If you’ve ever had too much to drink, you know some of the morning-after consequences can be less than pleasant: queasiness, tiredness, a splitting headache, dry mouth, stomach upset, and a fuzzy memory, to name just a few.
“There are three big complications to a hangover: inflammation, because it binds to different chemical enzymes in the body and changes the way they act; dehydration, because it causes you to urinate a lot; and sleep deprivation, because it interrupts your sleep architecture so you’re not really getting a good night’s rest,” explains Deep Bhatt, MD, an internist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.
The good news is you can take certain steps to prevent those symptoms if you’re planning to drink.
First, to prevent a hangover, keep in mind that drinking in moderation is half the battle. For women, that means one drink a day, and for men, it's two drinks a day, per the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. One drink equals 1.5 ounces (oz) of liquor or spirits, 12 oz of regular beer, or 5 oz of wine. Drink in moderation to limit hangover symptoms, as well as all the other negative health effects of booze. Those include both short- and long-term damage, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes. (Whether any amount of booze at all is safe for your health is debatable.)
When you're drinking alcohol, be aware that it can interact with certain medications and cause side effects like dizziness, drowsiness, impaired concentration, and an increased chance of overdose, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). These medications include antidepressants, stimulants, and certain medications that treat anxiety. Allergy medications may negatively interact with alcohol as well. Check with your doctor to make sure what you're taking doesn’t have a harmful interaction with alcohol, the NIAAA advises.
And understand that what you eat before you start drinking matters. You’ll want to make sure you have a full stomach before you drink, because as Mayo Clinic notes, alcohol is absorbed faster on an empty stomach. Scientists are finding some interesting foods that may help too, like asparagus. Research has found that extracts of asparagus leaves and shoots contain amino acids and minerals that may help liver cells better metabolize alcohol and reduce inflammation. Those components may also provide liver-protective effects, which could help your body recover faster, the research suggests — but no studies have yet been done in humans.
In addition, make sure you're well hydrated before you indulge, as alcohol causes you to urinate more than normal and depletes your body of fluids, per Cleveland Clinic.
What should you do if a hangover does strike? So far, science has not come up with a single magic natural cure that will solve the misery of having had one too many cocktails. But experts have pinpointed several practical remedies that may shorten the symptoms. Here, discover a few hangover hacks.