The Best Way To Deal With A Hangover
Extra large, eye-twitch-inducing coffees. A little "hair of the dog." Water (obviously). These are just some of the common hangover "cures" you've probably heard of. You're an adult, and knowing your body's limits is a must. If you want the freedom to quaff booze and wake up headache-free the next day, you've got to know when to cut yourself off… or at least how deal with the problem in the morning.
This guide to hangover mitigation will help you avoid nasty next-morning nausea. Some of this advice hinges on a little foresight — our apologies if you're reading this with a hangover in-progress. We'll wait here while you go get a glass of water, okay?
Why Do You Feel So Bad?
Your Liver Can't Keep Up
The answer is more complicated than "alcohol is bad for you."1 Humans have tossed back drinks since the neolithic age, but today there are still competing hypothesis as to how hangovers manage to clobber us so thoroughly. The first piece of the puzzle has to do with your drink of choice, as Scientific American explains:
Chemicals formed during alcohol processing and maturation known as congeners increase the frequency and severity of hangover. Liquors such as brandy, wine, tequila, whiskey and other dark liquors containing congeners tend to produce severe hangovers, whereas clear liquors (such as white rum, vodka, and gin) cause hangovers less frequently.
Okay, so a fine sour mash bourbon could leave you feeling worse than well vodka. Congeners are just substances that contribute to your booze's identity inside the bottle — Scientific American also mentions acetaldehyde, a toxic compound formed while your liver's busy breaking down the alcohol in what you've imbibed.
While drinking at a leisurely pace, acetaldehyde is no big deal. As HowStuffWorks notes, an enzyme called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and an antioxidant called glutathione team up to break icky acetaldehyde down to harmless acetate. It's when you start to outpace your liver's natural processes that things become dicey:
Unfortunately, the liver's stores of glutathione quickly run out when larger amounts of alcohol enter the system. This causes the acetaldehyde to build up in the body as the liver creates more glutathione, leaving the toxin in the body for long periods of time. In studies that blocked the enzyme that breaks down acetaldehyde (acetaldehyde dehydrogenase) with a drug called Antabuse, designed to fight alcoholism, acetaldehyde toxicity resulted in headaches and vomiting so bad that even alcoholics were wary of their next drink.
Your liver can only make so much glutathione at a time, and withholding acetaldehyde dehydrogenase is a method for essentially classically conditioning against alcoholism. These both seem like reason enough to respect your liver. Drink in moderation, give your liver a chance to break down the acetaldehyde, and you're already on the way to a happier morning-after.
And You're Pissing Away Hydration
On top of toxins, there's alcohol's canny ability to sap your body of something very good: H2O. Even drinking 4% ABV beers will dehydrate you quicker than you can tape your cans into a wizard staff. Why is that?
Alcohol is a diuretic. In plain english, it's a substance that encourages urine production. In crude english, it makes you pee more. When you urinate, your body loses some water, and even small amounts of alcohol can make certain people have to use the bathroom a lot. Mental Floss details what's happening, chemically speaking, that causes your body to literally piss water away:
Part of what makes you pee so much while boozing is that alcohol inhibits arginine vasopressin, also known as antidiuretic hormone or ADH. ADH is made in the part of the brain called the hypothalamus, and then stored and released from the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. Its job is to conserve water in the body by reducing its loss in urine. It binds to receptors on the kidneys and promotes water reabsorption, a decrease in the volume of urine sent to the bladder, and excretion of more concentrated urine.
And you're still losing water even if you're not making trips to the bathroom. Inhibition of ADH is still lowering the amount of water your body reabsorbs. Holding it in doesn't mean you're more hydrated, you've just got a bladder full of diluted pee.
The worst hangover you've ever had probably wasn't due to any one thing. A mix of toxins, dehydration and lack of sleep (either from staying out late or sleeping poorly) combine like an evil version of Voltron to make you regret last night's poor decisions.
Pumping The Brakes
Let's say you're already a non-zero, positive number of sheets to the wind2, and in a flash of inebriated good thinking, you determine there's a very good chance you'll be hungover in the morning unless you do something right now. Let's also assume, for the sake of argument, that you aren't going to stop drinking, have some water, and go to bed. What's going to help you out?
