Table of Contents
Top 5 Hangover Cures
A headache is a common and annoying symptom of a hangover. Hangovers happen mostly due to dehydration. Alcohol is a diuretic. In simple terms, drinking booze makes you pee more, and will cause dehydration. When your body is dehydrated, your brain can shrink slightly, which can cause headaches and other negative symptoms. Alcohol can cause blood vessels in your brain to expand and then contract, which can lead to headaches. How do you cure a hangover? It’s difficult because your body is already processing the alcohol. We’ll look at thinking about how to cure a hangover, but the most effective option is to take steps ahead of time to avoid the hangover altogether.
1. Eat before drinking
Sounds simple, right? Eating a meal before drinking can slow down the absorption of alcohol and help prevent a hangover. Foods high in protein and healthy fats, like eggs, steak, and avocado, can be particularly helpful. These types of foods take longer for your body to digest and can help slow down the absorption of alcohol.
2. Drink electrolytes with your water
A high quality electrolyte drink like PREGAME can be the difference between a miserable Sunday morning, and feeling amazing. Drinking a ton of water is essential to hangover prevention, but to really ensure you become hydrated you need to consume electrolytes. Electrolytes are minerals that have a positive or negative charge when they dissolve in water. They help to create an electrical charge that is essential for many of the body’s functions such as regulating fluids, sending messages between cells, and contracting muscles. The most important electrolytes are:
- Sodium – Sodium is an essential electrolyte in the body that helps to maintain fluid balance and support bodily functions. Sodium ions carry a positive charge and are present in the body’s fluids, including blood plasma and extracellular fluid.
- Potassium – Potassium works as an electrolyte by carrying a positive charge and creating an electrical gradient across cell membranes. It is essential for many bodily functions, including nerve and muscle function and fluid balance regulation.
Both of these electrolytes, as well as other nutrients helpful in avoiding a hangover are found in PREGAME.
3. Get some sleep the night before
We all know that getting enough sleep is great, but if you go into a night of hard drinking already tired, you’re going to have a bad time. Sleep is delicate. Sleeping while drunk means your body is getting lower quality sleep, and not reviving your energy as well. That’s why it’s so important to go into a night of drinking when you’re already well rested. You can’t “catch up on sleep” when you’re drunk, so your best bet is to call it an early night the night before.
4. Exercise regularly (or at least the day before drinking)
Working out makes you strong, and you’re going to need that strength if you expect your body to process a ton of alcohol. Aside from building muscle and keeping you generally healthy, exercise helps prevent a hangover in a few others ways:
- Liver Health – Exercise helps to improve liver function, which is important in breaking down and eliminating alcohol from the body.
- Metabolism – Physical activity like lifting weights and running increases metabolism, which can help to speed up the process of alcohol metabolism and elimination from the body.
- Reducing Inflammation – Hangovers can cause inflammation in the body, leading to symptoms such as a killer headache and muscle soreness. Regular exercise and weight lifting can help to reduce inflammation in the body, which can in turn help to prevent or alleviate hangover symptoms.
5. Burnt Toast
Burnt toast? The idea behind this strange hangover cure method is that the charred carbon in the toast acts as a filter that can absorb impurities and toxins in the body, including those produced by alcohol. Activated carbon, which is similar to the carbon in burnt toast, has been shown to be effective in absorbing toxins in the body. That said, there isn’t much scientific evidence to support this method. Lucky for you, the placebo effect is real, and maybe burning your morning toast will be enough to help you push past that monster hangover!
Final Thoughts
The most effective way to avoid a hangover is to prepare ahead of time, by eating a high protein meal before drinking, drinking water and electrolytes like sodium and potassium, getting a good night’s sleep, and exercising regularly. There are COUNTLESS home brewed hangover cure and hangover prevention solutions out there. Reddit is notorious for users sharing some crazy hangover cure ideas, some of them even too farfetched to try. There are also entire subreddits dedicated to curing and preventing hangovers like /r/CureHangover. In the end it always comes down to eating right, drinking electrolytes, and getting a good night of sleep.
