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Food and Drink
9 Jun 2005 13:16

Eat, drink (water), and be merry in the morning

The end of exams is a favoured time for excessive amounts of drinking. While your mother, the government and the police will never condone getting legless, you can help your body to forgive you in the morning with a sensible drinking plan.

Drunken people
Disgraceful behaviour.

Hangovers can completely incapacitate you, giving you an upset stomach, a huge headache, and a mouth that taste like the bottom of a birdcage. What fun is that?

The cause of a hangover

Consuming large volumes of alcohol causes by-products in your body, in particular a nasty chemical called acetaldehyde. Research suggests that this chemical may be responsible for the worst of your hangover.

After you ingest alcohol, your body breaks it down into, among other things, acetaldehyde, before converting it into less harmful substances. The acetaldehyde messes with your brain, while depleted minerals short-circuit your nervous system, and that's in addition to low blood sugar and the classic headache-and-dry-mouth symptoms caused by dehydration. The result: nausea, twitchy nerves, unpleasantness, pessimism, terrible headaches and dizziness.

The severity of a hangover varies according to the amount you've drunk in a given period of time, your age, and your body's ability to breakdown the poisons. Basically, the more you drink in a short amount of time, the more you'll feel the alcohol and the older you get, the more you'll feel the effects the next morning.

Don't go out on an empty stomach

"Soaking up the alcohol with food" or "lining your stomach" are classic tips that hit the nail on the head. Food is important as it soaks up some of the alcohol instead of allowing it to travel, uninterrupted, into your bloodstream.

If you want to minimise the after effects of a night out, start with a starch-based meal packed with essential minerals and vitamins - a large jacket potato with fresh vegetables is ideal. This will slow down the absorption of alcohol in your blood and reduce the depletion of vitamins and minerals. Also, take a multivitamin.

Hydrate your body

Every glass of water your drink before you go out is worth two in the morning. Alcohol acts as a diuretic and quickly leads to dehydration and a reduction in electrolytes. Top up your fluid levels to maximum most importantly before, but also during and after.

Choose your booze with care

Poisonous chemicals called congeners occur naturally in all fermented drinks. The general rule is that darker drinks, such as red wine, bourbon, scotch and brandy have more congeners than lighter drinks such as white wine, vodka, and gin. Avoid cheap red wine, which contains an extra hangover-inducing poison called tyramine.

Alternate alcoholic beverages with non-alcoholic beverages

This simple measure will help keep you hydrated. A fruit juice, which is particularly good at rehydrating the body, is a good choice.

Consume less than one drink per hour

Experts say that your liver breaks down alcohol at the rate of about a beer an hour, so spreading out the drinking over the course of an evening will lessen the likelihood of a hangover. Well, you could try...

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