Chow Down Early And Often
Eating something before, after, or while getting blotto might be your trusted first line of defense against a hangover, and you probably know how this is supposed to help. Food is supposed to slow the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream, and this is key — remember how important it is to give your liver time to breakdown the alcohol? Your body is pretty quick to absorb alcohol though, so as WebMD explains, eating after will help a lot less than eating before or while you're drinking:
"The alcohol is already in your body, so eating food or drinking water won't affect how it's absorbed," says Aaron White, PhD, senior advisor to the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. But if you eat a meal and have water while you're throwing back those cocktails, your hangover may not be as bad. "Having food in your stomach while drinking reduces how high your peak blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) gets by about a third," White says.
[WebMD]
That sizable reduction in peak BAC is reason enough to break for a snack in the middle of bar hopping instead of waiting 'til the end of the night. Also, eating something that includes multiple food groups3 should help recover some of the vitamins you evacuate thanks to alcohol's pee-encouraging properties.
Grease Isn't A Superfood
Before you chide your health-conscious drinking buddy for chowing down on a salad instead of a plate of bacon and eggs, put aside the idea that greasier food is superior as a hangover preventative. Yes, it can help, and it might satisfy a craving. But it's more important that you're eating, period. The Telegraph mentions that the amino acid cysteine can give you a boost, but it's far from exclusive to junk food:
Cysteine, an amino acid found in eggs, helps to break down acetaldehyde, effectively doing part of the job usually carried out by your long-suffering liver. There's no need to worry if you are vegetarian though – cysteine is also found in other common breakfast foods including oats and yoghurt. Bacon also contains amino acids – but the idea that greasy food in itself helps cure a hangover is misplaced.
Think about it this way — if you're already done drinking, you should eat if you need a meal. Otherwise, there's no guarantee it'll thwart a hangover, and junkier foods could exacerbate tummy trouble the next day.
Drink More Water And Less Alcohol
Yes, this advice can seem about as helpful as "don't drink and you won't get hangovers." Really though, you look about as good scoffing at water between drinks as you do writhing in bed or hunched over the toilet the next morning. Let's be clear: water consumed during or after drinking will help with the symptoms associated with dehydration, but technically speaking it doesn't "cure" anything.4
Hangovers are like the hydra — cutting off one head doesn't finish the beast. While investigating a trendy new "hydration clinic" claiming to offer hangover relief, News.com.au interviewed an expert who puts it bluntly:
Professor Kypri said one of the common myths about how to avoid hangovers was to drink water in between drinks. While he says this was a good way to reduce your alcohol consumption, it actually does not have an effect on your hangover. "Most people, myself included, grew up thinking that you needed to drink as much water in between alcoholic drinks to reduce the hangover," he explained. "And there's is a good reason for doing that, to reduce your consumption. But it doesn't seem to reduce the hangover effect.
The "hangover effect" here is everything but the dehydration you've taken care of. There's no flushing a hangover out of your system. If you're drinking in excess or at a speedy pace, the water will help as much as it can. Worry about mixing drinks in so far as it implies you're drinking more in a single session. To truly steer clear of a hangover, you've simply have to drink less.
What About The Next Day?
I Want A Mimosa Regardless, But Will It Help?
The old "hair of the dog that bit you"5 (and by extension, all your favorite brunch cocktails) is at the center of a recent hypothesis regarding hangovers. Some people swear by the morning-after drink despite it seeming so counterintuitive. Adam Rogers, author of Proof: The Science of Booze proposed a new take on "hair of the dog." The Independent highlights methanol as Rogers' potential hangover culprit and target of the next day's drink:
All alcohol contains trace amounts of toxic methanol, [Rogers] said, which can cause blindness and even death in high concentrations because the body converts it into formaldehyde. The poison is usually used to preserve dead bodies and can deprive parts of the body of oxygen when administered in high levels. Fortunately, the levels of methanol in most drinks are very low but added up over time, it can cause a hangover. Ethanol, the main component of alcohol, is given to patients with methanol poisoning to stop it converting into formaldehyde.
