night of drinking before bed. A hangover drink will help your body replenish fluids and will certainly make your morning less unpleasant, but is not an all out cure. The effectiveness of a hangover drink will depend on how much you drank, how much food you ate and how much water you drank throughout the night. Again, there is no magic cure for hangovers, it just comes down to how you take care of your body during and after your nights out.
2. Sleep It Off
The best tried and true method for kicking hangover symptoms is simply just sleep. Drinking elevates a lot of things in our body. Alcohol is both a stimulant and a depressant, so when people go out drinking for long periods of the night they are taking their bodies on a consistent up and down journey. This puts a lot of stress on the body and will likely make for a poor night's sleep. If you wake up on the weekend feeling those familiar symptoms of headaches, body aches and fuzziness, consider hydrating and getting more rest.
3. Breakfast
It may take a little while to feel hungry after waking up after drinking, but there are a few light things you can eat for your body upon waking up that will help curb some of the symptoms. Breakfast is key, and things like orange and apples juices, yogurt, proteins and toast will replenish nutrients you lost the night before. One of the reasons hangovers get so bad is a lack of food before going out to drink, so if that’s the case make sure you eat a healthy breakfast the day after.
4. Hydrate With Electrolytes
Water, juice and drinks packed with electrolytes are your friend the day after a night of heavy drinking. Just like a hangover drink, fluids will help your body bounce back and recover from your evening out. Delivery services these days allow you to order all kinds of convenient store items like mineral water and electrolyte drinks. Of course water on its own will do wonders for a hangover, but electrolytes will give you the extra push your body needs to start feeling better.
5. Ratio While Drinking
Something one can do while out drinking is practicing observing the ratio between alcoholic drinks and water throughout the night. Many find that the one-to-one ration helps them pace themselves throughout the night while taking steps to stay hydrated. This is probably the best thing you can aside from eating food or abstaining to prevent severe hangovers the next day. Alcohol dehydrates us, but if we combat that with consistent hydration, the effects can even out. Especially if you are tending to drink lighter drinks like white wines, clear liquors or light beer. Heavy and dark drinks like red wines and whiskeys are said to give worse hangovers, although the jury is still out on whether that’s true or not.
Conclusion
With hangovers, our bodies need to recover and replenish lost fluids and rebalance by eating healthy meals. This is especially true if the person out drinking hasn’t had enough to eat before they go out. In general, fluids packed with nutrients, electrolytes and vitamins are the best way to deal with hangover symptoms during and after a night of drinking. Remember that there is no cure for hangovers other than simply not drinking, but you can alleviate some symptoms by taking necessary steps to take care of yourself after the fact.
