Post-party Hangover Plan: The Food Solution
What's your natural instinct when you have a hangover? For most of us, it's to reach for food - and that's exactly what you should do.
Food is the natural way to detox from a hangover since it provides everything you need to make yourself feel better. First, by eating you help to stabilize your blood-sugar levels. Second, food allows you to replenish the stores of the B vitamins and vitamin C that were destroyed by all that alcohol the night before, thereby recharging your body's natural ability to detox itself.
What to reach for
Fruit juice. Dehydration is the major cause of most hangover symptoms. Therefore your first defence against them should be trying to boost fluid levels within your body. So why is fruit juice better than water? As well as a good proportion of water, fruit juice also contains antioxidants that help to strengthen the liver. According to research published in a leading toxicology journal, the presence of the fructose in the juice actually helps increase the speed at which the body metabolizes alcohol. Drinking juice and eating fruit throughout the day will also help to replenish lost vitamin C.
Scrambled eggs. Protein is a big hangover helper. To detox properly, your body needs the amino acids found in protein foods. Any will do, but cysteine, which is found in high quantities in eggs, is particularly helpful. Eggs are also good because they contain low.levels of fat. Fat is digested through the liver, so is best avoided on hangover mornings or your body switches from detoxing the alcohol to detoxing the fat, leaving you in pain for longer. Toast and honey. These will help raise blood-sugar levels, taking away that jittery, sick feeling and supplying another dose of detoxing fructose. Brown toast is also high in B vitamins, which need replenishing to boost your energy.
Adding other foods rich in B vitamins, such as red meat and wholemeal pasta, throughout the day will maximize these effects. Leafy green vegetables. Many leafy green vegetables contain natural substances that help support the liver and enable it to work at a faster rate after drinking alcohol. Most of these are not things you want to eat first thing, so spreading them throughout the day can help shorten your hangover without testing your stomach too much.
Good ones to try include cruciferous vegetables (like cabbage and broccoli) and artichokes. These vegetables also include levels of folic acid, which is a vital anti-alcohol nutrient because it can actually repair some of the cell damage inflicted by alcohol. Watercress is also good because it contains high levels of chlorophyll, which helps to re-oxygenate the body - and oxygen is something you need lots of as detox can quickly deplete the levels of oxygen in the blood.