Counterbalancing alcohol with plenty of water and carbs should prevent a hangover, but to recover from it, try these healthy hangover cures
Alcohol dehydrates you quickly because as a diuretic, it causes your body to remove fluids from your blood. Alcohol can further trigger migraines and cause your blood sugar to fall if you’re not being careful. An alcoholic binge is also known to cause nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting the following day—what we call a hangover—because of its effects on your stomach and its acid.
Though the body’s response to overindulgence should be warning enough, no one will blame you for letting loose and getting drunk once in a while, but you may blame yourself for the inevitable headaches the morning after. Now that New Year festivities are up next on our social calendars, it’s best to plan ahead and prepare these hangover cures so that you bounce back faster. The list ahead is particularly useful for those of you whose work or classes resume right after the holidays.
Hydrating drinks
As much as we’d want them to exist, there’s no instant miracle cure to hangovers. However, the fact remains that so long as you stay dehydrated, your body will take longer to recover. Water is the obvious choice when it comes to hydrating, but there are specific fluids you can drink for better symptom relief and faster recovery, like ginger tea to help ease your nausea, and coconut water or sports drinks to recover lost electrolytes.
Alternatively, you can drink smoothies with hydrating ingredients like fruits. At the top of our list of recommendations is this easy three-ingredient pineapple coconut smoothie. It’s a known hangover cure due to the pineapple’s hydrating benefits along with the coconut’s positive impact on digestion.
Ingredients rich in sodium and potassium are also linked with severe dehydration recovery, so sweet potato and banana smoothies are great, too. This recipe also contains protein-rich Greek yogurt to help stabilize blood sugar, as well as nut butter that helps replenish the magnesium lost from heavy drinking. Take note that you should sweeten your smoothies naturally with fruit instead of ingredients like honey to ensure proper rehydration.
Hearty meals
Of course, you can’t begin your day with just drinks. You will also need to eat food like oatmeal to help reduce hangover symptoms since it contains complex carbs. You can top this off with potassium-rich fruits like bananas and avocados, or blueberries to fight inflammation and almonds to recover magnesium and zinc.
For something heavier, you can make meals centered around eggs, chicken, salmon, or beef with food like sweet potatoes, spinach, avocados, and asparagus on the side. Notably, eggs and meat sources high in protein can help you recover from hangovers faster, while salmon which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids helps fight inflammation. And as mentioned earlier, sweet potatoes and avocados are great ingredients for hangover cures since they contain nutrients helpful in dehydration recovery. Spinach and asparagus are great additions to this list, too, since the former can replenish your diminished folate levels and the latter can help break down alcohol faster due to its amino acids, minerals, and enzymes.
Light exercise
RELATED: Low-Impact Exercises to Keep Your Body Moving Throughout the Holidays
Finally, as difficult as it sounds to do when hungover, exercise is the quickest way to recovery. This is because working up a sweat increases your mood-boosting endorphins and oxygen flow. However, since you’re already dehydrated from being hungover by then, be sure to make and take any of the previously mentioned hangover cures so you don’t exacerbate your symptoms. And since you will be undergoing symptoms that will affect your coordination, stick to low-impact exercises like yoga so you don’t push yourself too hard.
