WHAT MAKES A GOOD HANGOVER CURE ?
Party season is upon us. We all know what that means for the morning after – but remember that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Rhys Fisher has the lowdown on how to beat your hangovers.
Whilst searching for a foolproof hangover cure may be ambitious to the point of foolish, there are some steps one can take to make the day after a heavy session slightly more bearable, but also some classic ‘cures’ that are out-and-out myths.
The first of these ‘cures’ is the old adage about the hair of the dog, or for some of us, getting back on it. Sounds a little dubious, doesn’t it? Surely the last thing you need when you’re laying there with a pounding in your skull that’s making you consider the benefits of beheading is another drop of what caused all this misery. The logic of this sounds so flawed, because it is. Having another drink will in no shape or form help cure your hangover – all you are doing is prolonging and worsening the inevitable. Be brave. Face your demons head on and get rewarded with a slightly less terrible hangover.
Next on our list of fabled hangover cures is the fry-up: another suggestion that, once you dig deeper, sounds utterly ludicrous. How can something swimming in grease, containing almost all of your recommended daily calories and utterly devoid of nutritional value, be of any use in combatting this brutal affliction? The answer is, it can’t.
What your body needs after drinking your weight in gin is to replenish all the vitamins that you quite literally flushed down the toilet during your 87 trips to the bathroom the previous night. A fry-up may be one of the country’s favourite dishes and one of the few things that Britain has contributed to the culinary scene, but rich in vitamins it is not.
So what exactly should you eat? Eggs, eggs, and more eggs. The most versatile of the classic breakfast foods is also the most effective in combatting the effects of a hangover – particularly for headache sufferers. Eggs contain an amino acid called cysteine, which breaks down the headache-causing chemical formed by the liver breaking down alcohol. In short, eggs are the best.
Another breakfast option is good old-fashioned oats, which aren’t only teeming with vitamins, but will also raise your blood sugar levels, taking you from corpse-like to potentially presentable.
For those lucky readers who are able to sleep late on a hangover and don’t particularly fancy a bowl of porridge at two in the afternoon, soup is another great option. Both vegetable and chicken noodle will give you a mineral boost, as well as restoring sodium and water levels. They also have the added benefit of being light on the stomach, for those of you who are prone to allowing last night’s alcohol to exit the body the same way that it entered it.
The cliched ending to a piece like this would be to inform you that whilst these foods and drinks will help, the only real cure for a hangover is to not drink as much alcohol the night before. However, we both know that’s not going to happen. Enjoy the beers, and stock up on eggs and soup.