Hangover Nausea

Hangover nausea feels like a curse the day after a big alcoholic binge. People also give the worst suggestions for getting over the nauseous stomach that comes with being severely hung over, such as eating greasy foods. Before you start frying up bacon and french fries for breakfast the day after, lets look at why hangover nausea occurs.

Why Does a Hangover Cause Nausea?

Hangover NauseaAlcohol irritates you stomach. In fact, if you drink long enough and hard enough, alcohol can damage the lining of your stomach. The lining grows back, but it's going to cause severe nausea for the time being.

The best way to cure hangover nausea is to avoid hangover nausea through prevention. Eat before drinking, so you don't drink on an empty stomach. Hydrate yourself before drinking. Drink plenty of water as you drink alcohol.

Once the night is over, take two aspirin and drink 2-3 glasses of water before going to bed. This should help eliminate all but the worst hangover headaches. Nausea is another matter, altogether, especially when you haven't taken precautions against excess drinking.

If you already have hangover nausea, lets look at ways to reduce the pain and damage caused by binge drinking.

Drink Fluids

Find a fluid your stomach will accept and drink plenty of fluid. Water is best for body detoxification, but water often makes your stomach more upset. In lieu of water, drink from among the following list of liquids.

Remember that caffeine is a diuretic, so too much caffeine is going to dehydrate you. One of the main reasons for having a hangover is that your dehydrated, so you can exacerbate your problems by drinking too much coffee, tea or caffeinated soft drinks. Carbonation helps certain stomachs deal with nausea, though, which is why Mom always wanted you to drink Ginger Ale.

Sports drinks replenish electrolytes, and the sugar content in them might give you a temporary energy boost. But there is also acid content in Gatorade and Powerade, like there's acid in soft drinks, so these can make already upset stomachs worse.

Orange, tomato and prickly pear juice are probably your best options, for the reasons stated above. Remember that all of these liquids include water in sizable amounts, so if you can keep them down and they don't have substances that dehydrate you further, any are probably going to help.

Breakfast Helps - Hangover Nausea

Curing Hangover DizzinessIf you can keep something on your stomach, breakfast helps hangover nausea. One of the reasons that nausea occurs is that alcohol hurts the lining of your stomach, and your stomach churns out more acid. This acid gets to churning and causes the symptoms of upset stomach and nausea.

When you eat a piece of toast, this food sucks up a significant amount of these stomach acids. Like I mentioned earlier, avoid eating too many greasy foods. Grease slows down the digestion process. Fatty foods to avoid include bacon, cheese and most meats.

Instead, eat dry toast, fruits like bananas, and cereal. If milk sounds like a really bad idea, rough it once and eat dry cereal. Eating breakfast with a hangover is going to help you, so even if you don't feel like eating on a nauseous stomach, give it a try.

Banana Milkshakes - Upset Stomach Remedy

Sometimes, solid food just isn't in the cards. In those situations, you might want more on your stomach than a bunch of liquids, so a milkshake is a good compromise. Of all milkshakes, banana milkshakes are the best remedy for a hangover.

To make a banana milkshake, put 2 bananas, 5 cups of milk and some honey in a blender. Blend to perfection, then pour into a glass or cup and drink your banana milkshake.

The banana restores potassium and magnesium you need to maintain proper water levels. Potassium and magnesium also help in maintaining proper blood sugar, while helping get blood pressure under control. Also, magnesium is good for your muscles and nerves.

Meanwhile, the milk in the banana milkshake should help soothe your upset stomach. If you remember from your old chemistry class, the acid scale had "bases" and "acids". Add one to the other and you neutralize the effects of each. Milk is considered a "base", so when you add milk to the churning acids of your stomach, it tends to neutralize the acids.

Antacids and Stomach Relief Medicine

Pepto Bismol tablets also treat nausea, for many of the same reasons that milk does. As the old commercials showed, Pepto Bismol lines your stomach and protects the lining of your stomach from acid, while neutralizing the stomach acids that have been produced in too great of amounts. Once you eat, ingest 1-2 Pepto Bismol tablets and see if this helps.

Take a Nap Sitting Up

Taking a nap lets you sleep off a hangover, including the nauseated feelings you have. If you fear headaches or feel a headache coming on, sleep sitting up, which keep the blood from pooling in your brain. "Sleeping it off" might be hard to do, when you're sick to your stomach, so this is only a last resort, or at best, a supplementary cure.

Chest Pains and Hangovers

If you're new to drinking and hangovers and you're having chest pains along with your headaches, nausea and other hangover symptoms, you're probably having an anxiety attack. Anxiety attacks come from too much adrenaline pumping through your blood, causing severe chest pains. Chest pains are not normally a symptom of hangovers, so unless you think you're of an age that heart conditions become a factor, you should take deep breathes and try to calm down.

This might sound like an odd topic for a hangover article, but I've come across a couple of young drinkers who were dealing with this very thing in the last year. If you've ever had heart or lung conditions in the past and you start to have chest pains, talk to a doctor immediately.

Curing Hangover Dizziness

One of the problems of curing hangover dizziness and other symptoms, is that some of the best remedies don't cure everything. Water and aspirin are great for headaches, but it's hard to hold down water on an upset stomach, while many painkillers (like aspirin) cause your stomach to bleed. But if your hangover nausea is the worst side effect of your hung over condition, consider the information above when selecting your hangover remedy.