This isn't a ringing cure-all endorsement for Bloody Marys, mind you. Rogers himself notes that even if "hair of the dog" alleviates minor methanol poisoning, these subsequent drinks can just be masking your hangover symptoms.
Go Easy On The Coffee
You're hungover, meaning you're groggy and miserable. Shouldn't it make sense to reach for the same thing that usually makes you less groggy and miserable? A coffee or tea can seem just like the thing, but be warned: it won't "sober you up," per say, even if it makes you feel better. Depending on your hangover symptoms, caffeine could also make you feel worse thanks to its vasoconstriction and diuretic (dehydrating!) properties. On the other hand, if you swear by morning joe, abstaining can lead to minor withdrawal. Drift Away Coffee explains:
You likely need at least some coffee to prevent a withdrawal headache from setting in, but drinking coffee will increase your blood pressure and make the headache from drinking last night worse. What should you do? A hangover presents a catch-22 for coffee drinkers. The best solution is often to go back to sleep, if you're able to.
No time to snooze? Try alternating between your caffeinated beverage of choice and water, and try not to think of those happier times where caffeine fixed all your life's problems.
And Don't Mess With Acetaminophen, Period
Remember earlier, when we resolved to respect our livers more? Well, similar to alcohol, our livers need our help when it comes to processing acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. That help comes in the form of not consuming too much. Take it from Fusion, don't keep Tylenol by the bed for hangovers:
With or without alcohol, Tylenol should be handled with care due to its effects on the liver. The organ can only metabolize a certain amount in a given period of time—there's a reason the pill bottle tells you not to exceed 10 regular-strength pills in 24 hours. If you take too much, your liver will metabolize the rest in a process that produces a toxic byproduct that actually kills liver cells. (Acetaminophen overdose is the number-one cause of acute liver failure in the U.S. and the U.K., so it's probably a good call to follow the instructions before popping those pills.)
[Fusion]
If your liver could talk, it'd surely thank you for not mistakenly reaching for acetaminophen after a night of boozing. Ibuprofen (i.e. Advil) and aspirin are safer bets for relief from hangover pain, though they should be handled with care given their own associated risks and side effects.6
Hands down, the best way to prevent a hangover is to drink less or not at all. Try to do the adult thing and drink in moderation. If you're stuck with a hangover, the next best adult thing you can do is accept it. Your neolithic ancestors probably wished for a cure-all too, but at least you can tweet memes about your hangover and rack up some pity likes.
Looking for more instructions on being a grown-up? Check out our archive.
First, what's in your drink is more specifically ethanol, so it's appropriate to say "ethanol is bad for you."
This old letter from a Nantucketer to the New York Times explains the origin of "three sheets to the wind." Referring to sails on a Dutch-style windmill, it's actually better to be a balanced "four sheets to the wind" than it is to be three. Don't take this to mean you should keep drinking when you're already hammered — the chances that you'll regain your balance are about as good as the chances that you'll spontaneously turn into a Dutch-style windmill.
The Dietitians of Canada have one of the more handy charts for food sources of vitamins, if you're curious. If you're too tipsy to consult a chart before snacking, just use good judgment and try to eat something that's not too junky, y'know?
You've probably seen Pedialyte (and Gatorade, and coconut water, and…) touted as super hangover preventatives. The Today Show looked into this trend in 2015, after Pedialyte launched an ad campaign targeting party-loving adults. These drinks can help with dehydration, but they're simply not magic cures. Being seen as a hangover cure is really good for business, but the benefit to you might be little more than a placebo effect.
The helpful language historians at World Wide Words do a stellar job tracing "hair of the dog" back to Hippocrates' principle of "like curing like," later applied to rabid dog bites. The first jesting, booze-soaked appearance of the phrase in English literature dates back to the 1500s.
Non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen and aspirin, as Fusion reminds us, are safer on the liver but can cause gastrointestinal pain when taken on an empty stomach. Whether you're popping an aspirin before bed or the next morning, at least grab a snack.
