Evening with friends went further than expected and you got a huge hangover? Here are some tips to combat the consequences.
When you are young, especially during the university period (or in any case after graduation), it often happens that you participate in parties and social gatherings where alcohol is the main course. Partly to overcome social anxiety, partly to experience the feeling that alcohol consumption can give, as a teenager it can happen that you let yourself go and exceed with consumption.
At the moment everything goes well, indeed you experience a pleasant sense of euphoria, as well as the ability to socialize can increase. In this context, we will not dwell on responsible consumption for those who have to drive. It is common knowledge that anyone who has to drive has a responsibility to stay sober, since alcohol alters perceptions and slows down reflexes and the ability to concentrate. But we will focus on what the health consequences are the day after excessive alcohol consumption.
Anyone who, at least once in their life, has indulged in excessive alcohol consumption he knows that the following day there are consequences for the organism. As soon as you wake up you are hypersensitive to noise and light, you probably experience a severe headache and almost certainly feel nauseous, dizzy, tired, difficult to concentrate, thirsty and probably even hungry.
When you are young, everything is resolved with a long sleep until lunchtime, a moment in which the nutrients necessary to recover strength are placed in the stomach, then we proceed with a slow afternoon in which our brain is given time to resume function normally. When you grow up and you don’t have this time available, hangover is definitely a traumatic eventas it must be overcome quickly in order to be able to carry out daily tasks.
Alcohol is bad for your health, even in small quantities
Be wary of those who tell you that a small amount of alcohol is not bad for your health. Scientific evidence has shown that alcohol consumption has negative effects on our health. Not only that, scholars agree that it is not possible to establish what the minimum allowed consumption is, the one that does not cause any health risk. The principle that must be adopted is “Less is more”, that is, it is fine to indulge in a glass from time to time but if you avoid that too, all the better.
The fact remains that from time to time it is possible to indulge in a drink and that in adulthood we should have understood what the limit we are able to tolerate is. However, it can still happen that you lift your elbow too much during an evening, but rest assured that the next day it is very likely that you will wake up with some or all of the symptoms of a hangover. So let’s try to figure out how to counteract the symptoms and get back to normal.
Hangover cures: Drink water and eat
The first thing you need to do after drinking to excess is drink a few glasses of water. Just before going to bed, in fact, it is advisable to drink to rehydrate. Alcohol blocks the release of the hormone vasopressin, which usually has the function of inhibiting urine production by the kidneys. Also among the harmful symptoms of a hangover there can be excess sweating, diarrhea and vomiting, all phenomena that increase dehydration.
After drinking water, it may also be useful to eat something to get sugar into the body. Drinking alcohol decreases blood sugar level and doing it on an empty stomach further lowers blood sugar. Very often the sense of tiredness and headache that you feel after drinking a lot are caused by a lack of sugar in the blood which does not allow the brain to work properly. So eating can restore normal levels and reverse these side effects.
Avoid paracetamol
The morning after a colossal hangover you could therefore experience headaches and tiredness. Said of the help that water and food can give, it could be that these precautions do not have any positive effect on the immediate. Headache could be an annoying travel companion during the day, so it may be necessary to take medicines to counter it.
In this case, aspirin and ibuprofen are fine, or other typical medicines for these problems; however, they should be used with caution, since NSAIDs (non-steroidal medicines) irritate the stomach. When you drink to excess, your stomach is already irritated by the presence of alcohol, so excessive consumption of medicines could be counterproductive. Absolutely to be avoided in these cases is paracetamol, since the alcohol present in the stomach could accentuate the toxic effects that this medicine has on the liver.
Coffee and lemon? No, just coffee
As mentioned, one of the effects of a hangover could be excessive tiredness. Surely you have heard of several home remedies for this condition, such as the consumption of fresh milk, or that of Coca-Cola, or even the coffee solution with lemon. In particular, the latter is “sold” as a miraculous remedyin reality there is no evidence to support the real effectiveness in counteracting the effects of the hangover.
However the consumption of coffee might be a good idea. In fact, being an energizing drink, coffee could help us overcome the tiredness and confusion typical of alcohol intoxication. We could associate this with the consumption of foods rich in B vitamins such as apples, nuts, cereals and milk.