How to Treat a Hangover

We've all wanted to know how to treat a hangover at one time or another. Hangovers happen when people drink too much alcohol, especially hard liquor and wine. When you go on a binge, you're likely to need a remedy for the headaches, nausea and other metabolic reactions caused by a killer hangover.

How to Treat a HangoverThere seem to be a million hangover treatments - one for each drinker. That's because people's bodies react differently to alcohol. Some get hangovers from drinking spirits. Others tend towards those strange wine hangovers. There are some who even get hangovers from excess beer consumption, especially if they go on a binge.

Since people have different metabolisms, various hangover remedies might work perfect for one person, while hardly at all for another. So the next time you've had a little to much to drink, start with our list on how to treat a hangover and find a remedy which works for you.

Causes of Hangovers

Most people get a hangover, because their body gets dehydrated when consuming alcohol. Also, heavy drinkers tend to lose too much Vitamin A, Vitamin B and Vitamin C. To recover from being hung over, you need to start to replenish your body by drinking plenty of water and restocking with vitamins.

To start with, stop drinking alcohol while you're trying to recover. A hangover won't abate fully until you get all the alcohol out of your system. But while you still have alcohol in your body, take these steps to alleviate the worst side effects of a hangover.

Take Aspirin - Drink a Big Glass of Water

I have a friend who's both a medical doctor and a heavy drinker, and he suggests the simple remedy of 2-3 aspirin and a big jar of water. The aspirins are going to help with the pounding headaches when the blood vessels in your head stop constricting and blood starts rushing back to your head again, while also helping with general body pain. The water helps rehydrate your body.

Here's a counterintuitive fact about water: the more water you drink, the less water your body retains. When your body assesses it's not getting enough water, it retains what little water it has in the body's cells, as a conservation strategy. That's why people get puffy faces when they drink a lot - the body is conserving water through water retention. If you drink water, your cells release what they've been conserving, you restore the natural water levels in your body, and you purge your body of impurities through the normal means of water purgation (urination mostly).

Drink a Soda

Carbonated drinks sounds in sodas and colas relieve the effects nausea. If you're really nauseated from a hangover, you might find it hard to hold water on your stomach. If you drink water and feel the need to heave, switch to a carbonated drink. The carbonation relieves your stomach, while the blend of sugar and caffeine should give you a quick burst of energy.

Here's another fact you might not know: when soft drinks first came on the market, they were sold as a cure for upset stomach. "Pepsi" was so-named, because it was marketed a cure for dyspepsia (upset stomach). The carbonation is a reason.

Drink Coffee

Treating HangoversCaffeine is a stimulant, so if you don't have a soda pop to drink, coffee is a substitute. Coffee doesn't have carbonation, though, so it's not as good of a pick-me-up for the sickened drinker, though it looks better to have drunks drink coffee to sober up in the movies.

Drinking too much alcohol does funny things to your brain, and caffeine temporarily abates some of those after-effects.

Eat Dry Toast

Toast a piece of bread (with no butter) and eat a piece of dry toast. You want something "on your stomach", to negate some of the queasiness of upset stomach. Otherwise, the acids in your stomach churn. Don't add butter, peanut butter or jelly. The human body is adapted to eat bread as the base of all foods, so it's the best food for a bad stomach. (Try less salty crackers, if you don't want toast.)

Eat a Banana

When you drink a lot, you lose potassium and magnesium from your body. Potassium, along with sodium, maintains the body's water balance and helps lower blood pressure. Magnesium aids in the proper functioning of muscles and nerves, while magnesium also converts blood sugar into energy.

So when you eat a banana while you have a hangover, you may help restore body's ability to do the following things.

Any of these can be connected to a symptom of a hangover. We've already covered dehydration, while "water balance" also deals with salinity of water in the blood stream and cell structure. Lowering blood pressure means you're less likely to have pounding headaches, while converting blood sugar into body energy is important for getting on your feet again. And if you muscles and nerves aren't functioning properly, you're likely to be tired, sore, depressed or agitated.

Drink Orange Juice - Eat an Orange

Replace Vitamin C lost by drinking a big glass of orange juice. Drinking tomato juice, eating an orange or taking a Vitamin C tablet are also options. This is a good supplement to whatever else you're doing to cure your hangover, though replacing lost Vitamin C is only part of the remedy.

Take a Hot Bath

Steam the toxins out of your system with a long, hot, steamy bath. This is going to be a little spacy, at first, because immersing yourself in hot water is not something a person dehydrated from a hangover wants to do right off. Once you sweat out those toxins and impurities, you'll feel a lot better, though.

Treating Hangovers

As you can see, figuring out how to treat a hangover is something of a trial-and-error process. If you've only been drinking for a time, start at the top of this list and work your way down. There are also hangover remedies on the market that we'll be spotlighting on this website, so if none of these hangover remedies work for you, don't give up hope.