Coping with a hangover

Instead of telling you not to drink excessively over the festive season (because you probably aren't going to pay attention no matter what we say), here are some tips for before and after your big weekend to help you prevent and/or get over a hangover. Dissection of the hangover
Depending on how much and what you drink, a hangover can range from a mild queasy headachy feeling through to a thudding headache of migraine proportions, severe dehydration, nausea, diarrhoea and overwhelming exhaustion. Again, depending on the depth and breadth of your hangover, you could find yourself incapable of functioning normally, being grumpy, sensitive to light and not really up for a day’s work.
So what actually causes this grief after a night’s drinking? The main culprit is ethanol – that is the alcohol found in what you are drinking. Ethanol has diuretic properties, meaning that it makes you pee and you thus become dehydrated, which in turn causes the headache and nausea. So the more aclochol you drink, the more dried out you get and the more impressive your hangover will be.

Added to this are toxins found in alcoholic drinks (congeners, impurities that are a result of the fermentation process). The drinks containing the greatest amount of these toxins are red wine and dark liquors such as brandy, whisky and bourbon. White wines and clear liquors such as rum and vodka contain less congeners and so cause milder hangovers.
However, when you mix your drinks then different sorts of these toxins get mixed inside you and this is the best way to ensure that you finish up with the biggest of all hangovers… Additionally, beer is carbonated and speeds up your absorption of alcohol, so if you're into Beer with whisky chasers, you’ll be setting yourself up for a whopper hangover.
Preventing a hangover
Here are some tips to help keep the ensuing hangover to a minimum:

• Don’t drink on an empty stomach. Try to eat something solid, like a good plate of pasta, before you start drinking. A glass of full-cream milk can also help as the fat slows down the body’s absorption of the alcohol.

• If you are at a pub or a bar, try not to get into buying rounds with your chums, otherwise you'll lose track of how much you are drinking and have no control over your individual consumption. Better that everyone pays for his own drinks and drinks at his own speed.

• If possible, stick to clearer drinks such as white wine or gin… and steer away from the darker drinks such as whisky, red wine etc. And DO NOT mix your drinks over the evening.

• Try to alternate each alcoholic drink with a glass of non-fizzy water or juice. This will help keep you hydrated and may even reduce your overall alcohol consumption. Fizzy drinks don’t have the same effect as they are carbonated and so speed up alcohol absorption in the same way as beer does.

• Try to stop drinking early. If your objective is to get drunk, then once you’ve reached that objective, you should stop drinking. If you stop drinking alcohol earlier, your body will have more time to process and eliminate the alcohol before the next morning comes around.

• Walk at least a part of the way home – the fresh air will sober you up a bit and help out for the morning after.

• Remember to drink a couple of glasses of water before going to bed – it all helps to beat the dehydration.

Coping with a hangover
If you do wake up with a hangover, here are a few tips to lessen the pain:

• Avoid the old adage ‘hair of the dog’. Further drinking will only put the hangover off until later. Be careful; if your preferred hangover remedy is to drink more, you could be getting into a vicious alcohol-dependency circle.  

• Drink as much water as you can over the day. If you are bed-bound, keep a bottle of water handy to drink as and when.

• Try and drink some fresh fruit juice, which will give you a boost of vitamins.

• If you’ve got a bumper headache, you may need to take a painkiller, so go for the soluble version of paracetamol, which is gentler on your stomach, particularly if you are feeling nauseous.

• Avoid all caffeine (tea, coffee or energy drinks). While caffeine may give you a temporary feeling of improvement, it will also dehydrate you further and once the immediate effects wear off, you may actually feel worse.

• If you are feeling really dried out, then take a rehydration treatment sachet (available at the chemist) to replace lost minerals and salts.

• Even if you don’t feel like it, try to eat something – a banana is great and will help replace some of the potassium you lost through the extra peeing the night before. And if you're up for it, an English breakfast can also help by giving you a boost of calories and the amino acid cysteine, thought to be good for eliminating toxins.

• If you can manage it, get outside for a breath of fresh air and have a bit of a wander (even round the garden will do!).

• Rest and relax – you’ve overdone the drink and a hangover is the price to pay. So just lie back and accept it, get some rest and try to be more reasonable the next time you have a night out.

What you actually do need to know about alcohol consumption…
The NHS recommends:

• Men should not regularly drink more than 3-4 units a day.
• Women should not regularly drink more than 2-3 units a day.

'Regularly' means drinking these amounts every day or most days of the week. If you are 'regularly' drinking alcohol above these recommended amounts outside of the festive season, you may have the beginnings of an alcohol dependence problem.